Tag: Nashville

Out Now: Jaimee Harris

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Jaimee Harris is a thoughtful songwriter, a kind and quirky human, and an insightful individual. It was an honor to speak with her about her upcoming tour, the inspiration behind her songs, and how she takes care of her mental health in a demanding industry. Our conversation touches on everything from her daily routine – right down to crafting the perfect cup of coffee each morning – to how she stays grounded on the road, to the process behind her songwriting.

We dive into her haunting song, “Orange Avenue,” written about the tragic shooting at the Pulse LGBTQ+ nightclub in Orlando, Florida – a thoughtful and chilling track. We also explore the details of the title track of her 2023 album, Boomerang Town, a story song rooted in both fact and fiction. It follows intriguing characters with intricate pasts, the restless ache to escape small-town limits and achieve something big, and the soul-crushing realities of a harsh world.

I hope you can feel Jaimee’s humor, intellect, and warmth through this interview.

You have four months of touring coming up. You’re playing shows across the U.S. and you’re also headlining a tour in the Netherlands and Belgium. How does all of that feel and what are you most excited and anxious about?

Jaimee Harris: Mary [Gauthier] and I just got home from being on this incredible thing called Cayamo, which is like a floating music festival on a cruise ship. We were on that boat for seven or eight days and just got home last night. We leave again this weekend for tour. So I’m trying to pretend I’m not home right now. Because if I switch into this mentality of, “I’m home now,” then that just disrupts the system. So I’m looking at this week as if I’m still on the road. With just like a couple days off.

I’m so excited about touring the Netherlands. It’s one of my favorite places to play. It’s one of my favorite places to be. I love the people there. I love the culture there. And it’s been cool because I’ve been over there many times as an opening act, but I’ve never done my whole set there. And it’s been my experience that the people in the Netherlands can really handle and really enjoy the dark songs.

How do you find constantly being on the road? And, how do you balance that with mental health?

Well, I’ve learned that I need to have a couple of things in place to make me feel comfortable and it doesn’t take much, but one of them that is so important to me is my coffee, which might seem silly. But there’s this coffee I love from Austin, it’s called Third Coast, and Mary Gauthier, my partner, used to run restaurants in Boston and one of the only things she kept from her restaurants when she sold them to move to Nashville to become a songwriter is this industrial coffee grinder.

Every morning we grind it and make espresso and that’s like a huge part of my joy. And we bring it on the road with us. I bring a little kettle and my Hydro Flask, I’m a Hydro Flask girl.

Me too! Mine is right here! [Pulls up Hydro Flask]

Amazing! I love them so much. So the water bottle is a huge deal on the road.

Every morning when I start my day with that coffee, it sets me up for success. Having a little bit of routine to keep me tethered to something while we’re on the road is really helpful. I’ve found that I can always find 15 minutes throughout the day to move my body. Making that a priority for me helps everything while I’m on the road. I love being on the road. Today, since we just got home yesterday, I’ve just been on the couch all day. Re-entry is always hard for me. So today I’m just watching movies and being a weirdo on the couch.

Could you tell us about your recent interactions with Emmylou Harris?

I think coming off this thing we just did on the boat was incredible and Emmylou Harris is my number one hero of all time.

Her guitar tech, Maple Byrne, gave us a heads up a few weeks ago that Emmy might want me to play guitar and sing with her for this [songwriters] round we were in. I literally was driving a car in the Hill Country in Texas and I had to pull the car over and scream. I was like, “There’s no way! That’s my number one hero!” And I didn’t even believe it was gonna happen until it happened.

Earlier that day [during Cayamo], I played a show as me on the boat. Twenty minutes before I played, security walked Emmylou Harris and her friend to my show. I literally had to run to the bathroom! I was like, “I’m gonna be sick. I can’t handle this. This is crazy! THIS IS CRAZY!” I literally forgot the first two lines of the first song, because I was so in shock. I just couldn’t believe that happened and then I got to play with her later that afternoon. My wildest dreams have come true!

You’ve mentioned Mary a little bit. What has it been like for you to find a partner, Mary Gauthier, who is both a partner in life and also a partner in music, playing shows and touring together?

It’s been incredible. I have learned so much from her about what it is to be a troubadour from the business side of things. She’s so wise, because she came to music after running three restaurants. She has a lot of business experience that she’s been able to apply to the world of being a troubadour, which is incredible. She’s been able to do what she does inside her own integrity in a way that’s really beautiful to learn from. And I get to live in a house with one of the greatest living songwriters. I truly think she’s one of the greatest songwriters of all time, and it’s made me a better writer. Just getting to watch her, how hard she works on songs. She is a real hard worker. I mean, she’s got a lot of natural talent, but she chisels and chisels and chisels songs out of the marble. And so it’s made me up my editing game.

Your song “Boomerang Town” is so beautiful and relatable and intimate; it’s a story-song format. How did you come up with the idea for “Boomerang Town” and what does that song mean to you?

It came in different stages. I’d always wanted to write a song about where I grew up. I’m from a small town just outside of Waco, Texas. I remember being in my early twenties and trying to explain to people where I grew up and I came up with the phrase, “It’s a boomerang town.” People try to leave, they end up going back there pretty quick. That phrase had been in my mind for a while.

In 2017, I got asked if I wanted to sing a verse of “This Land Is Your Land” during this 4th of July celebration. The songwriter hosting the song said, “What verse do you want?” I said I want the steeple verse. The verse is: “In the shadow of the steeple, I saw my people/ By the relief office, I saw my people/ They stood there hungry, and so I stood there asking/ Was this land made for you and me?” In my hometown, there’s an interstate, I-35, that runs through the center of it and on the east side of that interstate there’s a steeple from the Truett Seminary in town and on the west side there are two relief offices. The interstate creates a bridge and there’s been a community of people living under that bridge for decades, like my entire life.

When I saw those words, I saw my hometown. The songwriter said, “I always thought Woody got it wrong with that verse.” I couldn’t believe that he would have such a different take on that verse; that planted a little seed for me. I worked on that song for years. I tried a bunch of different perspectives. I initially started with myself and I couldn’t find a way for the song to move forward if I was the narrator. I tried it from the perspective of a veteran. Then I tried it from the perspective of a woman who worked at a cafe. I decided her name was going to be Julie, because I’m a huge fan of Buddy and Julie Miller. I finally landed on the perspective of the 17-year-old boy who worked at Walmart that knocked up his girlfriend. Which is a combination of me when I worked at Walmart and somebody else I knew. That’s when the story started to take off.

I’ve had so many experiences where people came up to me and said, “Hey, you got that song perfectly right.” Like, “My brother died under that bridge, I know all about that scene.”

Also, being a woman from Texas, with the way things are going there – nationally and politically, that song, how it ends, has a way deeper impact than I could have imagined when I wrote it in 2020. The choices women had in 2020 are more than we have now in 2025. There’s no way I could have known that when I was writing it.

You’ve just passed 11 years of sobriety. Is there anything that you’d like to share about your sobriety, your support system, and addiction in general?

Well, I couldn’t have done it without 12-step recovery. I’m very active in 12-step recovery. That’s been my lifeboat, doing it with other people. Someone in recovery said this thing that has stuck with me: “At five years, you get your marbles back. And at 10 years, you get to play with them again.” I feel like that’s true. I’m learning every day.

I remember when I first got into recovery, people would say this thing that I could not understand, “I’m so grateful to be an alcoholic.” When I got there, it was through the criminal justice system, so I was going there to get a paper signed. I was like, “What are these people talking about?” I can’t tell you how many times over the last six years I’ve said, “I’m so grateful, because I have a support system in a time when a lot of people feel really isolated.”

You spent some time in Florida in 2022 and you wrote a song called “Orange Avenue” about the 2016 shooting at the Pulse LGBT nightclub. What does this song mean to you, and what was the process of writing it?

I decided to visit a bunch of spots in Florida to collect stories and write and record a song in each town. I spent a month traveling the state. I wasn’t even gonna go to Pulse, and then somebody mentioned it and I said, “Okay, I’ll check that out.” Everything about it really floored me. I was imagining this bar being in an entertainment district, where there are a bunch of bars. It isn’t like that, it’s a neighborhood bar. So it’s just house, house, house, house, a Dunkin’ Donuts across the street, and then Pulse. Of course it was a gay bar, but it was also a bar that you could get into if you were 18 and up. So it’s also a place where younger kids could get in and just go dance and have a good time. Which is why the youngest girl that was killed was 18 years old. She was there on vacation with her family.

Now it’s been deemed a national monument. When I was there, it was kind of makeshift. There are pictures of people, notes to loved ones, poems, just all sorts of tributes. Then there’s this one kind of official-looking plaque. It has the names of 48 people that died in the shooting. To the side of it says at the request of a family, one name has been left off this list. I was wondering, what’s the story there? I looked it up and it turns out there was a man of Middle Eastern descent and his family didn’t know he was gay until he died in the shooting.

They were ashamed of that. It took quite a long time for anyone to agree to come pick up his body. That’s how deep the shame was. At the time, I believe the police chief of Orlando was a lesbian and because of the element of it being a neighborhood bar, because there were people that were there just because they could get in because of their age, they weren’t necessarily going to come out and say, “Hey, this was a hate crime.” When they found out that that family didn’t want to come pick up their family member, they said, “We have to tell the world that this was a gay bar. This was a hate crime.”

I tried the song from my perspective, but it didn’t really have the impact that it did until I put it in a perspective of that man and his ghost and what it would be like to embody that man’s experience. It was an honor to write that song.

Photo Credit: Brandon Aguilar

Steve Treviño on Only Vans with Bri Bagwell

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

My fairly new and hilarious friend, Steve Treviño, kindly welcomed us into his home podcast studio to film this episode of Only Vans. We talk about sleeping with your road manager, comedy and music parallels, representing Mexican-American culture, The Comedy Store, mentors, and more.

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Comedian Steve Treviño must be one of the most generous, kind, and brilliant human beings. I know he’s hilarious, and we have spent tiny pockets of time together in passing before this interview, but this man is a legit all-around family man, entrepreneur, road warrior, and not to mention, an extreme giver of his time. As you’ll find out, he was going to Canada to do a big show the morning after this interview and still agreed to this somehow– and invited Kyle and I to use his podcast room at his house in the Texas Hill Country (because my RV was in the shop)!

In our Only Vans conversation, Steve and I get into what we have in common, like being on the road, being with a partner who is also an entertainer, and the parallels of the music biz and the comedy biz. I love his insider insight into Nashville vs. Texas and we talk about Steve being an integral part in opening Gruene Recording Studio, seven minutes from my house. His hustle is unmatched and it’s so beautiful how much he loves and supports Texas music. Wait ’til you hear his Pat Green story – and the Randy we mention a lot is, in fact, Randy Rogers.

Steve takes a phone call with his wife Renae mid-podcast, which ends up being our first comedic bit together about it potentially being about Steve having cancer… anyway, Renae is @iamrenaewithana on Instagram. She is equally as talented and brilliant, and Steve would probably argue she is more of those things than him. But give him and her a follow and if you have not seen Steve live, he’s going everywhere and his tour sells out quick! SteveTreviño.com is the website, and if you haven’t yet – what are you doing? – check out his comedy specials for down-to-earth, real-life, feel-good, truly memorable comedy!

 

SURPRISE! Billy Strings & Bryan Sutton Release ‘Live at the Legion’

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

A year ago today, on April 7, 2024, the American Legion Post 82 in East Nashville was packed to the gills with rabid flatpicking fans, geared up for a special appearance by two of the greats: Billy Strings and Bryan Sutton. Far from their first show together or their first collaboration, it was still one of the hottest tickets in Nashville and fans lined up down the sidewalk and up the drive of the humble Legion for their chance to witness bluegrass guitar history in the making.

To the delight of the many hundreds of thousands who would have but couldn’t also squeeze into the cinder block building known for two-stepping, honky-tonkin’, and bluegrass jams, today Strings and Sutton surprise released a live-recorded album of that evening’s show, Live at the Legion. Available digitally – with CDs and vinyl on the way August 1, and physical pre-order open now – it’s a two-disc, 20-song collection of traditional tunes, medleys, covers, and two of the most personality-rich and unique improvisational voices on the instrument.

Strings makes it no secret that, like many younger guitar pickers in bluegrass and adjacent styles, Bryan Sutton is a hero. The two have collaborated often in the past, formally and informally, getting together for jams and lessons, Strings appearing at and attending Sutton’s Blue Ridge Guitar Camp, performing as a duo at the Station Inn, Sutton guesting on stage with Strings and band, and more.

These are two generational talents, understood within and outside of bluegrass to be standard-setters for the instrument and for flatpicking at large. Together, their musical dialogues are entrancing, exciting, and as charming as they are downright unpredictable. Billy’s power and aggression on the six-string ease, while each player listens ardently and responds to the other with comfortability, or a wink, or a tasteful counterpoint, or an outburst-inducing surprise. Sutton is endlessly lyrical, drawing out such responses from Strings. For their level of chops, the collection rarely strays into self-involved jamming or ego-driven ideas.

Later this year, in September, Strings and Sutton will perform a short series of intimate duo shows to celebrate Live at the Legion – and give any who couldn’t be there in East Nashville in 2024 for the taping of the album another chance to catch the magic. The pair will appear at the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame & Museum in Owensboro, Kentucky; at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium; in Chattanooga, Tennessee; and in Boone, North Carolina with accompaniment by Strings’ bassist, Royal Masat. Due to anticipated demand, tickets for any/all of the shows must be requested by April 21, 2025, after which lottery winners will be notified. Sign up to request tickets here.

Bluegrass boasts many an iconic duo album, especially focused on the guitar. In the future, will we group Live at the Legion alongside other such definitive recordings as Blake & Rice? It seems almost inevitable. From Blake & Rice to Skaggs & Whitley, Watson & Monroe, and Grisman & Garcia – or even the just-released Carter & Cleveland – it seems immediately clear Billy Strings & Bryan Sutton’s Live at the Legion will be going down in bluegrass history. Tuck into this double album delight to see and hear why for yourself.

Photo Credit: Joshua Black Wilkins

KC Johns on Only Vans with Bri Bagwell

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

KC Johns is an incredible singer-songwriter and artist based in Nashville, Tennessee. We had an excellent Only Vans conversation live from the mountain at Steamboat MusicFest 2025! In this episode we get into old fashioneds, cruise ship jobs, Nashville, singing in the mountains, touring overseas, and more.

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KC Johns and I met over social media and we became fast friends. She is a whiskey girl like me and has her own mesquite-smoked Thunder Whiskey. This was a live-audience episode recorded and filmed at MusicFest in Steamboat, Colorado. The audio for her live acoustic performances ended up being unusable, totally on our end, and I am so sorry about that. KC is such a great live singer, but unfortunately the recording was too distorted to use. Please go see her sing live if you can, or check her out on Instagram.

During this episode, I jump into talking about her life as a cruise ship performer, and also provide no context when I bring up her super clever song, “I Wanna Rock for Christmas.” Sorry gal, I just love that tune!

Anyway, this is KC Johns. Check out her new single, “Break From the Heart,” and KC, I will come find your next Key West show at Hogs Breath and crash your stage!

And, happy birthday to Only Vans producer Kyle! You rock.

Photo Credit: Bob Pierce

Ride With Kelsey Waldon in Her Jeep “Comanche” as She Announces Her New Album

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Kentuckian singer-songwriter Kelsey Waldon has announced her upcoming album, Every Ghost, (June 6, Oh Boy Records) with – you guessed it! – a song about a pickup truck. Do not worry your pretty little heads, though, as this is a truck song that’s definitely Good Country.

“Comanche” text paints a common image in country, long languid drives down rural backroads in your favorite truck. Your four-wheeled security blanket, your best friend with a tailgate. (Watch the brand new music video above.) Listeners can imagine riding along with Waldon, in the passenger seat, down some gravel track in far Western Kentucky, as she hums the tune, formulates the hook, and builds the song around her relationship with her trusty 1988 Jeep and the contemplations that keep her company as she drives. Did she write it while behind the wheel? If not, it certainly sounds that way.

Waldon has no concerns about her “authenticity” or being perceived as dyed-in-the-wool country; she’s been exactly who she is her entire life, and certainly her entire musical career. She leverages this confidence to take up a tired radio trope – the quintessential truck song – and turn it into something earnest, relatable, engaging, and somehow brand new. It’s a perfect song to take into the summer, for rolling the windows down, sipping a cold (soft) beverage out of a glass bottle, and blasting Good Country as the miles fly beneath the floorboards.

“Comanche” is an excellent debutante ball for the upcoming Every Ghost, a nine-track album that promises to continue Waldon’s penchant for real, raw, original country that’s not too concerned about being mainstream or outlaw, “legit” or “poser.” The Kentucky native doesn’t make music or write songs for that reason, anyway. For Waldon, it’s all about expression. About finding a thread that feels grounded, down to earth, and emotive and pulling for all its worth. Doing so, she untangles plenty of simple and resonant songs that straddle alt-country, bluegrass, mainstream sounds, old-time, and much more. “Comanche,” on the surface, is a truck song, but even a moment with the lyrics shows the subjects it turns over are much more complex and in-depth.

This kind of creative work isn’t the only thing she’s been hauling. Every Ghost finds the artist challenging herself and growing beyond the sonics, production, and recordings, too. “There’s a lot of hard-earned healing on this record,” Waldon shares via press release. “I’ve put in the work not only to better myself and leave behind bad habits, but also to learn to love my past selves. It took time and experience, but I’ve come to find compassion for who I was, and that’s a major part of this album.”

Waldon’s music has always been honest, it’s always been confident, but Every Ghost still feels like the dawning of a new era. Where that honesty and confidence are underpinned by a fresh sense of ease and a trust in herself. Like the trust she has in her reliable old friend, the Jeep Comanche.

Photo Credit: Alysse Gafkjen

Jason Carter & Michael Cleveland’s New Album is a Fantastic Twin Fiddle Workshop

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Following more than 30 years since first meeting and countless times sharing the stage during festivals, the two most accomplished fiddlers in International Bluegrass Music Association history have finally teamed up for their debut album together.

Released March 14 via Fiddle Man Records, the aptly titled Carter & Cleveland sees the combined 18-time IBMA Fiddle Players of the Year Jason Carter and Michael Cleveland flexing their bluegrass muscles on compositions from some of the most prolific songwriters around – like Darrell Scott, John Hartford, Tim O’Brien, and Del McCoury.

Coincidentally, it was with McCoury and his sons’ band, the Travelin’ McCourys, with whom Carter spent the last 33 years playing until the February announcement that he’d be stepping away from the groups to focus on his solo material and collaborative projects, like this one with Cleveland.

“I just thought it was time to start pursuing other things, like my own career,” explains Carter about his decision to leave the bands. “That being said, I never thought I’d be leaving the [Del McCoury] Band. I recently gave a fiddle lesson and the person I was teaching told me he was surprised I left the band and I remember telling him, ‘I’m kind of surprised too.’ [Laughs] But it’s so rewarding to be doing something new with my own band along with getting to play with Mike.

“I’m also really excited to see the McCourys play with their new mandolin player, Christian Ward,” he continues. “There’s no bigger fan of Del or the Travelin’ McCourys than me. This will be the first time since I was 18 years old that I’ll be able to sit out in the audience and watch his show. I can’t wait!”

It was also with McCoury where Cleveland, then 13, first met Carter back in the early ’90s during one of Carter’s (then 19) first gigs with him.

“[The Del McCoury Band] has always had the players that I aspire to be like,” says Cleveland. “I remember going to and recording the band’s shows from the soundboard when Jason was just starting out with them. Then I’d go home and try to play guitar over the recordings to best imitate each part. They quickly became some of my biggest influences in this music, and still are.”

Ahead of the album’s release, BGS spoke with Carter & Cleveland over the phone to discuss the duo’s years-long partnership, the process of bringing this record to life, and their thoughts on the history of duo records in bluegrass music.

You have tunes from Del McCoury, Darrell Scott, John Hartford, Bill Monroe, Buck Owens and other roots music legends on this project, but no originals. What was behind that decision?

Jason Carter: Well, for me, I didn’t have any original tunes at the time we started doing this, so I just started throwing out songs I liked. Then I called some songwriters – Tim O’Brien, Terry Herd, Darrell Scott, and others – and the songs I liked most of what they sent I then played for Mike. I’ve only written one fiddle tune so far, but actually have four or five writing sessions lined up this week, so maybe if there’s a Carter & Cleveland Volume II, I could have a cut on there.

Michael Cleveland: We’ve talked about needing to sit down and write together, it just hasn’t come to fruition yet. When I’ve sat in with Del or Jason in the past we never had time to rehearse, which is similar to how these songs came together. We were able to talk about material and send things back and forth, but we didn’t have much time to sit down and rehearse before recording because we’re both so busy. I hope we get to do that someday, but at the same time songwriting isn’t the main focus for me. I know folks that’ll write a tune every day, but for me that only happens once in a while; when it does I make sure to run with it.

What are some standout songs for y’all on this project?

JC: That’s tough, because I like all the songs on the record. At any given time I could have a different favorite. There’s also some that didn’t make the record we still have in the can and might put out later that could actually be my favorite songs. That being said, I really like the part of “With a Vamp in the Middle” where [Mike] finger picks the fiddle while I’m strumming…

MC: That was your idea!

JC: I heard you play something that sparked that. [Laughs] When you’re in the room as a fiddle player and you hear Michael Cleveland play, it’s all special. He [is] leagues above everyone else.

MC: It’s hardly ever a problem that you have too many good songs, but that was definitely the case when we went in to record. As soon as we put the word out about it we had a bunch of our musical heroes sending us songs to record and they were all great! When I first heard the demo of “Give It Away” from Tim O’Brien I liked the song immediately. Tim was playing old-time banjo on it in the key of D while singing, but once I heard Jason sing it in the key of B I knew it was meant to be a hard-driving bluegrass song.

I also really enjoy “Kern County Breakdown.” The only time I’d ever heard that – which made me want to record it – was from Alison Krauss. She used to play it as a fiddle instrumental and I always wish she recorded it. I don’t know if it’ll happen, but I’m still holding out hope that she’ll put out a fiddle album one day.

She does have her first album in 10 years dropping later this month, so you never know!

Throughout the history of bluegrass music there have been many timeless duo records from the likes of Ralph Stanley & Jimmy Martin to Ricky Skaggs & Tony Rice to Bill Monroe & Doc Watson. What are your thoughts on being the next chapter in that series of collaborations?

JC: I hadn’t really thought of it like that before…

MC: If this album is mentioned in the same breath as any of those, that would be great! We also talk a lot about our favorite twin fiddle albums, which this seems to be more of, and have tossed around the idea of doing this project for 15 years. There’s albums from Kenny Baker and Bobby Hicks, Buddy Spicher and Benny Martin, Buddy and Vassar Clements, and so many more, but there hasn’t been one for a long time now. That’s what originally inspired us to do this. In the last few years people have also finally figured out what a great singer Jason is, which afforded us a lot more room to experiment than if it were a twin fiddle instrumental album.

JC: Mike just has such a good ear. I remember sending him a couple versions of demos I played and sang on and he’d immediately get back to me with suggestions like adding a fiddle lick at the beginning, like on “Outrun The Rain.” He thought it would be great for a high harmony thing two above the lead. As soon as he heard this stuff he had ideas. It was really cool to see how that all came together.

Mike just mentioned the idea for this album has been floating around for 15 years. When did y’all eventually get to work on it?

JC: We started recording a couple years ago. The first session we recorded we actually did at [guitarist] Cody Kilby’s house during COVID, then it was another year or so after that until we got working on it again. Because we didn’t have any rehearsal time, I remember sending voice memos of myself playing fiddle, guitar, and/or singing to Mike to listen to and send suggestions back. I remember being at a show with Del tucked away in the dressing room by myself trying to record versions of these songs or trying to run through an arrangement before sending it to Mike through text message.

MC: I had a great run with the label I was previously involved with, Compass Records, but they weren’t really interested in collaboration albums. With all of my projects and Jason as busy as he is, we were always just in the middle of other things until Jason put out [2022’s Lowdown Hoedown] and I completed [2023’s Lovin’ Of The Game]. It was around that time we decided to take the leap and finally start working on this.

Speaking of taking a leap, I know y’all co-produced this record too. What was your motivation behind that?

MC: We had talked about bringing somebody in. I’ve worked with Jeff White for years on my albums. In a way he helped to produce this one too, which is fitting because I always felt like we co-produced my albums together. For this record there were people we’d send stuff to listen to, even down to the final mixes, just because we respect their opinions, but the final calls were all us.

JC: Even when you’ve got someone like Bryan Sutton in the studio for tracking, he may have an idea he throws out that becomes a big help as well. That could come from anyone involved in the session, even engineer Sean Sullivan, who we leaned on heavily as well because they do this every day. These people are here for a good reason, because they’re super talented and play some of our favorite music. And when it comes to Cleve, I’m all ears. He always has good advice.

MC: When you first start recording, you don’t always know what sounds good. It’s like with playing, singing, or anything else, the more you put yourself in those situations the more you understand what you want to hear and how to achieve it. Working with Jeff in the past, we’d be together during the day when all of the sudden he’d say, “Hey Mike, I gotta take off for a few hours, produce for a while.” It freaked me out the first time he did that, but it forced me to get comfortable in the situation and forced me to trust my ear more. Jeff having that faith in me also gave me a little more confidence in myself that I was making the correct decisions and to continue trusting my instincts.

JC: With the Travelin’ McCourys, all of those records were produced by the band along with most of the stuff we did with Del, too. I did produce my solo record, Lowdown Hoedown, though. But even on that, when we were recording Sam [Bush] and Jerry Douglas were there. I remember Jerry – who produced a lot of the McCourys’ stuff early on – always had great ideas on arrangements and different things to put in when he spoke up, which was a huge help. Getting to be in the studio with him is an education you can’t get anywhere else.

Jason, you briefly spoke of a few of the album’s players there. But they’re far from the only top-notch pickers you have on this record, with the likes of Vince Gill, Charlie Worsham, and Sierra Hull, among others. How’d y’all go about deciding who to bring into the fold?

JC: We just tried to think of who would best fit with the songs as we listened to demos for each.

MC: It also came down to who was available at certain times. Guys like Bryan Sutton, Cory Walker, and Alan Bartram played on most of it. I remember days where Sam Bush was available on mandolin and others where Harry Clark filled in. Some of the first sessions we did after the pandemic were with Cody Kilby and Casey Campbell followed by David Grier and Dominick [Leslie].

And going back to something Jason said earlier, I also leaned on Bryan a lot, specifically about what songs he thought it would be good to have Sam on, which led to his inclusion on “Middle of Middle Tennessee” and a few others.

What has music, specifically the process of bringing this record to life, taught you about yourselves?

MC: This was one of the first things I’ve done without a producer being there. Most of the time we would agree on decisions, but other times you don’t know what the right thing is and somebody has to make the call, because that’s typically something a producer would do. When it’s just you there’s no question, but when you’re working with somebody you want to make sure it’s a collaboration and not one person running the ship. Recording this album has taught me to be more aware of that.

JC: The singing part of this too, that’s still pretty new to me. I’ve sung on other people’s records, my solo album and with the Travelin’ McCourys, but being the lead singer throughout is a new venture for me and something I really enjoyed getting to do with Michael.

What do the two of you appreciate most about one another as both musicians and people?

JC: Everything about Mike’s playing, he’s just on another planet right now, and as a person he’s the same way. I recently got married and Mike was my best man, because no matter what he does he is the best man!

MC: Hearing Jason play with Del, he’s always been the fiddler I’ve wanted to be. We’re both into the same stuff, which is why I think we work together so well. It’s why we’re able to jump on stage and play twin fiddles without rehearsing, which is usually a mess when you do that. Getting to work with him on this album has been a dream come true for me.

Photo Credit: Lead image by Sam Wiseman. Square image by Emma McCoury.

Tommy Emmanuel’s Fiery Guitar Picking Is Not Just for Musicians, It’s for Everyone

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Tommy Emmanuel is in his happy place: spending a Thursday afternoon at Nashville’s Gruhn Guitars in anticipation of recording a new solo album. “I’m here getting a new pickup system featured in one of my guitars, buying strings, hanging out with the guys, and getting a little Gruhn mojo from the shop,” he says. “The weekend, I’ll spend stringing up and playing my guitars, making decisions about which guitar I’ll use for what song, and stuff like that.”

For the next hour, however, he’s upstairs in the store’s amp room, settled in to discuss his two new albums – the just-released Live at the Sydney Opera House, recorded over the course of two performances in May 2023, and a solo album in the works – along with many other topics. Highlights from that conversation follow.

I was trying to find a starting point for this interview, which is challenging because there are so many. I listened to your January interview with Rick Beato and had a “stopped me in my tracks moment” when you said you spent three days listening to Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department. I thought, “Tommy Emmanuel is a Swiftie! We’ll start there.”

Tommy Emmanuel: Taylor, as a writer, is definitely a big influence on me. Someone who achieves what she achieves is doing something beyond the norm. Even beyond talent, it’s a spiritual experience, it’s big, and it’s deep, and I like to observe, listen, and learn from people who achieve like that.

You described her songwriting as “crying from the heart.” That stood out because that’s really what music is – it comes from the heart. We always hear that tone is in the hands, but is the heart not at the core of that?

Exactly. I was [writing a new song] and trying to find something that could give me the right melody to say with the chorus what I wanted to say without words, making the melody this cry from the heart. It’s– [sings melody], the chords change underneath, and so there’s movement, but there’s this cry from the heart right in the middle of everything.

Can you tell us more about this new solo album?

Normally, I record here, fly to LA, mix and master it with my friend Marc DeSisto, and I’m the producer. With this album, I’m working here in Nashville with Vance Powell, the busiest guy on the planet. We start on Monday and we’ve got to get it all done in four days.

I have eight new songs, including this piece we’ve been talking about, “A Drowning Heart.” There’s “Black and White to Color,” “Young Travelers” – I’ve got some interesting titles. The songs are different to what I’ve written in the past. There’s a couple of typical fingerpicking tunes that I really like. They’re a little more folk-influenced. The other ones I’ve been talking about are much more ’80s rock and roll style. I have a song called “Scarlett’s World.” The introduction and ending sound a bit like Dire Straits. I did that on purpose, because it’s such a cool sound. That song is inspired by the movie Lucy with Scarlett Johansson. I love that movie. I love her work. My granddaughter is like Scarlett and she is a force of nature. I got the idea to call the song “Scarlett’s World” when I was with her.

I’m enjoying this phase of my life. Whatever page I’ve turned to get to this stage has been worth it, because some songs have come to me in this last six months that I really love playing in my shows. Playing new songs live gets rid of anything that doesn’t need to be there, because sometimes you can write a song, you’re trying to be clever, you’re trying to be creative, you’ve got all these good ideas going, and then you play it for somebody and you realize, “Oh, this part here is not necessary.” You throw it out and get to the meat and potatoes. Forget all the other stuff. Just tell me the story. Take me somewhere. That’s why I like to perform my songs to an audience before I record them. Your instincts are on a hundred. When you walk on stage, your physical and spiritual instincts have risen up and they’re ready to serve you.

Of course, you’ve also just released your live album. You’re known for working without a set list. With such a rich repertoire, how do you sequence your shows, and sequence them so that the performance speaks both to musicians and non-musicians?

That’s so important to me. My music is not for musicians; it’s for everybody. I’m trying to be an all-around artist, entertainer, writer, player, performer. I’m trying to give people a bit of everything. [The show] has to be a journey, a story, entertaining, and when it’s over, I want people to think, “I’ve got to see that again.” There’s a passage in the first Indiana Jones movie that I never forgot. One of the characters says, “What are you going to do now, Indy?” Harrison Ford says, “I don’t know. I’m just making this up as I go along.” That’s me. That’s how I live my life.

Your history with Maton Guitars goes back to your days playing electric guitar. The common trajectory is the player begins on acoustic, and then goes on to electric. True to originality, you did the opposite.

I started on electric. When I was starting to be a songwriter and making my own records, I was mostly writing on electric, 60 to 70 percent, and the rest was acoustic. I started doing solo shows on acoustic and all of a sudden I realized, “Holy smoke, this really works well.” So I started writing more songs to play as a solo acoustic player. It was more pop and rock and roll music, funky, all that sort of stuff.

The record company wanted me to do something we could get on radio, so I made some jazz-oriented records. I got a lot of airplay on jazz stations and that kind of forced me into that direction for a while. It was good, because I learned to write and perform that way. When I moved to Nashville, I wanted to be on the Opry and play the Ryman, so I focused on being more country- and bluegrass-based, which is my roots. My biggest influences when I was a kid, before Chet Atkins, were Jimmie Rogers and Hank Williams. They were my first two loves of music.

What are the biggest challenges of doing what you do the way you do it?

Everything comes down to commitment. How committed am I to be a better player? I often tell people who want to talk about my technique, “I don’t talk about my technique. It’s invisible.” The music is what counts, not how I do it. My abilities fluctuate because I’m a human being. I’m not a robot; I’m not going to be exactly the same every time.

If you want it to be good, to flow, and to be wonderful to watch, then there’s a lot of work ahead. You’re going to have to work so hard to make it that way. I never stop working on my abilities, because it’s so important. My role model, Chet Atkins, worked harder than anybody I’ve ever seen at practicing and making sure that every little detail was so smooth. I will follow that with adding that my age is challenging me as well. There are things I could do twenty years ago that I can’t do today and I have to be okay about that. I have to find new things to replace some of the things that I physically can’t do.

I’ve just come off a five-week tour, which was grueling, long, lots of travel, not a lot of chance to do some serious practice. Every day was like, get to the venue, get my guitar out, start playing, work on some songs that maybe I didn’t play the night before or the night before that, remember some of my other songs that I haven’t been playing, put them in the show, and constantly find ways of making it different and interesting from the night before.

I’ve got to be in good shape physically, mentally, and spiritually to get up there and play my heart out for nearly two hours and throw my whole life into it. I’ve got to eat well, rest well, and have enthusiasm for what I’m doing. I can’t remember a time where I was standing on the side of the stage and thought, “Not this again.” That never has entered my mind. I’m like, “I can’t wait to get out there. I can’t wait to play. I can’t wait to see how this night is going to go and what I’m going to do that’s going to surprise me.”

You’ve told us a bit about your introduction to bluegrass, coming to acoustic guitar from electric, and your passion for jazz. Can you draw a through line between all those genres? How do they shape what you do?

It’s about musical abilities and musical ideas. When I play with Ricky Skaggs, or Molly Tuttle, or anybody, it’s about me fitting into what they do and serving the music as best I can. There’s a bit of bluegrass in everything I play. There’s a bit of blues in everything I play. I don’t feel like I need to be in a box or have a style stapled to me. It’s all music to me.

When I play with Billy Strings, I can hear Doc Watson and Tony Rice, of course, but I can also hear little bits of Stevie Ray Vaughan, B.B. King, George Harrison. You know, we’ve all got it in us. It’s all styles of music together. Bluegrass is such an open-ended thing to me. If I’m playing “Highway 40 Blues” and I take a solo, I don’t necessarily think, “Oh, I’d better tap into Tony Rice.” I just play what I feel at that moment.

A number of musicians have told me that they sometimes get sick of their own playing. Does this ever happen to you, and if so, how do you climb out of that rut?

I get tired of myself sometimes and usually something comes along that lifts my faith in my gift. Right when I think I’ve had enough of me, I need a break, something happens and somebody needs me to play for them, and they remind me, “Don’t forget – you’re here for a reason. You’re here to serve others. When you play, people feel something. They feel happy. So get out of your own head and do it for someone else.”

There are times when you definitely need a break. I just had a week after the tour I finished in Zurich a week ago. I flew into England to be with my grandchildren and my daughters and I didn’t play much. I played a little bit after the girls had gone to bed. I made my dinner, played a little bit, and then watched Netflix and chilled out. It was good. I needed that break.

When your colleagues talk about you, they always describe you as a good guy, a nice guy, a mentor. How much of that comes from the kindness and mentoring you received from Chet Atkins?

I’m just trying to hand on what was handed to me. When you’ve been loved on by a guy like Chet Atkins, you know you’ve been loved. When you’ve been loved on by someone like my mother, who led by example her whole life … what a great soul, a great spirit.

When I moved to the big city when I was young, I was so used to people being almost aggressive towards me, because they thought I was showing off or thinking I was much smarter than them. And it never entered my mind. But they were full of jealousy or fear or whatever, I don’t know. So when I got to the big city and I saw musicians who did things I couldn’t do, when I got to know them, they were so encouraging to me. They were so honest with me. They treated me with a dignity that other people didn’t. And so I just want people to feel good when we play together, because it’s a very honest experience.

Who is your dream artist to work with?

Marty Stuart. What a talent! He’s a free spirit and the kind of guy I like being around. I would love to work with Marty.

You’ve spoken openly about your long battle with addiction. You are in recovery and you’ve also done the work through therapy. What part has guitar played in your recovery journey?

The guitar has always been my go-to thing to help me get through stuff. When I went through my first divorce, we’d been married for 15 years and I thought we were doing great. Everything was wonderful, I’ve got two little daughters, then my wife wanted to separate and then she was with someone else. I had to let her go and I went through a painful divorce.

I was broken beyond measure and my world went upside down. It was during that period that I wrote some of the best music I’ve ever written. It came to help me and gave me something good to focus on. Next thing I know, people are loving the music I’ve written, and I’m out, I’m starting again, I’m off on a new road.

The thing I love [about sobriety] is being clear. I’m present. My love of music and playing in general has grown so much since I’m not ruled by drugs or alcohol. I’m [five years] free and I’m so grateful. What I do now is better, it’s more honest, it’s more real. I don’t feel self-obsessed, self-absorbed, or feel sorry for myself for all the bad things that nearly destroyed me.

I know what addiction is now. I know how to deal with it. It’s finding what the problem is, being willing to talk about it, put the work in, follow the steps, and keep doing the work that has made my life so beautiful and so much better. Sometimes I think, “How the hell did I ever survive that?” I’m guessing that my maker was with me all the way. I’m totally free today, but I don’t take it lightly. It’s living one day at a time, and it’s beautiful.

And finally, what is the difference between playing guitar and being a guitarist?

Being a guitarist is being a gun for hire. Being a guitar player is a way of life. A guitar player is someone who loves to play for people and who loves his instrument deeply.

Photo Credit: Alysse Gafkjen

The Herculean Story Behind Andrea Zonn and John Cowan Becoming The HercuLeons

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Andrea Zonn and John Cowan have been among the hardest-working musicians around Nashville for the past few decades. Zonn has done tons of sessions both for her violin and vocal prowess as well as touring with superstars like Vince Gill, Lyle Lovett, and James Taylor. Cowan, a longtime member of the legendary New Grass Revival, also was a founding member of the country-rock supergroup The Sky Kings, has done solo projects, and currently tours as the Doobie Brothers’ bassist. However, they only really started playing together due to the pandemic. Their collaboration resulted in a band called The HercuLeons, whose debut album Andrea Zonn & John Cowan Are The HercuLeons arrives March 21 on True Lonesome Records.

Darrell Scott, Tom Britt, Greg Morrow, Abraham Parker, Gary Prim, and Reese Wynans represent the primary HercuLeons on the album, while Billy Payne, Michael McDonald, Jonell Mosser, John Hall, and John McFee number among the special guests.

Zonn and Cowan spoke separately to BGS for our feature interview all about their unique collaboration, becoming a band, and the debut album.

When did you two first meet?

Andrea Zonn: I moved to Nashville in 1986 and John I think got here two, three, four years before that. I was already a fan of his, but we met and our paths crossed over the years. Then at some point we got called to sing on a session together. I just love singing with him. We became friends and have been great friends. He’s like a brother to me, actually.

John Cowan: Our lives have been continually entwined because of our musical interests, our mutual respect for each other, and because we would get hired to do backing vocal sessions.

How did this particular collaboration come to be?

JC: Right during the pandemic, Andrea and I had gotten solicited to play on a custom project. It was like, “We’ve got three songs for you.” And we’re like, “Okay.” Well, it turns out they had like nine songs for us and we basically just went from the top of the list all the way to the bottom; we were there like 10 hours.

AZ: Then I was just about to call him on my way home, when he called me and we were both about to say the same thing, which is “God, I love singing with you.” We just decided to sort of become each other’s creative bubble during the pandemic. We were thinking we would do something sort of bluegrass-y with [mandolinist] Ashby Frank, [guitarist] Seth Taylor, and [banjo player] Matt Menefee, which was a blast. So, we did a couple of Facebook Live concerts, which is hysterical because we were playing just to the camera.

JC: These kind of young guns guys – Ashby and Seth and Matt – they’re at that time of their lives where they’re just running full speed. They’re just so impassioned and so full of music that you really can’t get somebody like that to commit to, “Hey, let’s be in a band.” By the time we got around to making this record, the personnel had just switched to basically me and Andrea and then we chose the band that we wanted to make the record with.

How did the record come about?

JC: It happened pretty organically. We were talking about making this record. We weren’t even as far as who’s playing on it, or who’s producing or what it is. But I was driving home from my sister’s house in Indiana back to Nashville one day and I heard Claire Lynch doing this song called “Barbed Wire Boys” and I literally pulled my car over because I thought to myself: “Am I hearing what I [think I’m hearing]?” The words were so unbelievably well-written. It was just stunning. I played it for Andrea and I said, “What do you think of this song? Are you just as stunned by the words as I am?” She said, “Absolutely!”

AZ: It just felt like such a timely message in this song, which is that there’s this generation of strong, stoic men who have this really soft underbelly. It feels like there’s not a place for that right now and there’s a real wistful longing for this gentle strength. We were listening to the song going, “What could we do with this?” We were just looking at it as this single standalone thing. Let’s just record this because we love it. We’ve got time on our hands. And the idea just kept growing. It’s like, “Let’s just figure out a way to make a record like this.” Also, with the pandemic [it was] a weird time to make long-term plans

Wendy Waldman produced the album – how did she get involved?

JC: We got a hold of Wendy Waldman, who’s one of my oldest friends and produced many things I’m involved with. Andrea and I made a vocal guitar demo and sent it to her.

AZ: We decided we wanted to slow down [the song], break it down, and make it more of what Wendy calls, “The prairie orchestra sort of thing.”

JC: She worked on it for us – it’s like she went away in a little hobbit in a village of stuff, she came back to us, and she’d written the most beautiful layers of mandolins and acoustic guitar tuned down low.

AZ: She’s like a shaman the way she creates. It’s like you just see glowing aura is coming out of her when she’s in that space.

The idea to do an album grew from there?

JC: That was the beginning of the record. We had that song and we started pursuing it and it would be about sharing tracks and files back and forth from California, which is where Wendy lived, and that was going swimmingly well.

AZ: Exactly. It was like, “Let’s put something beautiful in the world, because I feel like that’s our responsibility as artists.” Especially during these times we’re living in are so full of devastation and difficult things and people need healing. They need beauty. They need that balance. And so that’s where we come in. So, it just started as just this yearning to create something beautiful. And then it was just so much fun, and the chemistry was there.

The album features only 11 songs and those are mainly covers. Was it hard to decide what songs to record?

AZ: It was brutal actually picking songs, because there are so many beautiful and great songs and we weren’t really all that concerned with where the genre markers are. We just were like, let’s just do stuff we love. We’ve just been feeling our way through it. Things that we really felt like we could sing well together were sort of a consideration. It was such an organic process, and it was not a quick process.

JC: I think we got up to 30 songs that we wanted to have a stab at. We kept culling it down. So, this bushel of songs started to reveal itself to us. We opened it up a lot [like] a basket of fruit and you could see which one was going to make it and which ones might get a little too ripe.

One of the things that immediately stands out is the amazing way you two sing together

AZ: We have a lot of the same influences. You know, I call him “The Powerhouse” and I’m sort of a “Powder Puff” so [we] complement each other. He’s just so intuitive and such a great musician, such a beautiful sense of phrasing, and it’s just very easy to fall into place with him

JC: We know each other’s voice, so there’s some kind of internal resonance that’s going on there that you can’t see or feel or touch… You can’t necessarily write it out on a piece of paper. When two singers sing together like that it’s like Baez and Dylan.

The music is remarkably diverse – a vibrant mix of rock, soul, blues, country, funk, and bluegrass – but the album holds a real cohesiveness. There’s a sense of humanism and empathy that flows through the songs you picked.

JC: That’s just who we are. Andrea and I are the same. We’re the perennial man looking for a spirit greater than all of us to bond us to human beings in the world.

That seems to be spotlighted using your single “Face of Appalachia” (an old Lowell George/John Sebastian tune that Valerie Carter had on her 1977 debut album) to raise awareness for victims of Hurricane Helene. It’s a song that has many connections with both of you, right?

JC: Both Andrea and I became or were friends with Valerie before she passed a couple of years, so there’s a huge emotional connection for both of us.

AZ: We just love the song and we wanted to kind of do our little spin on it. Then when the hurricane hit, it’s like we all felt so powerless to help, so we wanted to raise awareness and direct people to organizations that are actually on the ground doing good work. I mean, John and I love the people, the region, the music that comes from there. It’s just such a meaningful place, you know, and your heart just breaks for what people are going through.

If you had to choose a song that’s a good entry point for listeners, what would it be?

AZ: You have to listen to the whole thing. You just have to suck it up and suffer through it, it’s only 11 songs! “Straight Up” would get their attention. Let’s say that it’s short and sweet and it’s just full of a lot of what we do, except for the slow pretty stuff and there’s a great message in that song.

JC: I might say “Face of Appalachia,” because there are two beautiful lead vocals on there, but they don’t appear to be lead vocals. They just appear as these two people singing together. … There’s so much about that track. How the words fit so well with the arrangement. It has shadows and light as well, but a lot of pathos.

The Gregory Porter song we do called “Take Me to the Alley,” I just think it’s a staggering song. It’s basically talking about how people are lining up all these shining things in front of their houses waiting for God to return and then he shows up and he’s like, “I don’t want to see any of this, take me to the alley, take me where the desperate ones are.”

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the HercuLeons.

Mark Knopfler’s ‘Shangri-La’ Rearranged Adam Wright’s Artistic DNA

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

(Editor’s Note: No Skips is a brand new feature from BGS that asks artists, songwriters, musicians, and industry professionals what albums they regard as perfect, with every track a masterpiece – i.e., No Skips!

For the first edition of the column, songwriter-artist-musician Adam Wright highlights Mark Knopfler’s seminal album, Shangri-La, as we look ahead to Wright’s own upcoming project, Nature of Necessity, coming later this year.)

There are only a few times in your creative life when someone’s work hits you so hard it rearranges your artistic DNA. I could probably count those moments for me on one hand.

Shangri-La was a big one. It told me that you can write away from the outside understanding of things. That you can start from the inside of your own knowledge and continue inward. It also taught me that you can write about anything you find interesting. That being understood is not as important as whether or not you’ve put something down worthy of working out for whomever decides to try to understand it. And that there are so many things to write about that are not falling in and out of love. (People probably could have stopped writing love songs in 1950 and we still would have too many.)

The depth and perspective of the storytelling, the crafted excellence of the writing and the sublimely tasteful musicianship make it, to me, Knopfler’s masterpiece. He’s done this on all of his albums, they all include brilliant gems of songs, but Shangri-La is just perfection from top to bottom. – Adam Wright

“5:15 AM” (Track 1)

Like all of the songs on this album, “5:15 AM” is exquisitely written and recorded. It is the story of a coal miner on his way home from the night shift discovering a murder victim who turns out to be involved with organized crime. It is chock-full of lingo and references to specifics about gambling machines, nightclubs, and lots of mining terms. The way Mark weaves all of this language into lyricism and brings it back to the tragic lives of the coal miners at the end is exceptional and beautiful writing. The recording is gorgeous and still somehow earthy as dirt. Just a masterclass in songcraft.

“Boom, Like That” (Track 2)

“Boom, Like That” is about the rise of Ray Kroc from a milkshake salesman to a fast food emperor. Like “5:15 AM,” there are plenty of specific references in this one. “Going to San Bernardino, ring a ding ding. Milkshake mixes, that’s my thing now.” You’re in the middle of the beginning of a story right off the bat. I love songs from the character’s perspective and few writers do that as well as Knopfler.

The movie The Founder was filmed in my hometown of Newnan, Georgia. I noticed the town when I saw it, so I looked it up and read a bit about the filming. While the song was inspired by the book about Kroc, I’d read the movie was actually inspired by the song. Even if the song weren’t so well-written, the riff at the end of the chorus is enough to keep any guitar player happily busy for days.

“All That Matters” (Track 11)

Much of Shangri-La is written from the perspective of the characters in its songs. The title track and “All That Matters” seem to be more personal. “All That Matters” is just a sweet, simple song from a father to his children. Again, beautifully written and pretty as porcelain. It has some surprising chordal and melodic turns in the B section to juxtapose the nursery rhymey-ness of the verses. Just perfect. And a nice respite from the mostly cynical tone of much of the album.

“Stand Up Guy” (Track 12)

“Brew the coffee in a bucket/ Double straight man and banjo/ If you don’t got the snake oil/ Buster, you don’t got a show.”

Again, you’re right smack dab in the middle of someone’s story. This time it’s a musician in a group of traveling, Victorian-era pitchmen. They apparently have teamed up with “the Doctor” who peddles snake oil medicine to townspeople and does it well enough to keep them fed on beefsteak and whiskey. Just wonderfully interesting, both lyrically and musically.

If you wanted to become a very good songwriter (or musician or producer, for that matter), you could only study Shangri-La for years and get a very long way toward the goal. I’ve been mining this album for inspiration for twenty years. It always gives me something more.

Photo Credit: Jo Lopez

Ron Pope Chases His Dream On ‘American Man, American Music’

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

It may look rough around the edges, but Ron Pope’s journey through life encapsulates the American dream. He buffs out those spots, uncovering a hefty dose of humility, wisdom, and empowerment on his 11th studio record — American Man, American Music.

On it, the New Jersey-born, Georgia-raised singer uncovers moments from his childhood (like waking up before school to unload semi trucks) to the present day that have shaped him into the man he is and made his musical dreams a reality. But despite its title, the album is anything but exclusionary. Just like our nation’s diversity, American Man, American Music is a patchwork quilt of sounds, stories and experiences that serve to remind us that we’re all dealing with the same struggles and desires no matter what we look like or where we came from.

“I want to make music that other people can take and put into the moments in their lives,” says Pope. “The goal is that if I’m doing it right they’ll feel less alone. I want to put that back into the universe because I’ve taken so much of it out that it’s part of what buoyed me to get me to this point.”

This manifests itself in heartfelt vignettes centered around his family and recently discovered meaning of “home” on songs like the ode to his wife, “In The Morning With the Coffee On,” as well as “Mama Drove a Mustang,” an homage to his mom’s “let it ride” attitude that he wound up carrying into his own musical pursuits. But he’s also not afraid to get political on songs like “Klonopin Zombies,” a story about losing his grandmother that directly calls out the callousness of the pharmaceutical industry and sees him painfully pleading, “I swear there must be a heaven, ’cause where the hell else would someone like you go?”

Speaking by phone from his Nashville home between a mid-morning job and picking his daughter up from school, Pope spoke with BGS about home, family, platforming the next generation of artists and the experience that make up American Man, American Music.

You duet with Taylor Bickett on “I’m Not The Devil.” What spurred you to bring her aboard for it?

Ron Pope: Lately I’ve been finding so much inspiration in new artists. Growing up you tend to fetishize the stuff that came before you, almost like hero worship. Luckily I’ve come up in an era where so many of my contemporaries are masters, from Jason Isbell to John Moreland, which is really cool. But now I’m at a phase in my life where I’m getting more and more inspired by the artists coming in behind us. I remember first hearing Taylor’s songs, reading her lyrics, and seeing people making posts about sunsets and storms with her songs in them and was blown away. That’s what I love about music – you’re always finding new ways to be inspired.

What are your thoughts on the practice of platforming younger artists and what you stand to benefit from it as well?

If you make records your whole life, it’s going to be an ongoing challenge to find things that keep you engaged and excited about making music. It’s like a game that I’m always playing with myself. I want to find things about music that make me feel the way I did when I was a kid. Sometimes when people imagine an artist, they assume you’re only listening to people who sound like the same handful of songs that they know and that’s it, but I listen to all different sorts of music. Just the other night I was making pasta with my daughter in our kitchen listening to Dean Martin. On any given day I’ll move from that to some Tony Rice, Jason Isbell’s new song, Turnpike Troubadours, people like Taylor on Instagram, and then John Prine. I find inspiration everywhere and love that the music I make still feels fun and exciting because of it.

You just mentioned your daughter. I know family plays a big role on this record, from “In The Morning With the Coffee On,” to “Klonopin Zombies,” “Mama Drove a Mustang,” and others. Mind telling me about how that helps to serve as a through line on this project?

The central message is that we all share so many of the same sorts of experiences. For instance, in “Klonopin Zombies” I’m talking about this point in my life when my grandmother passed away eight days after my grandfather, leaving me wildly devastated. In life, we’re all going to experience powerful loss in that way; it’s just a matter of if it has happened to you yet or not. It’s the nature of living. My goal for doing that was to reach people on a more general level. If you are blessed enough to love people, then one day you will suffer because you lose people.

When I was first starting out, one of the complaints that music industry people would have about my music was that my songs were too specific and didn’t feel general enough, which was weird because for me those are the [kind of] songs that I always felt the most attached to.

Think about the Eagles’ – “Standing on the corner Winslow, Arizona/ Such a fine sight to see/ It’s a girl, my lord, and a flatbed Ford/ Slowin’ down to take a look at me…” or James Taylor’s – “Just yesterday morning, they let me know you were gone/ Suzanne, the plans they made put an end to you.” You’re in the room, but you don’t know who he’s talking to or why. It’s like, how many times in your life have you watched someone struggle with the expectations people put on them? Even though he’s telling a very personal and very specific story, you’re brought in and it reminds you that there’s a human being on the other end of this.

We got to go to all these places and meet a lot of people, and what I have found as I have done that is most people want the same things – they want opportunities for themselves and for their children. They want to know that they’re safe, and that their kids are safe and are going to get educated. We have a lot more in common than we do that separates us, which can be hard to see when you’re just watching videos of people yelling or complaining about how differently they believe your neighbor is.

How does that idea tie into the album’s title – American Man, American Music?

It’s inherently political to say “I am an American man and this is American music.” It’s inherently political, but I didn’t want to make something to bash people over the head, because it’s hard to write stories that are both protest songs that feel like they matter and are actually good songs. So I decided to, with the exception of “I Gotta Change (Or I’m Gonna Die)” – which is a pretty open rebuke of the pharmaceutical industry expresses my anger towards it about the opioid crisis – I try to speak in more sweeping terms and not focus in on the things that I was angry about, instead focusing more on humanity and openness.

I’m following myself from when I was a child in these stories all the way to this moment in my life. I’m singing about the car my mother drove when I was six years old in “Mama Drove a Mustang,” then I’m singing a little prayer for my family that I wrote while I was out on the road in “The Life In Your Years” or how my wife and I have been together for almost 18 years on “I Pray I’ll Be Seeing You Soon.” It makes me realize that I have lived the American dream.

I’m just a regular person from a blue-collar family born to very good-hearted, well-intentioned teenage parents who didn’t have a lot of resources and did their best with the opportunities that were in front of them. There was no reason to believe at the start of my story that I would end up in this place. All of that is in there because I am an American and I am an American man, and I am making American music, but I don’t mean any of that to be exclusionary. So many people that are using all of those words do so to exclude others and I have lived the American dream and want others to be able to do the same. On this album I wanted to focus on telling great stories that highlighted my journey and my humanity and what it took for me to get to this place where I got to as a way of showing that I don’t think it’s something that we should hold hostage. We should want other people to be able to reach these things in a nation built by immigrants on stolen land.

What does “home” mean to you – both as a physical place and as an idea – in relation to this album?

My mom loved us a lot, but we also moved often, which can be destabilizing. When I got to the point in my life where I was out on the road I almost felt engineered to do it, because I never had a real sense of home growing up. When I went on tour it felt like I was supposed to be there, which made it easy to wake up whether I was in Lincoln, Nebraska; Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, or Pompano Beach. For a long time I thought you had to live that way to write songs.

At one point I was living in New York and hung out with my wife during a break from the road, who at that point I’d known since we were kids in Georgia, but had never dated. Suddenly everything changed and I started feeling her no matter where I was and yearned to be back in New York. I didn’t feel at ease unless I was with her, before realizing that she had become home for me. I’d never understood that homesick feeling that others get until then.

I feel that even more now with our little girl. It’s different, because my wife chose me and knew what I was and what I wasn’t, whereas we chose to bring our daughter into this world. Because of that I feel an even stronger pull from home than I have in the past because this little girl doesn’t care that I sing songs for people, and at the end of the day she doesn’t need that – she just needs me to be her father. It’s important that I’m able to make a living with my music, but it doesn’t make up for the fact that I wasn’t there to witness her losing her first tooth and other core memories. You have to grapple with that every day if you’re going to do this for a living. At the end of my life, if people say I’m a family man before they say I’m a musician, then I did it right.

What has the process of bringing American Man, American Music to life taught you about yourself?

There are points in the process of making any record where you look at yourself in the mirror and ask “Am I full of shit? Or can I actually land this thing?” The content on this album, what I’m talking about, it felt heavier and deeper than some of what I’ve done in the past. And I hate the idea of taking myself too seriously. At the end of the day, I’m an entertainer; everyone who makes music is supposed to be one, no matter how much they call themselves poets and stare at their expensive loafers oh-so-thoughtfully. Whether you’re Bob Dylan or Jackie Wilson or Tom Waits, at your core, you’re fundamentally the same as a clown or a breakdancer. Your job is to bring people joy, to entertain them. Walking around with this understanding has always made me sort of sick to my stomach whenever I find myself taking any of this noisemaking I do too seriously.

But on this album? I surprised myself. We are making music about serious things and I didn’t feel embarrassed or disgusted by it. It’s serious because it’s supposed to be serious; I’m not being a self-important asshole. Somebody needs to talk about the opioid epidemic and no one else was doing it in a way that I felt satisfied with. I did it because I felt like I had to, not to feed some inflated notion I had of myself as a capital A “artistè.” So I guess I learned that I’m not full of shit. Or at least, not entirely full of shit.

Photo Credit: Blair Clark