Tag: Mary Gauthier

LISTEN: Mary Gauthier, “Dark Enough to See the Stars”

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Mary Gauthier
Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee
Song: “Dark Enough to See the Stars”
Album: Dark Enough to See the Stars
Release Date: June 3, 2022
Label: Thirty Tigers

In Their Words: “I co-wrote the song ‘Dark Enough to See the Stars’ with Beth Nielsen Chapman many years ago, but never released it because it did not feel quite right. We took another look at it during the dark days of the pandemic after we’d both lost several dear friends. We saw the song in a new light and were able to rewrite it and find the core idea… which is that although the people that we’d lost were gone, the love that they’d given us was not. It was given as a gift we could keep, forever. There is something about grief that brings clarity. I took the title from a Martin Luther King Jr. speech. Dr. King said, ‘Trouble is in the land; confusion all around. But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough can you see the stars.’ To me, this means when things seem at their worst, we’re often gifted with knowing exactly what is important, and what matters most.” — Mary Gauthier

Photo Credit: Alexa King

BGS 5+5: Anya Hinkle

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Artist: Anya Hinkle
Hometown: Asheville, North Carolina
Latest album: Eden and Her Borderland
Personal nicknames (or rejected band names): Anyabird

Which artist has influenced you the most … and how?

I guess far and away I have to answer — Gillian Welch. I grew up in the New River Valley of Virginia listening to Tony Rice, Norman Blake, Taj Mahal, Hot Tuna, Muddy Waters, Grateful Dead, and Old and in the Way, loved bluegrass and blues, but also female folk singers like Joan Baez and Judy Collins, pop stars like Madonna and Cyndi Lauper, and songwriters like Sarah McLachlan, Natalie Merchant, and Suzanne Vega. It just took Gillian to come around with her Revival album and put all that together for me, that you could incorporate all those great roots sounds into something completely modern and original. I was living in California at the time I heard her first album. I grabbed my fiddle and headed straight down to 5th String Music in Berkeley and started going to every bluegrass jam I could find. I thank her for giving me the idea that I could do it too — because of her genius, I could begin to imagine myself singing and playing guitar and writing songs too. It’s important to have someone you can look up to and that you can relate to so you can even have the idea in the first place.

What’s the toughest time you ever had writing a song?

For more than a dozen years now, I’ve been hanging around the Cumberlands with my buddy “Hippie” Jack Stoddart, someone who, in his rough and audacious way, brings people together to make a lot of magic. Hippie said to me one day, “I want to introduce you to Zona.” He’d been doing a lot of outreach work out of an old school bus bringing groceries and coats and toys and stuff to people living in former mining towns in Middle Tennessee. So he brought me up the mountain to meet the hardened sweetness that is Zona Abston. We sat around her kitchen table and she told me her life story, a miner’s daughter, growing up with little education and no money, not much luck or hope. When we collapsed back in the truck, Hippie said to me, “You better write this shit down!” And so I did. I wrote every detail: the cancer, the hunger, the cheating, the shining, the debt, the babies, the heartbreak. I came back with a mess of notes and thought, “How do I make a song out of this?” So I sat down and tried to pull out the most specific and moving details of everything she told me and created a ballad for her. I was super nervous to play it for her because, well it was HER life. SHE had to live it. But when I sang it for her the tears rolled down her beautiful face. She said, yup it’s all true, every word of it.

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

I actually thought about this a lot earlier this year, during the pandemic when I was trying to understand what my purpose was in music when it seemed like the industry was going to hell. I decided to focus on three things, and wrote them on a yellow sticky note that is taped in front of my desk for quick reference. The first is authenticity, and a commitment to truth and honesty to who I am as an artist. It’s a challenge to believe that it’s all already inside. I don’t need to grasp at something outside of myself. I just need to continue to learn to trust myself and be myself. The second thing is connection — connection with other artists and musicians, connections with my fans and supporters, and connections with anyone along the path. Those beautiful relationships are the foundation for anything I can possibly hope to accomplish in this lifetime. Saying “yes” and valuing the people that show up for me is oxygen. The third thing is creativity — growth and discovery. Allowing myself to surrender to the journey, giving up thinking I have to have everything figured out and under control. I need to just submit to curiosity, openness, and faith.

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

Before I was a musician I was trained as an ethnobotanist. I traveled half the world studying plants and their uses and connections to culture. I love referring specifically to plant species in my songs because they can be so symbolic in our physical world. For example, in the the title track for my new record, Eden and Her Borderlands, I use a couple of plants that carry a deeper meaning. The cedar is fragrant and twisted, it’s green the year round, its oils are used to protect against decay and disease, it is sacred and ancient in its symbolism. I also use the sycamore. It is stately and grand, always grows near sweet water. It is often a boundary and its presence on the landscape signals a threshold that we approach and then cross over. Adding these botanical details to the song is like adding spices to a recipe, it gives more depth, even for those that might not know anything about botany. And who knows, maybe it will inspire people to love plants like I do!

How often do you hide behind a character in a song or use “you” when it’s actually “me”?

I love this question because initially there can be so much fear in exposing your true self. Absolutely mortifying to lay bare the thoughts and emotions of a real human, the one behind the Facebook posts and the stage persona and the person you think you are or wish you were. The real one with all the real flaws, that is the person that is actually interesting. But the songs really push yourself (myself!!!) to look in the mirror and substitute the “you” with “me,” to get personal. Well, it’s a journey of acceptance and insight. Getting personal is the thing that connects us to the rest of humanity and, honestly, the thing that makes a good song, the thing that makes a song relatable.

I recently took a songwriting course with Mary Gauthier. In the song I shared, I kept referring to myself as “babe.” She said, who is babe? She focuses a lot on pronouns, you know, who are we talking about here? Because in our heads, it’s always about us. It can’t NOT be. We are trying to figure out what the hell we are doing here and if we are at all worthy of anything we are pretending to do. It takes a lot of working through fear to write songs. It’s good work.

Photo credit: Sandlin Gaither

16 Summer Reads: New Books by Brandi Carlile, Mary Gauthier, and More

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My summer essentials list is pretty simple: A ball cap and sunscreen for a hike, driving directions and a trail map for a day trip, and more than a few reading options for the couch that’s inevitably waiting for me at the end of a long hot summer day. Gathering together all the new memoirs and taking some tips from my BGS colleagues, here are 16 top tomes to get us all — even the kids — through this sweltering season of 2021.

Rob Bowman, The Last Soul Company: The Malaco Records Story

Generous in its photography and its scope, this overview of Malaco Records explains how a pioneering independent label founded in 1962 brought a wealth of African American music to the world via artists like Mississippi Fred McDowell, Bobby Blue Bland, Z.Z. Hill, Johnnie Taylor, Little Milton, and James Cleveland.

Brandi Carlile, Broken Horses

This memoir satisfies the longtime fans who will learn what inspired the songs from her early albums, yet it’s also a candid and conversational statement about what it’s like to be a queer woman in roots music today. The cast of characters is charming, too, particularly her exchanges with Elton John and Joni Mitchell.

Brent Cobb, Little Stuff

Country tunesmith Brent Cobb has said he writes every album with his kids in mind, so transforming the song “Little Stuff” into a children’s book came naturally. But how many children’s books get their own music video? Whether you read it or watch it, the Georgia musician’s homespun wisdom shines through.

Robert Owen Gardner, The Portable Community: Place and Displacement in Bluegrass Festival Life

This scholarly look at bluegrass festival culture in the American West comes from sociology professor Robert Owen Gardner. It’s also an examination of how arts and music grapple with social and environmental change. A digital version of the academic textbook allows more room in the backpack for sunscreen and guitar strings.

Mary Gauthier, Saved by a Song: The Art and Healing Power of Songwriting

More of a memoir than an instruction manual, Mary Gauthier tells the stories behind original songs like “Mercy Now” while leaving the mystical and magical aura of writing them intact. By sharing her intimate conversations and co-writing experiences, she offers both a creative and compassionate point of view.

Howard Grimes with Preston Lauterbach, Timekeeper

Known as Bulldog, Memphis drummer Howard Grimes has propelled R&B classics like Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together” and Ann Peebles’ “I Can’t Stand the Rain.” In this autobiography, he also explains how he wound up homeless for a time and how he’s been guided by the Bible. Fans of Stax and Hi Records won’t want to miss this one.

Chris Hillman, Time Between: My Life as a Byrd, Burrito Brother, and Beyond

You can’t tell the story of country rock without Chris Hillman. Time Between entered its second printing earlier this year, proving there’s still a curiosity about near-mythical bands like The Byrds and the Flying Burrito Brothers. Start at page one and turn, turn, turn to the get the whole story from this prolific Rock and Roll Hall of Famer.

Johnnyswim, Home Sweet Road: Finding Love, Making Music & Building a Life One City at a Time.

The ever-endearing Johnnyswim found an even larger following when Chip and Joanna Gaines chose the duo’s anthem “Home” as the theme to Fixer Upper. Now, Amanda Sudano-Ramirez and Abner Ramirez give fans a deep dive into their own family life with Home Sweet Road, their debut book brimming with photos, recipes, stories, and poetry.

Kimberly Mack, Fictional Blues: Narrative Self-Invention from Bessie Smith to Jack White

The story of Robert Johnson selling his soul to the devil isn’t the only larger-than-life narrative in blues music. A scholar of African American literature and American popular music at The University of Toledo, Mack writes about how similar self-made personas resist racial, social, economic and gendered oppression.

Richard Marx, Stories to Tell: A Memoir

A late ’80s pop star whose catalog still holds up, Marx writes about his life and career, including a few interactions with era-defining figures like Olivia Newton-John and Kenny Rogers. He also gives his candid perspective of what the music industry is really like. By the way, can’t you totally hear Alison Krauss covering “Right Here Waiting“?

Willie Nelson with Turk Pipkin, Willie Nelson’s Letters to America

At 88 years old, Willie Nelson is a living legend with a modern point of view. Yet, rather than ranting on social media, he’s channeled his thoughts into a series of letters, even writing one to Texas and another to marijuana. With his classic lyrics reprinted alongside these letters, the book captures his conversational charisma.

Sinéad O’Connor, Rememberings

This Irish artist made an iconic music video by tearfully emoting into the lens, but there is much more to her story than “Nothing Compares 2U” and her infamous appearance on SNL. As The Guardian notes, “O’Connor also doesn’t need a ghost writer because she has, throughout all of it, rarely been at a loss for what to say.”

Sarit Packer and Itamar Srulovlich, Honey & Co: Chasing Smoke: Cooking Over Fire Around the Levant

In this cookbook and travelogue, the founders of London restaurant Honey & Co. are seeking out savory smoke flavors in Egypt, Jordan, Israel, Turkey, and Greece. And it’s not just grilled meat! Fruits, vegetables, breads and “Unmissables” are make their way into these pages, too. Find out more about the authors on BGS’s The Shift List.

Kim Ruehl, A Singing Army: Zilphia Horton and the Highlander Folk School

An activist and song collector, Zilphia Horton finally gets her due. Ruehl (also a BGS contributor) explains how Horton adapted folk music and hymns for empowerment and social causes, with “We Shall Overcome” as just one example. Considering the school’s ties to civil rights, this piece of Tennessee history merits the attention.

Bobby Rush with Herb Powell, I Ain’t Studdin’ Ya: My American Blues Story

A favorite on the blues scene since the 1950s, Bobby Rush remains a beloved figure in the genre, winning his second Grammy for Best Traditional Blues Album earlier this year. A well-traveled entertainer at age 87, this memoir follows his remarkable life journey from Louisiana to Arkansas, on to Chicago and ultimately the Blues Hall of Fame.

Paul Simon, The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin’ Groovy): A Children’s Picture Book

If you gotta make the morning last with little ones around, try this imaginative picture book. With song lyrics from the 1966 Simon & Garfunkel classic and vivid illustrations by Keith Henry Brown, the 24-page book captures the small details of city life by following a bunny on a bicycle — how groovy is that?

 

BGS 5+5: Zach Schmidt

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Zach Schmidt
Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee
Latest Album: Raise a Banner
Personal nicknames (or rejected band names): Schmidty is kind of a birthright when your last name is Schmidt, you are going to be called it whether you like it or not.

Which artist has influenced you the most … and how?

If I have to pick just one, without a doubt I would say Guy Clark. I have loved his music as long as I can remember. Sometimes I feel like it has always been a part of me. Every time I listen to him I hear something I have never heard before. The songs tend to evolve over time for me. Over the years I have studied his words in written form, learned his songs, and listened countless times. I don’t think I could ever get tired of listening to Guy Clark and his music has absolutely changed my world in a dramatic way.

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

I try to draw inspiration from everything that I encounter but literature and film certainly inspire my writing in a significant way. The song “I Can’t Dance” from this album was written right after I saw the movie Manchester by the Sea. I won’t try and spoil it for people who have not seen it, but the house fire scene absolutely wrecked me when I saw it. Facing loss and working through it is something we all can relate to, especially after a year like 2020 and the way that movie portrayed the protagonist was so beautifully heartbreaking.

What’s the toughest time you ever had writing a song?

I think when I try to co-write with someone I don’t know very well. That is something I didn’t know anything about when I moved to Nashville and something I reluctantly tried. Trying to force out a song for the sake of time or a sense of accomplishment is brutal. These days I don’t mind writing with friends but I always need some time to work into my own creative flow.

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

I will make any excuse to spend some alone time with Mother Earth. Being alone out in the woods is one of the best ways to clear your head. I love to hike and mountain bike any chance that I can. I also find myself digging through the trash and recycling a fair amount to sort what belongs where. We have to take good care of this place.

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

Since I was talking about Guy Clark earlier I will stay with him. As he says in “Lone Star Hotel”: “Give me greasy enchiladas and a beer to wash it down.”

Photo credit: Curtis Wayne Millard

Harmonics with Beth Behrs: Beth Behrs & the Brothers Koren, ‘The Moon Will Stay’

Posted on by Shelby Williamson

Beth Behrs, host of the BGS podcast Harmonics, is premiering her new album with the Brothers Koren, The Moon Will Stay – now available on Bandcamp.


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The project was originally intended to be purely therapeutic, a merging of Behrs’ personal poetry and the Korens’ music it inspired. But over time, with the growth of the Harmonics community and a decision to be more vulnerable with her listeners, Behrs decided to release the album via Bandcamp, donating the proceeds to three organizations near and dear to her heart:

Songwriting with Soldiers provides weekend retreats across the U.S. for veterans who have served in all conflicts. Since 2012, they’ve connected with hundreds of veterans and military families, and created a safe and inspiring environment to share their experiences and write with professional songwriters, like Mary Gauthier, a guest on Season 1 of Harmonics.

Jewel’s Never Broken program, in partnership with the Inspiring Children Foundation, aides struggling children through mental health support, mentoring, education, and equip them with life skills and tools to earn college scholarships. Jewel will be the first guest on Season 2 of Harmonics, premiering next week.

The Equus Foundation is the only national animal welfare foundation in the U.S. that is 100% dedicated to protecting the country’s horses, and strengthening the bond between horses and people. Their mission is to safeguard the dignity of America’s horses throughout their lives, and to share the ability that horses have to empower, teach, and heal. Equine therapy has had a huge impact on host Beth Behrs’ and her family’s lives — horses have been instrumental in her mental health and loving connection within her family.

Subscribe to Harmonics to stay in the loop for Season 2, premiering on Tuesday, March 9, featuring guests like singer-songwriter Jewel, legendary comedian and entertainer Carol Burnett, renowned singer and actress Kristin Chenoweth, and so many more incredible guests!

Follow @harmonicspodcast on Instagram for more updates on these incredible organizations, and to stay updated on the podcast.

Album Art: Hana Behrs

Harmonics with Beth Behrs: Episode 7, Mary Gauthier

Posted on by Shelby Williamson

Singer, songwriter, activist, and all-around badass Mary Gauthier joins host Beth Behrs on this episode of Harmonics. The two talk about why superheroes are so often adoptees and orphans (and vice versa), the power of songwriting for veterans of the armed forces, her last live show immediately before the shutdown, and so much more.


LISTEN: APPLE • SPOTIFY • STITCHER • AMAZON • POCKET CASTS • MP3

Mary Gauthier’s name is spoken with reverence in songwriter circles. She’s won countless awards from organizations like the Americana Music Association, GLAAD, and Folk Alliance International, and was nominated for Best Folk Album at the 2019 Grammy Awards.

A Louisiana native, Gauthier has been releasing her own music for over twenty years, but her 2019 record Rifles & Rosary Beads brought a whole new level to her art, when she collaborated with the Songwriting With Soldiers project to put wounded veterans’ stories to song. 

 

‘Harmonics with Beth Behrs’ Debuts on BGS Podcast Network on September 8

Posted on by Editor

The Bluegrass Situation is thrilled to announce the newest addition to the BGS Podcast Network: Harmonics With Beth Behrs. The eight-episode podcast explores the intersections of music, creativity, wellness, and healing. (Subscribe here.)

Hosted and produced by actress, comedian, and banjo lover Beth Behrs (The Neighborhood, 2 Broke Girls) each episode features a deep dive conversation into topics such as mental health, sound healing, songwriting as therapy, ancient musical traditions, and the power of the creative process on our physical bodies and emotional selves.

The first two episodes of the series premiere on Tuesday, September 8, kicking off with guests Glennon Doyle (New York Times bestselling author of Untamed) and renowned sound healer Geeta Novotny. Other featured season one guests include Brandi Carlile, Mary Gauthier, Mickey Guyton, Tichina Arnold, and Allison Russell.

Behrs says, “Songs are simple ways of telling stories, you can find a song to fit any mood you’re in. That’s because music bypasses the intellect and goes straight to the heart. I’ve always felt that healing is creative and creativity is healing. Maybe it’s magic? I want to feel closer to the magic. I want all of you to feel closer to the magic. Harmonics was born so we could explore the intersection between music, healing, creativity, and spirituality- and in doing so, makes ourselves feel a part of something bigger. Less alone. More connected.”

Amy Reitnouer Jacobs, co-founder and executive director of BGS, says, “Developing this show with Beth was a dream — we’ve wanted to do something together for a long time. During this time when we’re all refocusing our lives and constantly assessing the state of the world, creating a space where women could be honest and vulnerable about so many topics — such as maintaining creative processes under stress and maintaining mental and physical health at home — seemed more relevant and necessary than ever before. We’re honored to feature so many incredible talents from the roots music world, but I think the breadth of our guests will show our audience that so many of these themes are universal and relevant across the creative spectrum.”

 

The String – Producers Rick Clark and Neilson Hubbard

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

Recording producers are often the best people to speak with to gain extra insight into what makes some music more effective than others. And that’s what we do this episode with two Nashville leaders with very different stories.


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Rick Clark came of age in Memphis and moved to Nashville in the 90s. He’s been a DJ, a compilation curator and a music supervisor for film and TV. He’s also getting back into songwriting and recording his own music. Neilson Hubbard is a key player in the modern Nashville music scene, with albums to his credit by Mary Gauthier, Gretchen Peters, Nora Jane Struthers and Matthew Perryman Jones. His own band of late is called the Orphan Brigade.

Kacey Musgraves is Country’s Queer Icon, but These Roots Artists are Actually Queer

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Kacey Musgraves’ dominance during Sunday’s 61st Annual Grammy Awards has certainly solidified her place as country music’s newest queer icon. She offered simply stunning, near-perfect performances during the primetime broadcast and took home four trophies: Best Country Solo Performance, Best Country Song, Best Country Album, and one of the most prestigious awards of the night, Album of the Year. So-called “Gay Twitter” devolved into a tizzy as the show unfolded through the afternoon and evening with Musgraves decidedly at the top.

Said Album of the Year, Golden Hour, saw a critical mass of LGBTQ+ fans embracing Musgraves’ music, but her relationship to the broader gay community has been percolating since her debut album, especially given its overt “Follow Your Arrow” message. All combined, her eye for gratuitous-yet-effortless glamour, her acid-steeped, anime-meets-California-meets-trailer park aesthetics, and her singular, pop-influenced countrypolitan sounds are gay country manna from heaven. And it’s not just in the music. This year, she made an appearance as a guest judge on VH1’s RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars and she routinely advocates for LGBTQ+ fans and their causes on her social media feeds.

To be sure, Musgraves fits the diva-idolized-by-gays criteria impeccably, but there’s a certain passive erasure that can occur when fans consciously or subconsciously become myopic in their praise of and infatuation with straight, cisgendered, female artists. It’s true that Musgraves has played an important role in expanding country music’s borders — musically, socially, and otherwise — but at the same time a burgeoning community of LGBTQ+ writers, artists, musicians, and creators are carving out their own space within country, Americana, folk, and even bluegrass and old-time.

This writer would never go so far as to suggest that one ought not squeal with delight at Musgraves’ fierce-as-fuck costumes, her tear-jerking solo performance of “Rainbow,” or her impossibly long and flowy Cher-callback, bump-it wig. Rather, if you love Kacey Musgraves and Golden Hour — because queer identities can be seen and reflected within her work, because she opens the door to the idea that country isn’t a forbidding place for these identities, and/or because she’s unabashed and unapologetic in her pursuit of these goals — you’re going to love these eleven badass, talented, inspirational, openly queer roots musicians, too.

Time to get stanning:

Brandi Carlile

After last night’s show this name should no longer need mentioning or introduction, as Carlile and her twin collaborators, Tim and Phil Hanseroth, absolutely brought down the Staples Center with one of the most moving performances of the night, the soaring, galvanizing, overtly queer, and now Grammy-winning masterpiece, “The Joke.” Carlile is openly gay, married, a mother of two daughters, and a tireless voice for representation and progress in Americana and its offshoot genres. If “The Joke” resonates with you (i.e. if it makes you sob uncontrollably, as it does this writer), check out “That Wasn’t Me,” “Hurricane,” and, of course, “The Story.”

Mary Gauthier

Gauthier’s latest, Rifles & Rosary Beads, was nominated for Best Folk Album this year and though it didn’t take home the prize, the album has received universal acclaim for its message of hope, empathy, and visibility for members of our armed services and the struggles they face during and after their service. Gauthier collaborated with veterans of the military in writing all of the record’s heart wrenching, honest, raw songs — which might seem counterintuitive given gays’ historically tenuous relationship with the military writ large. But Gauthier’s own life story, and the trials she’s faced, make her the perfect writer to prioritize empathy above all else in these songs.

Don’t sleep on the rest of her discography, though. The simple profundity of her writing is consistently awe-inspiring. Check out “Mercy Now” after you’ve given Rifles & Rosary Beads a listen.

Karen & the Sorrows

Jewish New York City native Karen Pittelman may seem like an unlikely frontwoman of a country band, especially when you factor in her past punk and queercore experiences, but it turns out she grew up bathed in the country compilation albums her father produced and sold for a living. Her voice recalls country mavens of bygone eras — it’s delicate yet powerful, with a pin-up girl quality that’s as subversive as it is natural. Also check out “Take Me for a Ride,” a Pittelman original that plays like a trad-country, queer version of Sam Hunt’s smash hit, “Body Like a Back Road,” but without the cheese.

Little Bandit

All of the hollerin’, barn-burning, hell-raising country soul of your favorite outlaw country rockers, but with lacy gay edges, Little Bandit (AKA Alex Caress, et. al.) is as honky-tonk as it gets. It’s a beautiful balancing act, presenting as an impossibly big-voiced, piano-smashing, charismatic frontman while singing male pronouns without hesitation. He leans into a beautifully paradoxical queerness that equally embraces diamonds, Waffle House allusions, platform shoes, and plain ol drinkin’. If you like it — and you will — check out “Diamonds,” too.

Sarah Shook & the Disarmers

Outspoken outlaws in a crop of alt-country artists who align with that eponymous country movement of the 70s, Sarah Shook & the Disarmers are a road-dogging band that would seemingly fit that mold, excepting Shook’s deliberate efforts to challenge the inherent heteronormativity of country music at every turn. For Shook it’s not necessarily about having a political message, as she put it in a 2018 interview with BGS, “I feel like doing what I’m doing — touring relentlessly, putting out records, and being unapologetically myself — is a very powerful and political maneuver as well… I’ve never been concerned about that because I feel it’s important to be honest and forthright as a human being, and as an artist and certainly lyrically as well.”

Indigo Girls

Both Amy Ray and Emily Saliers — the two halves that make up the absolutely iconic Indigo Girls — have released solo albums in the past year, both of which draw heavily on folk, Americana, and country influences. This should be no surprise to even the most casual IG fans. Banjos, mandolins, ukuleles, and so many other hallmarks of roots music have been integral to the Indigo Girls’ sound all along. But the songwriting, devastating and personal and oh so very real, is the real takeaway from both projects.

kd lang

This list might as well not exist if it excluded kd lang. Before her crossover to more mainstream genre designations, kd pretty much originated the role of badass queer making unimpeachably trad country music that refused to shy away from its queer touchpoints. Just take a look at this video! “Honky Tonk Angels,” sung with Loretta Lynn, Brenda Lee, Kitty Wells, and finally, kd in all of her butch, gender-bending, binary-eschewing glory — complete with a Minnie Pearl cameo! Country has always been (more than) a little queer, y’all.

Lavender Country

A man well, well ahead of his time, Patrick Haggerty (AKA Lavender Country), released his debut, self-titled album in 1973. It was a groundbreaking work, but the world, let alone the country music community and its commercial machine, were not ready for it. A Seattle DJ was fired for playing “Cryin’ These Cocksucking Tears” on the airwaves, only one thousand copies of the album were printed, and the band was relegated to performing exclusively at LGBTQ+ events and programs. But, despite being largely shut out of the industry, Haggerty and Lavender Country never ceased. In 2018, at the age of 74, Haggerty took part in AmericanaFest’s very first queer-focused showcase.

Amythyst Kiah

Amythyst Kiah’s booming, captivating voice, and her haunting, Southern gothic approach to Americana, bluegrass, and old-time set her apart from almost anyone else on the scene at this moment. Her reimagination of Dolly Parton’s magnum opus, “Jolene,” is a perfect example of how she carefully turns tradition on its ear. Based in East Tennessee herself, she draws on the rich musical heritage of the region, adding her own spin, creating space to allow herself to soar. And there’s plenty more soaring in her future, as she has opened shows for artists such as Rhiannon Giddens and Indigo Girls across the country and in Europe, and her collaboration album with Giddens, Allison Russell (Birds of Chicago), and Leyla McCalla, Songs of Our Native Daughters, is set to drop February 22.

Alynda Segarra

Singer/songwriter, activist, and Hurray for the Riff Raff frontwoman Alynda Segarra entrances with The Navigator, a concept project that focuses on the life and times of a fictitious Puerto Rican youth living in New York City. Themes of immigration, identity politics, displacement, disenfranchisement, and capitalistic overreach are threaded throughout the album, which offers its songs as tableaus of this girl’s — Navita’s — reality. It’s a stunning reminder that the intricacies and nuances that define us, and by doing so, separate us, are not so difficult for us to overcome with empathy and understanding. “Pa’lante!” (which translates to “forward!”) is the album’s battle cry, a song that turns utter despondency, grief, and a sore lack of humanity into a glimmer of hope.

Trixie Mattel

While almost all other drag queens who delve into the music scene release dance tracks, rap albums, or similar club-ready jams, Trixie Mattel (AKA Brian Firkus) draws upon her rural Wisconsin roots on two folk-adjacent, country-ish albums, Two Birds and One Stone. (Get it?) This isn’t just an opportunist attempt to punch up Trixie’s Dolly Parton-esque, country barbie aesthetic, she’s really got the chops. Not only is she a talented humorous-while-poignant songwriter, her technical skills on guitar and autoharp (yes, autoharp) are precisely honed to showcase her original music. This is no gimmick — though the Doves in Flight Gibson guitar and the custom, pink d’Aigle autoharp are jaw-droppingly perfect additions to Trixie’s lookbook.

 

LISTEN: Jane Kramer, “Hymn”

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Jane Kramer
Hometown: Asheville, North Carolina
Song: “Hymn”
Album: Valley of the Bones
Release Date: March 1, 2019

In Their Words: “This song was a kind of ‘homework’ assignment from my songwriting mentor, Mary Gauthier. She looked me in the eye and told me that all of my self-deprecation wasn’t cute or charming and asked me, ‘When are you going to drop the bullsh*t and really own your power and talent?’ She told me that only then would I write the kind of songs that were up to my full potential. She challenged me to write a song from a perspective of self-love. Like, full, real, spiritual and true self-love, and to call it my ‘Hymn,’ whatever that meant to me. I spent a few weeks after that alone, backpacking around Italy with a little travel guitar. I wrote this song in a little mountain village called Vetulonia, where I slept in a little cottage with a hammock for a bed, looking out over mountains that reminded me of home, and it sunk in then that I couldn’t really come home till I came home to myself. So I did.” — Jane Kramer

Photo Credit: Rose Kaz