LISTEN: Izaak Opatz, “Mag-Lev Train”

Artist: Izaak Opatz
Hometown: Missoula, Montana
Song: “Mag-Lev Train”
Album: Extra Medium
Release Date: April 29, 2022
Label: Mama Bird Recording Co.

In Their Words: “‘Mag-Lev Train’ describes one really great night I had outside of Yucca Valley, California, when I connected with someone in a way I hadn’t in a long time. You know how when you’re in your mid-30s and single you doubt you’ll ever feel that hot belly cauldron feeling of mutual attraction and excitement ever again? Yeah, me neither. But anyway, the feeling just slid into place with this person and we stayed up all night talking, even ended up on a porch swing looking at the stars. It was such a blissful comfort to re-enter that part of myself, to know it was still there. I wrote the song after the relationship ended, but spent so much time focusing on all the little details from that night that I started to think about how the end of the relationship was embedded somewhere in that first wonderful night, almost like the invisible virus released at the end of the movie 12 Monkeys. So that’s the out-of-place E minor chord at the very end.” — Izaak Opatz


Photo Credit: Kendall Rock

WATCH: Kitchen Dwellers, “Wise River”

Artist: Kitchen Dwellers
Hometown: Bozeman, Montana
Song: “Wise River”
Album: Wise River
Release Date: April 29, 2022
Label: Kitchen Dwellers in association with No Coincidence Records

In Their Words: “‘Wise River’ came to me after my friend Brad and I took a summer camping trip over to the Pioneer Mountains in Montana. The juxtaposition of the melancholy of a dried-up mining town wrought with economic hardship that discovered a resurgence due to the boom of the fly fishing and beef industries along the Big Hole River stuck with me. The song came out, ultimately, as an observational piece based upon my interpretation of the fact that the rising Phoenix archetype exists in the form of the histories of many small mountain communities of the American West.” — Shawn Swain, Kitchen Dwellers


Photo Credit: Ed Coyle

LISTEN: Madeline Hawthorne, “Riverbank” (Feat. Mimi Naja)

Artist: Madeline Hawthorne
Hometown: Bozeman, Montana
Song: “Riverbank” (featuring Mimi Naja)
Album: Boots
Release Date: October 1, 2021

In Their Words: “I wrote ‘Riverbank’ after my first overnight rafting trip down the Smith River in Montana. This was early on in the pandemic, May of 2020. I was in a dark place emotionally after having to cancel my tour and say goodbye to bandmates, who decided to move on from music to pursue other careers. This river trip brought me back to life and that’s when I decided to write my entire album, Boots. I hold a very special place in my heart for our rivers. They foster beautiful and healthy ecosystems that open your heart and your mind. Floating down a river allows us to witness a part of this earth untainted, serene and powerful. I am so grateful to have the opportunity to explore rivers in the West and I hope that this song brings listeners the feeling that I have when I’m in my happy place hanging out on the Yellowstone River or the beautiful Salmon River in Idaho. There’s just nothing like floating down the line with the one you love, cold beer in hand, warm sun on your skin and good tunes in the background — pure bliss.” — Madeline Hawthorne


Photo credit: Dan Bradner

WATCH: Riddy Arman, “Too Late to Write a Love Song”

Artist: Riddy Arman
Hometown: Somewhere, Montana
Song: “Too Late to Write a Love Song”
Album: Riddy Arman
Release Date: September 10, 2021
Label: La Honda Records / Thirty Tigers

In Their Words: “My buddy Zach Bryson and I were sitting around sharing our new tunes and talking songwriting, when I brought up a song I was struggling to write. Somewhere in my processing of the song’s concept I said, ‘but it’s too late to write a love song.’ Zach picked that phrase out of our dialogue and I took it from there — with that line in mind, the song wrote itself. In hindsight, I realize how important ‘Too Late to Write a Love Song’ was to snapping me outta heartbreak purgatory. That’s the magic of music, whether you’re a listener or a writer. Songs can transport you to the other side of whatever it is you’re working through. They never cease to.” — Riddy Arman


Photo credit: Mike Vanata

WATCH: Sean Devine, “Clay Bluffs”

Artist: Sean Devine
Hometown: Livingston, Montana
Song: “Clay Bluffs”
Album: Here For It All
Release Date: September 3, 2021
Label: Crazy Mountain

In Their Words: “The young woman in this story has some hard choices to make. She already knew that, and then they got harder. This story is not unique to eastern Wyoming; that’s just where I happened to overhear part of it, at a gas station Burger King on a cold January night. I didn’t know these young people, but then again I do. They have been my family and I have been them myself. That’s how I know this girl is going to be ok.” — Sean Devine


Photo credit: John Zumpano

LISTEN: Laney Lou and the Bird Dogs, “Up For Air”

Artist: Laney Lou and the Bird Dogs
Hometown: Bozeman, Montana
Song: “Up For Air”
Album: Through the Smoke
Release Date: July 30, 2021

In Their Words: “‘Up For Air’ is a song about going through tough times, but also knowing that you’re in the exact place you’re meant to be. Sometimes it can be hard to accept that things are the way they are and your only job is to surrender. The lyrics for this song came quickly, but composing it as a full band took a while. We tried many different tempos and vibes for the song over the course of a year and finally landed on an upbeat and happy vibe in the studio. Ultimately the song is saying that whatever you’re going through, things will work out if you take a deep breath and come up for air every once in a while.” — Lena Schiffer, Laney Lou and the Bird Dogs


Photo credit: Loni Carr

LISTEN: Satsang, “Malachi”

Artist: Satsang
Hometown: Red Lodge, Montana
Song: “Malachi”
Album: ‘All. Right. Now.’
Release Date: June 4, 2021
Label: SideOneDummy Records

In Their Words: “The day my son Malachi was born, they said his bilirubin count was bad and they suggested we keep him under this crazy blue light throughout the night. My wife and I couldn’t do it. While my wife slept, I held him on my chest overcome with joy and thinking about what he could be and what I could be to him. His mom woke up in the middle of the night and I handed him over, and as they slept I just watched the two of them. I pulled out my notebook and wrote down what would become this song.” — Drew McManus, Satsang


Photo credit: Greyson Christian Plate

Kishi Bashi Finds a New Comfort Zone in Folk Music on ‘Emigrant’

There’s a particular knowledge that is born only from a road-worn trek, like literature’s hero’s journey, where a protagonist adventures in pursuit of higher knowledge or power, someone like Captain Ahab or Tom Joad.

Kaoru Ishibashi, the musician known as Kishi Bashi, packed a camper during the pandemic and left his home of Athens, Georgia, wandering northbound through the American frontier that’s woven throughout the Western narrative. With newfound time and his daughter in tow, this journey was a personal exploration of Ishibashi’s own identity through the sprawling American terrain.

His trip took him to places like Heart Mountain in Wyoming, a World War II Japanese internment camp — a location he has visited many times during research for his upcoming documentary, Omoiyari: A Songfilm by Kishi Bashi, where he visits similar sites throughout the United States searching for the history that still persists today. The journey also carried him through the Ozarks and the Dakotas, and to small Montana towns like Emigrant — population 271 — just north of Yellowstone, and ultimately across the great expanse of the States to Oregon.

BGS chatted with Kishi Bashi about how this trip is intrinsically tied to his new EP, Emigrant.

BGS: What was the concept behind creating Emigrant? What drew you to creating the theme around the EP?

Kishi Bashi: I’ve been spending a lot of time in Montana the last several years — especially this year, since I had so much time. I took the camper out, took my daughter out, and we did this huge trip cross-country all the way to Oregon; we spread it out over a period of months. I got to enjoy nature in a way that I hadn’t in the past, to kind of imagine what it was like back then. A lot of rural places are pretty much intact; it pretty much is what it was like 100, 200 years ago. In Montana, it’s really cold, so there’s a reason not many people live there — but that’s changing. Emigrant is a town in Montana north of Yellowstone where a friend of mine had a cabin. I borrowed it from her family, and I stayed there for a few days and fleshed out a lot of the EP.

How is the title tied to the name of the town?

To be an emigrant is to leave somewhere in search of a better place to live. I found myself really searching my own identity, my own place in this country — as a minority or even as a musician in these COVID times — trying to find what makes me happy or what makes me a person. The symbolism was really great. [Emigrant] was a frontier town for a lot of people. It was literally the frontier of this violent place, both naturally from the weather, and it was a really cutthroat environment. I was also watching a lot of Deadwood before that — it’s up around there. It may not be historically accurate, but the vibe is definitely accurate. It was that frontier, settler, colonialism type thing. It was a really harsh place to live.

How did you plan your route? What were some of the lessons taken from the road trip?

With my daughter, we started in Athens, so we went up north, and there was a lot of driving. It was a good history lesson for her because we went to the Black Hills in eastern Wyoming — actually, that’s where Deadwood takes place — and how it was Sioux territory. We went to Mount Rushmore, and it was pretty unimpressive. There’s a Crazy Horse Memorial they’re building, which looks interesting and amazing. I was getting her to understand that this is a very complicated, nuanced, but violent history that existed in these lands.

I had the realization that if you live in a city — a town that’s been modernized over and over and over — you don’t feel what it was like back then. That paved road you stand on was a dirt road at one point. Before that, it was just a trail. You don’t really get to see that unless you go out to Montana or some rural area. We basically went straight up through Tennessee, Arkansas, South Dakota, and then cut over through Wyoming.

It sounds like this road trip was an American history lesson. Did you purposefully choose locations around Indigenous or Asian American histories?

Heart Mountain [in Wyoming] — where the internment camp was — I had been there many times. And my daughter as well; she has been there a couple times in the summer, because we’re filming there a lot for this documentary I’m doing. You can’t avoid Native American spaces in this place. It was interesting to see that a lot of the reservations were closed to outside travelers because their health infrastructure was so shoddy, and that people around them were bringing in COVID irresponsibly. That was heartbreaking to see; they were really desperate to keep it out.

Tell me about “Town of Pray.” Was it inspired by the actual town of Pray, Montana?

More by the name; the town of Pray is such a stoic name. I was reading this book — do you know who Jeremiah Johnson is? He’s this folk hero [also called John “Liver-Eating” Johnson], I think a real person, pioneer, Montana mountain man. I don’t know if you know the legend, but it’s such a violent place to exist. He had a Flathead [now known as the Confederated Salish and Kootenai tribes] wife, and she was murdered by the Crows. Then he went on a murderous rampage against the Crows, and then they respected him, and he joined forces against a different tribe. We have a very narrow narrative of what history is. When you see this violent history, it just makes me grateful that I don’t have to, like, kill other people to thrive, which may have been the case if you lived around there back then. You’re always watching your back. You’re always susceptible to trauma.

What are some lessons you hope listeners take away from this EP? Or lessons you learned through making it?

If people have the opportunity to go out and visit nature, get outside of your comfort zone and explore this country. And even more social justice issues, if you wander into any of these small towns, like in Montana — Bozeman used to be like 20 percent Chinese. Now it’s like zero. There’s a reason a lot of towns are white. After they built the railroad, they drove everyone out of town. Wonder why this country is not being shared by everyone?

You included two covers on your EP, [Dolly Parton’s “Early Morning Breeze” and Regina Spektor’s “Laughing With”]. Why were those chosen, and how do they tie into the overall theme?

One of the reasons was I definitely wanted to showcase female songwriters, because I looked at the Rolling Stone top 100 songwriters, and there were like two women in there — like Madonna and Dolly Parton. And it’s embarrassing. So I made an effort to do that. Of course, I love Dolly Parton just like everybody else. I always liked that song, and I thought it fit the vibe. The Regina Spektor song — I used to play for her; I was in her band — I always thought she was underrated, especially amongst musicians and as a songwriter. Lyrically, she’s brilliant, and she’s a huge inspiration for me. For the next generation of people who may not know her music, I wanted to point out that I have the deepest respect for her songwriting by covering her song.

Why lean into the folk or bluegrass genre for this EP?

It’s something I always wanted to do. This is also a disclaimer: I’m not a bluegrass musician. I don’t have much of a bluegrass situation amongst me, but I’m bluegrass adjacent. I went to Berklee College of Music and I studied with Matt Glaser, who’s an Americana teacher. But I played jazz violin. Gypsy swing, that’s my thing. I always loved bluegrass music, but I never felt, culturally, it was something I could attach myself to. I had this whole stigma, like imposter syndrome, of not being from a rural place. I’m a city dweller. It took me a while to own up to a fiddle tune.

As I became more comfortable with my own identity of being an American musician — an Asian American musician — I was like, “What if I just want to play something folky?” It was something I always wanted to do. So there are a lot of fiddle elements, especially in “Town of Pray.” If you think about “What is American music?” There’s jazz, there’s blues. Fiddle tunes come from a lot of Irish and Scottish roots in the mountains. American music is this huge conflagration of all these different cultures melding into each other. I think that’s the beauty.

And where’s my place in that? I’m an Asian guy playing a European instrument — violin — playing jazz, which is from the South with African American contributions. I always felt like I didn’t have a real identity as an American, so that’s probably why I felt so comfortable singing bluesy stuff, or putting a fiddle tune in there — just because I want to.


Photo credit: Max Ritter

LISTEN: Cary Morin, “Valley of the Chiefs”

Artist: Cary Morin
Hometown: Lives in Fort Collins, Colorado; from Great Falls, Montana
Song: “Valley of the Chiefs”
Album: Dockside Saints
Release Date: August 7, 2020

In Their Words: “A true story told by my great grandmother at my Crow naming ceremony when I was about four years old. It tells of when she was a teenager and was kidnapped by a neighboring tribe. When women were kidnapped back then, they were destined to a life of servitude. She and her friends escape the warriors and are able to steal their horses and ride back home. The moral of the story from my great-grandmother to me was that there is nothing in life that you cannot overcome. I believe she was giving me this story to teach me perseverance in the face of any obstacles in my life. The story is familiar to me for my whole life.

“I wrote it as a memory of my life and my culture. I’ve written songs about the Crow side of my family for years. Not many of them were ever published until recently in my career. Earlier in my life, I probably thought that sharing these stories and family history was too personal. It would be interesting to ask other Crow people what their specific naming ceremony stories are. There are many… Now, I feel it is important to share this history and continue the oral history of my people. I’ve always wanted to hear this song with a different presentation. I had previously recorded it as a solo tune. I wanted a presentation with sweeping melodic lines.” — Cary Morin


Photo credit: Reggie Ruth Barrett

LISTEN: Tessy Lou Williams, “Busy Counting Bridges”

Artist: Tessy Lou Williams
Hometown: Willow Creek, Montana
Song: “Busy Counting Bridges”
Album: Tessy Lou Williams
Release Date: May 22, 2020
Label: Warehouse Records

In Their Words: “I wrote ‘Busy Counting Bridges’ with Jerry Salley during our second co-write. We’d had the idea to write a by-God country shuffle and this was the result. I love the way this song turned out! It’s heartbreak, but you can two-step your way around the room while listening. The band absolutely nailed this song; I had to stop myself from dancing around the vocal booth while recording my vocal parts. I hope it has the same effect on everyone else!” — Tessy Lou Williams


Photo credit: Christina Feddersen