Tag: Nashville

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

Roots Pop Quartet TopHouse Contrast ‘Theory’ With ‘Practice’ on New EP

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

With a self-made story spanning from their founding in Montana down to Nashville and beyond, roots pop quartet TopHouse know the difference between “theory” and “practice” all too well. But with their intriguing new two-part recording project, they might be some of the first to capture that difference in song.

Comprised of Joe Larson (lead vocals/guitar), Jesse Davis (guitar, mandolin), William Cook (violin) and Andy Lafave (piano), the band first released the hopeful, eminently uplifting Theory EP in 2024, and have now followed up with Practice, which dropped on Valentine’s Day (February 14). But what is the difference, really?

Both EPs fuse grass-roots simplicity with an experimental spirit – plus a rush of kinetic Celtic and Appalachian influence, just for good measure. With nearly 10 years behind them, the band have seen periods of unbridled optimism just to get a gritty reality check in the end; their songs live somewhere in the middle. Over 12 tracks in total, they cycle through warm, everyman vocals, spacious sounds, and live-in lyrics, and seem to conclude the concepts aren’t really opposites at all – more like two sides of the same coin

Where Theory is bold, bright and optimistic, Practice might be darker and a bit more reflective. Yet both are part of the broader truth – and both continually feed off of each other. Speaking with BGS ahead of Practice’s release, Larson and Davis explained where the new six-song set comes from and how it contrasts with its Theory companion.

This whole idea I think is pretty ambitious. Why don’t you tell me how the Theory and Practice EPs came about? Where’d that idea come to split this thing into two parts?

Joe Larson: Honestly, it was kind of an accident. I think Jesse and I were just hanging out one day. … We really wanted to do a full-length LP and we probably had, I don’t know, 14 or 15 songs and we were trying to find a common thread and get some idea of what this album might look like, what the concept of it might be. It just felt natural to split them into two lists. We’re like, “Alright, over here these songs are all about ideals and just optimistic worldview and all that. And then you’ve got these other songs about heartbreak and hardship and all that.” We just put ‘em into two lists and went back and forth for what felt like an eternity trying to decide what to do with this information. Eventually we were like, “Well, let’s just do a double thing.”

Do you see Practice as a more pessimistic kind of project? Or is it something different?

Jesse Davis: I wouldn’t say pessimistic. I’d say realistic. I think with Theory being sort of the ideals, maybe Practice is how they land in the real world, and it’s not pessimistic either in the sense that the EP ends with a tinge of hope. We’re big fans of hope here at TopHouse-the-band, LLC, and the EP ends with a little tinge of hope – in sort of a recognition of this cycle of striving for an ideal, falling a bit short, and maybe you fall quite a ways short. But then you pick yourself back up again and it’s almost like it’s a practice in itself.

I think also the two EPs are supposed to go together in the sense that it’s not like you listen to Theory and then you’re like, “All right, now I’m going to listen to what’s actually true and listen to Practice.” They’re supposed to kind of be combined in the sense, “Okay, there’s Practice, but the Theory is just as important to apply to the Practice.” It’s like, “Yeah, the realistic hard nature of the world is going to kick you in the teeth, but there’s a hope that you should bring to all of that, and ideals and standards that can be applied even in the hardest moments.”

JL: You might say that Theory is fake optimism, and Practice is real optimism. [Laughs]

How is the sound evolving on this one. Your fans really love that uplifting mix of rootsy, Celtic/Appalachian stuff. Has the vibe changed at all?

JD: I remember Joe and I had always had in the back of our minds writing a cowboy EP. We’re fans of artists like Colter Wall and I don’t know what you’d call it – maybe new country or underground country, whatever the term is. We just always had a little soft spot for that kind of a tone, I guess. So while we weren’t setting out to do that with this EP, I think it inevitably bled through a bit. It’s funny because sometimes the sound doesn’t line up with the lyrical message, if that makes sense. But when it doesn’t, I think I kind of enjoy that all the more.

Do you feel like your Montana roots still show up in the band? Maybe just in the willingness to think outside the box a little?

JD: I definitely think so, and for me, I think a lot of that has to do with what I’m visualizing. Maybe it’s not necessarily a musical thing so much as just a lyrical thing. But I think maybe the biggest factor with the Montana connection is that I just miss Montana, so a lot of songs point to this idea of going home or having a place. It kind of feels like we’re all wandering around right now, being away from our roots, which I think many people probably know that feeling.

The EP starts on “Meteor” and it’s got this simple, spacious sound. I just wonder, how does the image of a meteor fit in with the overall theme?

JD: It’s definitely metaphorical – or wait, sorry. Technically, it’s a simile, because it features “like” or “as.” [Laughs] It’s definitely the feeling of coming crashing down. It’s one I wrote, just sitting with my acoustic guitar and kind of strumming, and I remember feeling like it was pretty cheesy at the time I was writing it, because it was just catharsis. But sometimes either your tastes grow or things just develop into something a little bit more.

After that you get into a little bit more energy with tracks like “I Don’t Wanna Move On.” Where did that come from?

JD: “I Don’t Wanna Move On” and “Meteor” are almost sister songs in that those were two I wrote. They were written roughly around the same time and I was feeling some kind of way. “Meteor” is simile. There’s a picture to it. But “I Don’t Wanna Move On” is more of the incessant feeling of not wanting to move on. The chorus is not very ornate in its lyricism. It’s literally just that phrase repeated four times. And I feel like that fits the way sometimes an emotion just won’t leave you alone.

You guys mentioned finishing on a hopeful note, and “Falling” is definitely that. A really dreamy, beautiful song about being in awe over the ability to fall in love again, right?

JD: I think a lot of us struggle with periods of – maybe even if it’s not a full-on depression, just like a numbness to the world or just struggling with feeling anything at all. I mean, I know I definitely go through these phases. …“Falling” is about that. You wake up one morning and you’re like, “Oh, I feel my heartbeat again.” I think I wrote that one coming out of one of those seasons and just being just so grateful to get to feel joy or hope. It was funny because it was supposed to be a depressing song and then I finished it and I was like, “Huh, it’s hopeful.” But that’s probably a good thing. [Laughs]

With it being so uplifting, why did you include it on Practice and not Theory?

JD: That was definitely very intentional, because at least to me I think viewing the real-life things in just a doom-and-gloom view is pretty detrimental. And I don’t think that that’s realistic either. I mean, I know we said that Practice is sort of the realistic album where things go wrong, but I think that realism also includes the Theory. Realism includes the things that we strive towards because that is just as much a part of our life as the breakup or the loss or the addiction. The good things in life are just as real as the bad things.

Also, I think fits with the cyclical nature of the two EPs. If you go back to what Theory ends with, it’s a song that kind of descends into questioning things about life and maybe has a bit of a somber attitude to it. And if you were to go straight from that song into Practice, I think the feeling would continue. Then, as you get through Practice, you get to “Falling” and there’s a tinge of hope. If you go back to Theory from there, it begins with a song called “Better is the End,” which is maybe the most forward-thinking, hopeful tune in the whole collection. So maybe I’m connecting dots that aren’t necessarily there, but honestly, the song order sort of fits with the idea of it being cyclical.

JL: Yeah. We’re just trying to get people to listen to the EPs on repeat forever. [Laughs]

Don’t miss TopHouse performing on the BGS Stage at Bourbon & Beyond in Louisville, KY this September.

Photo Credit: Electric Peak Creative

Celebrating Black History Month: DeFord Bailey, Tina Turner, Keb’ Mo’, and More

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

To celebrate Black History Month – and the vital contributions of Black, Afro-, and African American artists and musicians to American roots music – BGS, Good Country, and our friends at Real Roots Radio in southwestern Ohio have partnered once again. This time, we’ll be bringing you weekly collections of a variety of Black roots musicians who have been featured on Real Roots Radio’s airwaves. You can listen to Real Roots Radio online 24/7 or via their FREE app for smartphones or tablets. If you’re based in Ohio, tune in via 100.3 (Xenia, Dayton, Springfield), 106.7 (Wilmington), or 105.5 (Eaton).

American roots music – in any of its many forms – wouldn’t exist today without the culture, stories, skills, and experiences of Black folks. Each week throughout February, we’ll spotlight this simple yet profound fact by diving into the catalogs and careers of some of the most important figures in our genres. For week two of the series, RRR host Daniel Mullins shares songs and stories of Stoney Edwards, Rissi Palmer, Keb’ Mo’, Tina Turner, and DeFord Bailey. Check out the first week of the series here.

We’ll return each Friday through the end of the month to bring you even more music celebrating Black History and the songs and sounds we all hold dear. Plus, you can find a full playlist with more than 100 songs below from dozens and dozens of seminal artists, performers, songwriters, and instrumentalists from every corner of folk, country, bluegrass, old-time, blues, and beyond.

Black history is American roots music history; the two are inseparable. As we celebrate Black History Month and its legacy, we hope you’ll join us in holding up and appreciating the artists who make country, bluegrass, blues, folk, and Americana the incredible and impactful genres that they are today.

Stoney Edwards (1929 – 1997)

If you don’t know the late, great Stoney Edwards’ name, it’s time to fix that – because his story in country is as powerful as the songs he sang.

Born Frenchie Edwards in Seminole Country, Oklahoma, in 1929, Stoney was part African American, Native American, and Irish. The son of sharecroppers, he was a prominent bootlegger in Oklahoma during his younger years. Stoney had dreams of playing the historic Grand Ole Opry. His big break in music would come later in life, in his early 40s, when he was discovered in California singing his honky-tonk style at a benefit for the King of Western Swing, Bob Wills.

Stoney was signed to Capitol Records in the early ’70s and from there he made history. He scored fifteen charting singles, including a pair of Top 20 hits, one of which – his 1973 hit “She’s My Rock” – is still revered as a bona fide country standard later covered by artists like Brenda Lee and George Jones. His songs were deeply authentic, whether he was singing about love, loss, or his own experiences growing up poor and Black in America. He gave a voice to the underdog, often drawing from his own struggles, including battling discrimination and working blue-collar jobs before music. Edwards would also record several songs saluting his country heroes over the years, including “The Jimmie Rodgers Blues,” “Daddy Bluegrass,” and his Top 40 hit, “Hank and Lefty Raised My Country Soul.”

Stoney’s music wasn’t just about catchy melodies; it was about storytelling. His debut single was inspired by a true story. Before he hit it big as a country singer, Stoney was trying to provide for his family working as a forklift operator at a steel refinery in San Francisco. A workplace accident resulted in Edwards being sealed up in a tank and suffering dangerous carbon dioxide poisoning; he endured an extensive two-year recovery, both physically and mentally. During this time, Stoney was struggling to care for his wife and children, so he planned to leave in the middle of the night. However he tripped over one of his daughter’s toys, and it prompted him to stay. In 1970, backed by the virtually unknown Asleep at the Wheel, Stoney Edwards released his debut single, the autobiographical “A Two Dollar Toy.”

While his career didn’t reach the same commercial heights as some of his peers, Stoney Edwards left an indelible mark on country music. He paved the way for greater diversity in the genre and showed that country music is for everyone – no matter where you come from or what you look like. Stoney Edwards passed away from stomach cancer in 1997 at the age of 67.

Suggested Listening:
“She’s My Rock”
“Hank and Lefty Raised My Country Soul”

Rissi Palmer (b. 1981)

She’s a trailblazer in country music, a voice for change, and an artist who refuses to be boxed in – meet Rissi Palmer!

Palmer’s mother passed away when she was just seven years old, but she instilled in her a love for the music of Patsy Cline. Rissi would burst onto the country scene in 2007 with her hit single, “Country Girl,” making history as one of the few Black women to chart on the Billboard country charts. Rissi has built a career on breaking barriers by blending country, soul, and R&B into a sound all her own. She has penned some empowering original songs, helping folks on the margins feel seen, especially her most personal song, “You Were Here,” dealing with the heartbreak of a miscarriage.

Beyond the music, Palmer uses her platform to uplift underrepresented voices in country and roots music. As the host of Color Me Country radio on Apple Music, she spotlights Black, Indigenous, and Latino artists in country music – proving that the genre belongs to everyone. With her powerful voice and unwavering spirit, Rissi Palmer isn’t just making music, she’s making history.

Suggested Listening:
“Leavin’ On Your Mind”
“Seeds”

Keb’ Mo’ (b. 1951)

Keb’ Mo’ is a modern blues legend. Born Kevin Moore, this L.A. native blends Delta blues with folk, soul, and a touch of country. With his smooth vocals and masterful guitar skills, he’s kept the blues alive for over four decades.

Mo’ is heavily influenced by the late Robert Johnson, who preceded Keb’ by about 60 years. Keb’ portrayed Robert Johnson in a 1998 documentary and included two Johnson covers on his breakthrough self-titled album in 1994. He has since won five GRAMMY Awards, collaborated with legends like Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne, and Taj Mahal, and performed for multiple U.S. presidents.

Mo’ is embedded in country and Americana music as well, working with cats like Lyle Lovett, Old Crow Medicine Show, John Berry, Alison Brown, Jerry Douglas, and Darius Rucker over the years. He has been quick to share his respect for country and gospel traditions, appearing on the critically acclaimed all-star album, Orthophonic Joy, recreating the magic of the 1927 Bristol Sessions – country music’s big bang.

Whether he’s playing a heartfelt ballad or a foot-stomping blues groove, Keb’ Mo’ keeps the genre fresh and timeless. His music isn’t just about the past – it’s about where the blues is going next. We love his passion for all things American roots music. Fifty years into his remarkable career, Keb’ Mo’ is still one cool cat.

Suggested Listening:
“To The Work”
“Good Strong Woman” featuring Darius Rucker

Tina Turner (1939 – 2023)

She was the Queen of rock ‘n’ roll, but did you know Tina Turner had deep country roots?

Born Anna Mae Bullock, she grew up in Nutbush, Tennessee. Tina recalled picking cotton as a youngster during her hardscrabble rural upbringing. Her musical journey began by singing at church on Sunday mornings. She grew up on country, gospel, and blues. Turner and her husband, Ike (who was abusive towards her) had massive success in R&B and rock and roll, but her first solo record was actually a country album.

In 1974, Turner released her debut LP, Tina Turns The Country On!, introducing herself as a solo act. Featuring top musicians, including Country Music Hall of Famer James Burton on guitar, Tina tackled songs from country greats like Dolly Parton, Kris Kristofferson, and Hank Snow. It would go on to receive a GRAMMY nomination for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance in 1975. Over the years, unreleased songs from this groundbreaking album would be dropped, including her powerful take on “Stand by Your Man.”

However, her most enduring impact on country might be as the inspiration behind one of the outlaw movement’s most popular hits. In 1969, Waylon Jennings was staying at a motel in Fort Worth, Texas, when he saw a newspaper ad about Ike & Tina Turner that intrigued him enough to interrupt Willie Nelson during a poker game so they could write a country classic. The phrase that struck Waylon heralded Turner as “a good hearted woman loving a two-timin’ man.” Sound familiar?

From honky-tonks to stadiums, Tina Turner’s fiery spirit left an unforgettable mark on practically every genre – country, rock, and everything in between.

Suggested Listening:
“Stand By Your Man”
“Good Hearted Woman”

DeFord Bailey (1899 – 1982)

Let’s go back to the early days of country to a name that shaped the Grand Ole Opry, but is often forgotten: DeFord Bailey, “The Harmonica Wizard!”

Born in 1899 in Smith County, Tennessee, Bailey grew up around banjos and fiddles in a musical family, saying that he learned the “Black hillbilly music” tradition. He overcame polio as a child, resulting in his short stature – he was only 4’ 10” tall – but it was through this ordeal that he found his voice in a harmonica. While recovering from the disease, he was bedridden for a year, and learned to mimic the sounds he heard outside on his harmonica: trains, animals, and the rhythms of life.

In 1927, Bailey became one of the first stars of the Grand Ole Opry on Nashville’s WSM, dazzling crowds with hits like “Pan American Blues.” He was actually the first artist introduced after George D. Hay referred to WSM’s Barn Dance as the “Grand Ole Opry” for the first time to poke fun at NBC’s classical Grand Opera. Bailey would also become the first artist to record in Music City. His hits like “Fox Chase,” “John Henry,” and “Evening Prayer Blues” captivated radio audiences, making him one of the Opry’s most popular performers. He would tour with other stars like Roy Acuff, Uncle Dave Macon, The Delmore Brothers, and Bill Monroe, but would often not be allowed to stay in the same hotels or eat at the same restaurants as his white contemporaries due to Jim Crow laws.

In 1941, DeFord Bailey was unceremoniously fired from the Grand Ole Opry under suspicious circumstances. He would make his living shining shoes in Nashville and would not perform on the Opry again until 1974, the first of only a handful of final performances on the radio program which he helped grow during its infancy, before his passing in 1982.

The Grand Ole Opry would eventually work to reconcile its mistreatment of its first Black member, issuing a public apology to the late DeFord Bailey in 2023 with his descendants on hand. Old Crow Medicine Show was there to celebrate the occasion, performing their tribute song to Bailey led by black percussionist Jerry Pentecost, entitled “DeFord Rides Again.”

In 2005, Bailey was rightfully inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame and over 40 years since his passing, he is still recognized as the Harmonica Wizard.

Suggested Listening:
“Pan American Blues”
“Evening Prayer Blues”

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Photo Credit: Stoney Edwards by Universal Music Group; DeFord Bailey courtesy of the Country Music Hall of Fame; Rissi Palmer by Chris Charles.

Drew & Ellie Holcomb Take Us Through Their ‘Memory Bank’

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Husband-and-wife indie-folk duo Drew & Ellie Holcomb have been making music together for 20 years. Ellie was a member of Drew Holcomb & the Neighbors when they first collaborated on a record in 2005 (now out of print). That was followed by 2007’s A Million Miles Away, which was then succeeded by something like their breakout, Passenger Seat, in 2008.

Over the years since, they’ve built up the Neighbors – and their cohort of friends, neighbors, fans, and listeners – into a more than tidy little paradise of a musical cul-de-sac, with more than a dozen releases (together and separately) and amassing more than a hundred million streams.

This year, the pair put out their first full-length duo album together, as equal fronting artists with the Neighbors behind them. Memory Bank, released on January 24, looks forward while looking back – a hallmark and through line of the duo, their group, and their creative output across their two-decade career. So many of the songs on Memory Bank seem to speak to the longevity they have – “Rain or Shine,” “Shut Up and Dance,” “Never Gonna Let You Go,” “Bones” – there’s a wisdom and perspective in this album that speaks to the distance they’ve traveled together. As well as denoting the upcoming miles they have yet to cover as partners, parents, and musical collaborators.

With the release of Memory Bank, we thought it was the perfect opportunity to stroll down memory lane with Drew & Ellie Holcomb, to contrast their latest project and the artists they have become now with their early projects and the artists they were then, in our most recent edition of First & Latest.

 I wonder, as you put together this Memory Bank, what memories from 2008 and that first album came up for you? How did that nearly 20-year history of making music filter into this project and its songs?

Drew Holcomb: Honestly, Passenger Seat was not even the first project. There was a record in 2005 called Washed in Blue that Ellie sang on that has been scrubbed from the internet. We put on an album called A Million Miles Away in 2007, which had a bunch of songs like “I Like to Be with Me When I’m With You” and “Hung the Moon” and others. I think the younger version of us was much less confident, in a way. We were flying blind. We hadn’t made a lot of records yet and you don’t know what you’re doing in the studio. We didn’t know what we were doing as songwriters. Ellie was just a member of the band at the time.

Ellie Holcomb: I was a neighbor with benefits. The starkest difference for me between Passenger Seat in 2008 and Memory Bank in 2025 is an open-handedness and a freedom that comes with the death of ego and also with a general posture of curiosity and gratitude.

You are both prolific creators – together and separately – how have you balanced your individual musical identities with your collective work over that time period? Do you find it to be an easy balance or a tricky one?

EH: One of my favorite things about us doing music both together and separately is that there’s a massive amount of respect for each other. The reason it took us 20 years to write and record an album together is because we’ve always honored that artistic and creative space with each other. We write really differently, we create really differently. I think that mutual respect and space that we’ve given each other made space for us to make what we we’ve released into the world now – and I love it.

DH: My only addition is a short answer: No, it’s not an easy balance. It’s very tricky, but it’s worth it.

I think our relationship definitely manifests itself through the music. I think on the one hand, there’s like the aspiration – love songs are often about the love that you hope that you have. So, when you’re young and you’re speaking about when you get older, you’re making a promise to yourself and to each other about the kind of love you hope for. There’s also a bit of the truths of your own personalities make it into songs.

There’s clearly a mission and a message in your music, and I think that’s part of your staying power as artists and part of why over so many releases in so many iterations – as a couple, with the Neighbors, as solo artists, as collaborators on outside projects – your songs continue to resonate with audiences in such an authentic and down to earth way. I wonder how much of that encouragement folks get from your music that you get, yourselves? I can see that being a big part of how you’ve gotten this far and are still moving forward.

EH: I’d say we talk to our kids a lot about what a stage is for and we always tell them that a stage is to bring joy. It’s a shared space where our stories mingle together. Music is a bridge builder. Our mission, if you will, with music is that it would help people connect to their own story and that it would help people connect to everybody else and feel a little less alone. There’s this beautiful quote that says we decorate space with art and we use music to decorate time. We feel so deeply grateful that people have used our songs to decorate like the time and the seasons of their lives, sorrow, joy, road trips, family gatherings, etc.

What will you take with you in your “memory bank” as you move forward, as you stare down the next 17 years of making music together? What do you see as your touchstones – or, alternatively, what do you hope you’ll look back and recall if we were to have this conversation again in 20 more years?

DH: Our memory bank as we move forward in the next 17 years of making music together, we are always trying to keep growing. I didn’t know how to sing harmony until this record. I learned how to sing harmony, not with the intention of making a record, but because I wanted to learn. Ellie’s learning piano with similar intentions. There are always new songs to find.

When you were making and releasing Passenger Seat, where did you see yourself now, all these years later? Was this always the goal? Did it seem like a pipe dream that you’d still be doing this together? Or was it inevitable?

DH: Music was definitely not inevitable. When I started making music, Ellie was a school teacher with no intention of being a professional musician. So we have just taken it a year at a time.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the artists.

BGS 5+5: Crys Matthews

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Artist: Crys Matthews
Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee
Latest Album: Reclamation
Personal Nicknames (or rejected band names): Papa Bear to my future-wife, Uncle Bear to our youngest nieces, and just Bear to my chosen nephew, River.

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

Without question, the song that took me a while to get ‘right’ is my song “Suit and Tie.” This song was written in response to the drag ban being rolled out in Tennessee. Nashville is my home now, so having a front-row seat to the fallout from that bill definitely weighed on my heart. [The ban] was intentionally loosely worded so that law enforcement could have cause to harangue anyone who they saw fit, even a singer-songwriter like me who happens to dress in suits and ties more often than not.

Gender and gender expression are both deeply, deeply personal – they are nobody’s business and certainly not our government’s business. As a social justice songwriter, I take tremendous care to avoid “speaking for someone” or inadvertently appropriating something that I only meant to appreciate. In “Suit and Tie,” only one of the verses is about me directly and offers my perspective as a Butch-identified lesbian who has been wearing clothes that bucked the patriarchy since I was four years old. The other verses are about a nonbinary person, a femme-identified gay man, and a trans woman.

My friend Holly [Near] once called my songs “truth-telling journalism,” which I took as a badge of honor. The notion of being a faithful steward of the truth means a lot to a PK (preacher’s kid) like me, and so it took me about seven drafts before I felt like I had done that with this song.

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

My mission statement is: To amplify the voices of the unheard, to shed light on the unseen, and to be a steadfast reminder that hope and love are the truest pathways to equity and justice.

What has been the best advice you’ve received in your career so far?

Unsurprisingly, so much of the best advice I have received during my time on this planet is from my mother. One gem in particular that has seemed more and more profound is, “Babygirl, you better remember whose you are, so you don’t forget who you are.” It was (and still is) her way of reminding me that this industry and this world can try everything in its power to try to change the things about you that make you special, those things that, so often, are the very things that drew them to you in the first place.

You have to be steadfast and secure in who you are at your core. You have to remember your ancestors and your community and the people who knew and loved you before anybody who thought they could help you ‘make it big’ even knew your name. That advice from her is why I have managed to have an actual career that centers my ideals and values. And I think it is why the people in my corner seems to also reflect that ideals and values.

Does pineapple really belong on pizza?

Absolutely not! I keep telling my future-wife that, but she keeps insisting that I’m wrong.

What is a genre, album, artist, musician, or song that you adore that would surprise people?

Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture” – before I realized I could write songs, I was fairly certain that I was going to be a high school band director. I have a deep love for classical music. I can conduct the 1812 like nobody’s business!

I know some musicians hope they get famous enough to sing the National Anthem at a Super Bowl or play at the GRAMMYs, but I’m just hoping that I get to conduct the 1812 with a philharmonic at least once before I die.

Photo Credit: Emily April Allen

Swedish Singer-Songwriter Sarah Klang Brings ‘Beautiful Woman’ Stateside

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

I meet Swedish performer and singer-songwriter Sarah Klang in the glorious maximalist backstage area at Nashville’s the Blue Room before her first-ever Music City show in mid-January. She’s cozy on the couch, a tin of pouched nicotine by her side, a hippo skull on the coffee table in front of us, and her brand new album, Beautiful Woman (out February 7) on our minds. The first thing I notice – besides her beautiful tattoos and the shimmering gemstone stud on one of her teeth – is her gaudy and gorgeous red-white-and-blue acrylic nails. Complete with rhinestones and glitter.

To Klang, the country aesthetic is the “coolest,” and in her part of the world she’s seen as something of a country queen. Her work across her discography varies greatly in genres and sonics, including folk, indie, pop, Americana, and so much more. But Beautiful Woman, which was produced by Eric D. Johnson (Fruit Bats, Bonny Light Horseman) doesn’t feel like Klang is just putting on rootsiness because it’s “cool” or “in” or trending. These are sonic spaces she knows well and strides through with ease.

Beautiful Woman boasts bold and brash moments that feel like Adele covering The SteelDrivers alongside tender story songs that could have almost been pulled from the catalogs of country queens this side of the Atlantic like Loretta Lynn and Dolly Parton. Danceable tracks, finger-picked ballads, and honest lyrics speak to impactful issues of motherhood, agency, feminism, embodiment – and so much more – but still feel light and joyful, leaning forward in the beat and finding hope in the melancholic.

Catching her debut Nashville performance at the Blue Room felt a bit momentous, though Klang seemed remarkably chill and relaxed, on and off stage. She and collaborator Theo Stocks (who also helps record and produce her projects) performed in duet, with lush reverbs and simple backing percussion tracks to a rapt audience. An audience who knew they were lucky to have Klang on this “side of the pond.”

Before the show, we dove into Beautiful Woman, speaking about the death of genre, choosing your own joy, always wanting more banjos, and so much more.

Do you see what you do as roots music? How do you place your own music within roots or folk or Americana? Your music has so many things – it’s got moments of grandeur, it’s got moments of subtlety, it’s got indie, it’s got pop, it’s got a little bit of everything. But I wonder how you identify it.

Sarah Klang: That’s sort of a really hard question. I always feel it’s a little bit like I don’t really know the genres. So, mostly when I put out my albums, afterwards people will review them and they will tell me what genre it is and I will be like, “Yeah, yeah! Mhmm, that’s what it is.” Because I don’t really think about it.

I mean, I listen to so much– random indie, folk, Americana, all those things that you mentioned. And I’m introduced to iconic classical things mainly through Theo [Stocks], my guitarist that I make albums with, and also Eric [D. Johnson]. Like a very normal thing in the studio would be that they would say, “Oh, this is very Kris Kristofferson-ish.” And I would be like, “Could you play it for me?” And then they play the song, and I’m like, “Okay!”

I don’t really have a special aim for where I’m going, because I don’t have any roots in anything. Really. I know what I like. I know the feeling [of what] I’m after. I guess the sentimental [and the] bittersweet, those always end up in some sort of Americana thing.

If it’s not the genre, or style, or the aesthetic that you’re going for – or that you’re following – it sounds to me like you’re following the songs themselves and the feeling you’re trying to evoke.

Yes. I mean, it’s just like an imprinted thing in my brain, “What sounds do I like?” It has always been like that, really. I don’t really play any instruments anymore. I used to play the guitar and the piano, but now I don’t. We’ve been here [in Nashville] for seven days and had sessions every day and Theo knows very well how to describe [the sounds]. He’s kind of like my interpreter. How do you say it? My interpreter? When it comes to melodies and shorts [takes], because someone at the session could play me a bit and I’ll be like “Hmmm?” And Theo will say, “It’s the last short. She doesn’t want that last short. Let’s go with that instead.” He understands.

I think I just have quite a small range of melodies that I like. I mean, my songs are kind of similar, how they are made. The aesthetic of country music has always felt like that’s the only way to go. That’s the only aesthetic that really looks cool, you know? When I started to dress up in country-ish things in Sweden, people were like, “Okay, well she makes country music.” That’s how far they would go. So in Sweden I’m often categorized and called the country queen of Sweden. I get a little bit nervous about that, because I know so little about country music and you know that everybody has such strong opinions about it.


What’s funny to me is even with how strong of opinions people have about country and what it is, it’s always in the eye of the beholder.

I’ve obviously been listening a lot – maybe not classic country, whatever that is – but I mean, I’ve been listening to Kurt Vile, Kevin Morby, Sharon Van Etten, you know, those very big country rock people for a long time. I think that is my biggest influence, really. Then we take that and Theo and Eric on this album, who are just very nerdy in music, they put their spin on it.

But for me, it’s not important to me. Where this album lands, in which genre – I couldn’t care less. But, I think that’s why I started having a western aesthetic. ‘Cause it’s the coolest part, I think. I was like, “Okay, I’m gonna start a solo project. Where do I want to be? What’s cool?”

That, probably. [Laughs]

You’re talking about collaborating with Theo and Eric and it sounds like having that trust and having that rapport is really important to getting the music where you wanted to get it. When I listen through and I hear the banjo moments and the really rootsy and Americana moments, trying to connect the dots, how much of that came from Eric producing?

I asked for that specifically! I mean, if it were up to me, I would say, “More banjo! Put banjo on everything!” ‘Cause that makes everything a jam.

But the boys are more tasteful when it comes to that. When [Eric] played, I think I asked him to try and play on like every song – and not because I wanted to be a “diddly doo” out there, but just because that’s my vibe. I mean, when someone plays on a banjo, there is nothing more tearjerking.

Of course, “Last Forever” jumped out at me for that quality. That was the track from Beautiful Woman that we premiered on BGS. I think it’s my favorite song on the record. But there are so many moments that feel like you’re a genre shapeshifter. And I think that that’s the time we’re in too, genre’s dead. Even while we get more and more and more genre names every year, it feels like genre’s dead.

For me, it’s probably a good thing that it is. That I’m not locked in a genre. I don’t think I’m ever gonna have to be like, “Okay guys, I’m breaking free from this [genre.]” I don’t have to do like a Miley Cyrus thing – “look at my new clothes!” – because I wear everything and that’s nice because I think I’m gonna keep on producing albums as long as I can, and I would like to not be stuck if I were to start feeling this [genre] is boring.

I mean, I’m a huge house fan. I love dance music. When I was a teenager, I mostly listened to weird party drinking music from the UK. I always wanted to make a club album. So, hopefully I could just like sneak over there. When the time’s right. [Laughs]

Another song that jumped out at me as feeling really rootsy is “Childhood.” Not only because of the aesthetic of the song, but the storytelling of it and the nostalgia in it. Something about it feels kind of theatrical to me, too, and I think country is so theatrical.

Yeah, it’s very dramatic. I think when I’m making a song, I feel like “more is more” and if you are going in a certain direction, just go all-in and don’t cringe. Because then it’s just going to end up in some halfway world.

For me, with “Childhood” I was like, “Oh, is this song too nice? Is it too sweet?” Like, no! It’s great. It’s a great song. You just have to go all the way with the feelings. Because then if you don’t, I don’t think you’re going to reach the point you wanted to reach.

Many of my melodies, when I write, I ask myself or Theo or Eric, “Is this too pop-y? Does it sound too much like yada yada yada? Is this a rip off?” And they’re, “Let’s go for it!” You just go straight into that vibe and feeling.

Our music goes all the way into the feeling without hesitating if it might be too much. If you are driving your car, you want to listen to Tom Petty. And he wasn’t like, “Oh, I’m gonna write a song that is making people feel free… but it can’t be too much!” [Laughs]

“I want a driving song, but for 35 miles an hour.”

No! [Laughs] Pedal to the metal.

The overarching concepts that the album is talking about, I think what some people, especially in the U.S., would think these are deep topics – feminism, womanhood, gender and gender roles. But I found it interesting that even with these subjects, the music still feels joyful, it feels like it’s looking forward, it feels like it leans forward – in the beat, literally and figuratively. But, it doesn’t feel like cotton candy, and it doesn’t feel like you’re minimizing anything. Can you talk a little bit about that?

I mean, that makes me so happy that you felt that way. I’ve done interviews about this album in Sweden, with women, and they’re like, “Sarah, you do know that you are a beautiful woman now, right? And I’m like, that’s not the fucking point! As if I were singing it, meaning that that was the point. Maybe I thought when I was younger that that was a goal, but it’s not now.

I just want to write whatever comes to mind, and since English is not my first language, I have to write it very straight and simple. Like, “This is what happened, period.” I don’t really have the energy or time to hide the message. That is not my thing. Some people are great with that, leaving clues. I just write words – it’s also like, I’m busy I need to write the lyrics now! [Laughs]

I always ask my friend when I’ve done an album, “What is the catchphrase for this album? What would you say now when you heard it?” So, for VIRGO she was like, “This is your sex album.” And Mercedes, “This is your pregnancy album, obviously.” But this one, she was like, “I think this is a celebration of girlhood, period.” And I was like, “Yep, that’s perfect.” I’ll just use that. Because I obviously just collect songs. Over a period of time, and then I feel, well now it’s done. And I don’t write an album after a theme.

One of the things I love about the album is that it ends on “I Have Everything.” I like that that’s the way that you’re putting a punctuation mark on the album. Right now, I’m really worn out by attention economies, consumption, consumerism, and like, “buying our happiness.” I was really struck by that song. I love having it at the end; it feels like you are not just talking to us, your listeners, but you’re also talking to yourself. So I wanted to ask you about the song and about the placement of it in the sequence.

I think I wrote it to myself. Like, “Listen! Stop being a complete asshole all the time!” It’s annoying, but I’ve learned – and it’s nice, but it’s hard to talk about it without it sounding so cringey and boring – but the only thing that makes you happy is to take walks outside, be with your family, eat right, and take care of yourself. And that is boring, but it’s the truth. I always felt that people who said, “I wake up every morning and tell myself five things that I’m grateful for–” and I’m like, “Okay… that’s weird.” [Laughs]

If you do that, you will probably feel better. If you are nice to people around you, you will probably feel better. If you’re nice to yourself. I mean, grown up people have been telling me [this] all my life. During my 20s, through periods where I was just unhinged and didn’t feel right. They were like, “Well, maybe if you took a little better care of yourself and didn’t party so much and spent time with your family, you would feel better.” And I was like, “Listen, it’s more than that.”

Yeah, like I am so deep. [Laughs] My traumas are so deep! You have no idea! I’m a fuck up. And then, turns out you’re not. That’s a nice thing about getting a little bit older, you just know, “I’m gonna be fine.” And it’s also my responsibility to make that happen.

Every time somebody had ever told me that “joy is a choice” and “happiness is a choice,” I didn’t realize at first that what they meant was joy or happiness that you construct for yourself isn’t fake.

No! And it doesn’t undermine your sad parts. Like, that is always going to be there. Don’t worry. I think so many of us are just melancholic people. I mean, people have had worse experiences than I’ve had and are so chill and so fine.

I think happiness is definitely something you can work on and give to yourself, and it’s not like a miracle.

Photo Credit: Fredrika Eriksson

BGS 5+5: Olivia Wolf

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

(Welcome to another 5+5! Hit play, scroll, and get to know artists, creators, and roots musicians of all sorts with five questions and five songs.)

Artist: Olivia Wolf
Hometown: Leipers Fork, Tennessee
Latest Album: Silver Rounds

Which artist has influenced you the most – and how?

Gillian Welch. She has shown me that lyrics can be both beautiful and dark, honest and true. Her instrumentation is brilliantly simple and to see her play live is to transcend to a different plane.

What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?

We played “The Wild” in Seattle, and I asked if anybody had gone fishing that day. A fella had been out that morning and caught three coho salmon. When the song started he closed his eyes and I knew he was back on the ocean in the breeze and the water. I love to see other people getting to escape through my music.

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

Photography, antiquing and home décor design, cooking, and hosting friends.

What is a genre, album, artist, musician, or song that you adore that would surprise people?

I love Daft Punk. Especially their song “Something About Us.” They influenced a lot of the cosmic aspect of my album and I greatly admire their lyrics and musicality.

If you didn’t work in music, what would you do instead?

There is nothing I could do instead, I am married to the music.

Photo Credit: Alysse Gafkjen

You Gotta Hear This: New Music From Seldom Scene, Swearingen & Kelli, and More

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

You’ve reached the end of the week! For a little treat, how about a few brand new songs and music videos? You Gotta Hear This!

If you’re looking for bluegrass, we’ve certainly got it this week– Chris Jones & The Night Drivers share their first recording of a Tom T. Hall original, “Mama Bake a Pie (Daddy Kill a Chicken),” since their dear friend and Bluegrass Hall of Famer passed away a few years ago. Plus, bluegrass legends Seldom Scene preview their upcoming album, Remains to Be Scene, with a new single, “Last of the Steam-Powered Trains.” And, wrapping up our bluegrass trifecta, banjo player Max Wareham pays tribute to NHL team the Boston Bruins with an excellent shredding instrumental tune, “The Black & Gold.”

From elsewhere across the roots music landscape, duo Swearingen & Kelli offer “Break Me Down,” a powerful acoustic number with plenty of grit, slide guitar, and blues influence. Plus, don’t miss Justin Wells’ new music video for “Sad, Tomorrow,” a contemplative slow burn of a song that focuses on mental health, melancholy, and forging ahead.

It’s a lovely collection of new roots music to take you into the weekend, and you know what we think – You Gotta Hear This!

Chris Jones & the Night Drivers, “Mama Bake a Pie (Daddy Kill a Chicken)”

Artist: Chris Jones & The Night Drivers
Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee
Song: “Mama Bake a Pie (Daddy Kill a Chicken)”
Release Date: January 17, 2025
Label: Mountain Home Music Company

In Their Words: “This is an old and lesser-known Vietnam War-era song of Tom T. Hall’s and the first song of his I’ve recorded since his passing a few years ago. I think I didn’t feel ready to until now. He had a unique ability to incorporate bits of humor into a sad story, and this is definitely one of those. This song is vivid and poignant in a way that is vintage Tom T. I was going to record this several years ago, but when I brought it up to Tom T. and Dixie, they wrote ‘Hero in Harlan’ that very day to give me something new to do instead.” – Chris Jones

Seldom Scene, “Last of the Steam-Powered Trains”

Artist: The Seldom Scene
Hometown: Bethesda, Maryland
Song: “Last of the Steam-Powered Train”
Album: Remains to Be Scene
Release Date: January 14, 2025 (single); March 14, 2025 (album)
Label: Smithsonian Folkways

In Their Words: “This song was written by Ray Douglas Davies and recorded by the rock group The Kinks in the 1960s. The Scene has always looked outside the box for material, and we thought this one fit the bill.” – Lou Reid

Swearingen & Kelli, “Break Me Down”

Artist: Swearingen & Kelli
Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee
Song: “Break Me Down”
Release Date: January 24, 2025
Label: Gone Rogue Music

In Their Words: “I wrote this song a few years back, but it never really got its due. I was also really obsessed with slide guitar at that time. It’s a little gritty, and when Jayne added her vocals on top, I thought, ‘Ok, this is exactly what this song needs.’ I love the discovery process of writing and recording. Sometimes it takes a while to find the exact combination of sounds with an arrangement to tell the story the way you really want to.” – AJ Swearingen

Track Credits:
AJ Swearingen – Guitars, drums, percussion, bass, vocals
Jayne Kelli – Vocals, organ

Max Wareham, “The Black & Gold”

Artist: Max Wareham
Hometown: Boston, Massachusetts
Song: “The Black & Gold”
Album: DAGGOMIT!
Release Date: January 17, 2025 (single); February 21, 2025 (album)

In Their Words: “Sports and music might have more in common than we think – this tune is a tribute to the Boston Bruins’ legendary ’22-’23 season, during which they broke most NHL records. Musically, the A part was inspired by Bill Emerson and the B part is a nod to the style of banjo legend, Rudy Lyle.” – Max Wareham

Track Credits:
Max Wareham – Banjo
Laura Orshaw – Fiddle
Chris Henry – Mandolin
Chris Eldridge – Guitar
Mike Bub – Bass
Larry Atamanuik – Snare

Justin Wells, “Sad, Tomorrow”

Artist: Justin Wells
Hometown: Lexington, Kentucky
Song: “Sad, Tomorrow”
Album: Cynthiana
Release Date: January 15, 2025 (single); February 20, 2025 (album)

In Their Words: “The title of the song comes from a story Nicole Kidman told Marc Maron on Maron’s podcast, WTF. Kidman talked about how she often took her characters home with her, acting in front of a mirror. Her young child had grown accustomed to seeing and hearing her mother work on these roles. A day or so after Kidman’s father died, she was grieving at home, and her kid heard this. Her kid asked ‘Mom, why are you crying?’

“‘Well, I’m crying because I’m sad, because Papaw died.’

“Her child, accustomed to seeing her Mom go in and out of emotions while working on her acting, replied, ‘Well, are you gonna be sad tomorrow?’

“I wanted to write this song about that feeling of helplessness you have when a friend is struggling with depression, when the only thing you can do sometimes is just be there. I ended up asking my dear friend Adam Lee to help me finish it, which was considerably apropos, because we’d both been each other’s therapist through lockdown, when we were kinda losing our minds. Considering all of the above, the song carries an even bigger weight because it’s one of the last songs that my friend Robby Cosenza played on before he passed. Robby was a Lexington icon, playing on hundreds of albums including a Ringo Starr record as well as my debut album, Dawn in the Distance, and he was instrumental in helping me get my legs under me when I started my solo career.” – Justin Wells

Photo Credit: Seldom Scene by Jeromie Stephens; Swearingen & Kelli by Daniel Shippy.

Peter Rowan and Sam Grisman Project Will Bring Old & In the Way to the Ryman

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

On January 9, 2025, there will be a special performance – more so a once-in-a-lifetime celebration – of the groundbreaking music of Old & In the Way at Nashville’s famed Ryman Auditorium.

Led by the “Bluegrass Buddha” himself, Peter Rowan, the legendary singer-songwriter and founding member of the group will be backed by the Sam Grisman Project. The gathering will also feature a murderers’ row of talent: Sam Bush, Tim O’Brien, Lindsay Lou, Ronnie & Rob McCoury, and more.

“In bluegrass, you just do the beautiful grace of presenting the music, being good neighbors and all that stuff,” Rowan told BGS in an exclusive 2022 interview. “But you could hear us in the band going, ‘go, man, go.’ Go for it, that’s where we came from. That’s what Old & In the Way was – the ‘go for it’ signal to everybody.”

To preface, Old & In the Way started as impromptu pickin’-n-grinnin’ sessions in the early 1970s between Rowan, his longtime friend, mandolin guru David Grisman, and Jerry Garcia, iconic guitarist for the Grateful Dead, who reached for his trusty banjo during the gatherings at Garcia’s home in Stinson Beach, California.

“We started picking every night after supper [at Jerry’s],” Rowan remembers. “We went through old song books and learned a bunch of material.”

At the time, Garcia was searching for new avenues of creative exploration, seeing as the Dead were in the midst of taking a much-needed hiatus after years of relentless touring and recording. He was also, perhaps subconsciously, trying to tap back into his roots before the Dead, this landscape of the late 1950s/early 1960s where Garcia was heavily involved in the San Francisco Bay Area folk scene.

“And you realized that Jerry was an intergalactic traveler, just dropping in on the Earth scene for a little while, but he was totally at home,” Rowan says of Garcia’s restless penchant and lifelong thirst for acoustic music.

When Old & In the Way formed in 1973, the trio recruited bassist John Kahn, as well as a revolving cast of fiddlers (Richard Greene, John Hartford, Vassar Clements). Sporadic gigs were booked around the Bay Area, with the vibe of the whole affair casual in nature – the ethos one of camaraderie and collaboration, but without expectations or boundaries.

“I remember singing the ending of ‘Land of the Navajo’ at the first rehearsal and I looked over at Jerry,” Rowan recalls. “He kept nodding his head like, ‘go.’ It was like Jack Kerouac at Allen Ginsberg’s poetry reading at City Lights Bookstore – ‘go, man, go.’ Encouragement, encouragement.”

By 1974, Old & In the Way simply vanished into the cosmic ether, but not before capturing a handful of live performances that have become melodic sacred texts of a crucial crossroads for acoustic music. To note, Old & In the Way’s 1975 self-titled debut album went on to become the bestselling bluegrass album of all-time – until it was dethroned by the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack released in 2000.

As it stands today, Rowan, now 82 years old, is the only remaining member of Old & In the Way still actively performing. Garcia, Clements, Kahn, and Hartford have all sadly passed on, with the elder Grisman and Greene retired from touring. Grisman’s son, standup bassist Sam Grisman, is now carrying his father’s bright torch.

And although the tenure of the Old & In the Way was short-lived, the ripple effects of the band’s ongoing influence and enduring legacy remains as vibrant and vital as it was those many years ago, when a handful of shaggy music freaks kicked off a jam that will perpetuate for eternity.

In preparation for the upcoming Old & In the Way showcase at the Ryman on January 9, BGS recently spoke with Sam Grisman, who talked at-length not only about his continued work with Peter Rowan and the intricacies of Jerry Garcia, but also why a band Grisman’s father started over a half-century ago still captivates the hearts and minds of music lovers the world over.

You were five years old when Jerry Garcia passed away. You were really young, but do you remember anything that you hold onto?

Sam Grisman: Yeah, I have a very vivid memory of what our house felt like, smelled like, and just what the energy was like when Jerry was around. And I remember that sort of ease, just the way that he made people feel. It seemed like my parents were at ease when he was around.

And he probably felt at ease being around them. It was probably a safe haven at that house.

Definitely. And, you know, my parents smoked weed in the house. But, my mom was pretty strict about cigarettes. [She] wouldn’t let anybody smoke cigarettes in the house. But, when Jerry was around, he smoked cigarettes in the house. So, part of this smell in my blurry five-year-old memory is the smell of cigarettes. And Jerry would sometimes wear a leather jacket, maybe the smell of leather.

I remember the sound of his laugh. I remember all that music, and some of it I remember so vividly that I just know that part of that memory is reinforced by being there as a little toddler when they were working up [music]. Because they would often work on tunes upstairs in the living room and then take them down to the studio, put them on the mics and pull them.

You just wanted to be around it all and soak it all in.

I was a really curious kid.

With the Ryman show coming up, there’s been a lot of celebration of Old & In the Way as of late, especially with you touring with Peter Rowan and the current Jerry Garcia exhibit at the Bluegrass Hall of Fame & Museum. You’ve been around those songs your whole life. But, when you think about the context of Old & In the Way, and what you’re doing at the Ryman, what really sticks out with why that was such a special time in not only bluegrass, but in the lives of those people?

I mean, what a lightning-in-the-bottle chapter of all those people’s lives, you know? I think 1973, ’73/’74, was a particularly fertile time for Jerry. He was playing a full schedule with the Dead. He had Jerry Garcia Band stuff. He was playing in Old & In the Way. He was playing pedal steel with the New Riders of the Purple Sage. It seemed like he really had an itch to go back to where his roots were, especially when you look at [the Grateful Dead album] Workingman’s Dead [that was released a] couple years prior.

For all of us, who are looking back on it 50 years in the future, it seems like this momentous, heady time that was just meant to be. But, for those guys in the moment, it was just total serendipity. And the quintessence of just going with the flow – Stinson Beach, California, vibes. They just kind of stumbled into this reality.

“Y’all wanna play?” “Sure, why not.”

Yeah, where it would just be really fun to have this bluegrass band that they didn’t take super seriously, which I think really comes across in the recordings, you know? Because there’s all this joy in that music that might not necessarily have been there if those guys were taking it super seriously or if they needed it to pay their bills. It was a very interesting circumstance.

And for them to call their hero Vassar Clements into the mix, on a sort of whim because Peter found his number on a card in his wallet. It was sort of like a fantasy camp for these guys. Like a bunch of hippies sitting around on the beach, smoking a joint, thinking: “Wouldn’t it be great if we had the world’s greatest fiddle player just show up?” “I bet you we could book a gig.” “Hey Jerry, you got these legions of people following you around, you could probably get us a gig, right?”

And that’s kind of how it happened. Those gigs were so magical, because they happened mostly for all of these Deadheads in Marin [County, California], for like 16 months or something.

So, if you really had your finger on the pulse of it and you were going to the Keystone [music club in Berkeley, California], to see [the Jerry Garcia Band] and you loved what the Dead were doing, you knew that they were going to take this time off, but you just saw Jerry the week before and he never took his guitar off. He just finished the [Jerry Garcia Band] set and walked backstage with his guitar on and was smoking a cigarette, and then you saw him 30 minutes later talking to somebody off the side of stage, still had his guitar on — you’re thinking, “Gee, this guy’s not going to stop playing music this year, so I better keep my eyes peeled for what’s next.” And they played all these little gigs mostly around the Bay Area — they kind of captured some lightning in a bottle.

With playing these Old & In the Way melodies not only throughout your life, but also extensively nowadays with Peter Rowan, what’s been your biggest takeaway on what makes those songs and the ethos/history behind them so special to you? What about in terms of musicality, technique, and approach?

It’s hard to articulate how special it is to be exploring these beloved songs that mean so much to so many folks, myself included, with Peter and a cast of some of my best friends and favorite musicians. It’s a catalog that’s got a lot of depth.

Old & In the Way would play anything from songs by bluegrass heroes like Bill Monroe, The Stanley Brothers, Reno & Smiley, and Jim & Jesse to Vassar [Clements], Jerry [Garcia], and my pop’s instrumentals, to the tunes that Peter was writing at the time, which are some of my absolute favorite songs ever written.

Songs like “Midnight Moonlight,” “High Lonesome Sound,” and “Panama Red.” Playing these tunes with Uncle Peter makes me feel connected to the times he spent with David and Jerry in Stinson Beach in the early ’70s.

I grew up in Mill Valley and loved going to Stinson Beach with my friends, so I have a pretty vivid image in my mind’s eye. They played tunes, hung out, relaxed, took in the sea breeze, smoked a bunch of great weed, and developed a highly individuated “West Coast” approach to playing and singing this bluegrass music that they all loved and respected so much.

And then, they called one of my bass heroes, John Kahn, and their fiddle hero, the inimitable Vassar Clements and gave the world about one glorious year – I think around 50 shows – of a rare and lovable breed of bluegrass.

So much of everyone’s personality comes through in the music, and you can hear their camaraderie in the recordings. I guess my biggest take away from getting to play this music with Peter is how important it is to bring your own approach to these timeless songs that we love, while still honoring what it is that makes us love them in the first place.

You’ve known Peter Rowan since you were born. But, what has this latest endeavor together meant to you, to play the Old & In the Way catalog to not only lifelong fans, but also a whole new generation of acoustic music fans and bluegrass freaks?

It means the world to me to get to spend some time out on the road sharing space and time in service of this music with Uncle Peter. Getting to meet all of these folks who care so much about this music and feeling their appreciation and gratitude for Pete has been truly special.

There are so many people from so many different ages and different walks of life for whom this music has been the soundtrack to many fond memories, and I’m honored to be one of them. It’s also been a joy to see fresh faces in the audience and some folks taking in this music with a new perspective.

In your honest opinion, what is the legacy of Old & In the Way when you place it through the prism of the history of bluegrass and the road to the here and now, especially this current juncture where the torchbearers are selling out arenas and creating this high-water mark for acoustic, traditional and bluegrass music?

For many folks who know and love the music of Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead, Old & In the Way has been their first exposure to bluegrass. So many people over the years have told me how listening to Old & In the Way led them to further explore bluegrass music and its roots and branches. And others have told me how it inspired them to become pickers and start bands of their own.

I think Old & In the Way has been pivotal in bringing a wider audience with a more adventurous musical palette into the bluegrass universe. The legacy of Old & In the Way is one of exploration and preservation, and they certainly paved the way for many of us to walk a similar path — honoring the music that we love, while exploring its boundaries and finding our own voices and approaches.

It’s wonderful to see my friend Billy Strings out there playing for so many folks on such a big scale simply being himself, playing his own songs with a great group of friends, and also honoring the material that made him the musician that he is — maybe that’s a part of the legacy of Old & In the Way.

Photo Credit: Elliot Siff
Poster Credit: Taylor Rushing

Embrace the Past,
Move Forward

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Music has and continues to be a form of healing for Fancy Hagood. The Arkansas-raised singer who takes his forename from the Drake song – not the Bobbie Gentry and Reba McEntire hit – first began writing songs as a queer junior high student struggling to fit in before dropping out of school at 17 to chase his newfound dreams in Nashville.

Despite growing up listening to everything from contemporary Christian music to The Chicks, Shania Twain, Tim McGraw, Destiny’s Child, and Missy Elliott, it was choir and theatre that brought Hagood’s own creative aspirations to life.

“I really found myself in those classes,” Hagood tells Good Country. “I was dealing with a lot of bullying at the time and writing music became one of the few ways I could truly express myself.”

But upon his arrival to Nashville, Hagood was told that a career as a queer country musician was unlikely. This was followed by a move to Los Angeles, coupled with a transition to pop, that led to him to opening for the likes of Meghan Trainor and Ariana Grande as he juggled a day job at Forever 21. Those opportunities coincided with a decrease in creative control over his own work, something he’s taken back for himself on 2021’s Southern Curiosity and his most recent project, American Spirit, which released October 25.

“I was hell-bent on this album not being a breakup record, but instead one about healing, moving forward, and finding yourself,” Hagood says of American Spirit. “I don’t want to be on the road singing songs about my ex, but I do want to sing about reclaiming your story, bouncing back, and that being the most powerful thing after experiencing something like that.”

Speaking on the phone from his Nashville home, Hagood detailed his ambitious Music City move, experiences with gatekeeping, his work with Apple Music, and more.

What was it like for you moving to Nashville so young? I imagine on one hand it’s quite empowering, but it can also be overwhelming too.

Fancy Hagood: On my song “Fly Away” I sing, “You were scared as hell to take the highway/ You barely knew how to drive…” and that’s the truth. I got my driver’s license when I was 16 and I never drove on the highway until I moved to Nashville, so it was very much a culture shock. I know a lot of people don’t view Nashville as a big city compared to New York or Los Angeles, but when you’re coming from small-town Arkansas it felt like the whole world had opened up for myself. There were parts of it that were really intimidating, but for the most part I had so much enthusiasm that you couldn’t really tell me anything. I had this idea that I was going to be a country superstar and you couldn’t tell me otherwise.

I know things haven’t always been easy for you though. You’ve dealt with some gatekeeping and other hurdles along the way. What’s that been like?

Before I moved to LA, I was getting all this attention in Nashville, selling out shows on my own. A lot was going on for not having any music out in the world yet. I quickly got a publishing deal, but instead of things taking off from there I started getting a bunch of people putting their own opinions on me and putting their own stuff into my music, thus limiting me because of their own fears. That was something I never had going into all of this – fear. It’s a complicated thing when you start mixing art and commerce. The powers that be recognize you have talent, but in figuring out how to make money from it they start thinking of Middle America and who’s going to buy it, leading to a fear game rather than just letting the artist be an artist.

When I moved to LA and got a record deal, that’s where other people’s fears began sinking into my own train of thought and my delusion began slipping away. I was accomplishing all these things, from performing on Dancing With the Stars to hitting the road with Ariana Grande, but on the inside I felt miserable. I realized I’d sacrificed so much of myself and my art to get to a place where other people found it comfortable for me to be successful, but a year and a half into it I just imploded and lost all the deals.

It wasn’t until moving back to Nashville in 2016 that I was able to shake all that off. In 2018 I signed a new publishing deal and began work on my album Southern Curiosity, a slow burn that didn’t release until 2021. It was a really difficult transition having [to go from] a Top 40 hit and everyone treating you like you’re the king of the castle to no hits, no deals, and nobody wants to touch you with a ten-foot pole. It was a humbling experience that taught me that the industry in place was not set up for someone like me to be successful. Because of that, my train of thought stopped being about how do I fit into the industry to thinking about how to create my own, which is exactly what I’ve been doing since Southern Curiosity.

One way you’ve been building that community you speak of is through your role as the host of Trailblazers Radio on Apple Music. What’s that gig meant to you?

I’ve never experienced a company that puts their money where their mouth is quite like Apple. They were supportive of me and my first record before hosting a radio show was even a thought. They first came to me after I guest-hosted on the late Leslie Jordan’s Apple Radio show, which I did three or four times with him. After that, they approached me with the Trailblazers idea and threw me into the deep end. When they offered it to me in 2021 I’d never done radio before and just recently we were picked up for our fourth season. My idea is to feature artists who don’t typically get those opportunities, allowing country music to be for everyone. If you look at our playlist you’ll see all kinds of artists on there, not just what country radio suggests Nashville is.

It’s also been meaningful getting to sit across from actual legends and people who have shattered the glass ceiling in country music. Each artist that’s come through our doors has taught me that not one artist’s journey is the same, which has done a lot for inspiring, motivating, and informing me as an artist.

Are there any particular moments or guests from the show that stand out?

I’d never met Jelly Roll before he came in for his interview and his heart just blew me away. Who he is at his core is so full of joy and his philanthropic side was really inspiring to me. He had just sold out Bridgestone Arena and donated all the money to an organization that helps incarcerated youth. Even when we weren’t recording he was wanting to know more about me, my art, and what I do. He’s just a stand-up person.

A moment ago you mentioned Leslie Jordan, whose loss you touch on (along with your grandmother’s) on the song “Good Grief.” I guess that goes back to songwriting being a method of healing?

Yeah, it came about during a writing session with my friend Jeremy Lutito on a particularly solemn day. We were both in sad moods, but in typical fashion when two guys are alone in a room the last thing they’ll do is ask, “What’s on your heart?” We got to talking about a situation with his family where their dog had passed away the night before, which led to a conversation about grief and having to walk his kids through it for the first time. As he was telling me this I just fell apart thinking of how grief is such a hard thing to come to terms with and reckon with, but sometimes it’s ultimately a good thing. We’d been struggling all day, but that song came about in only an hour or so. It was pure magic.

I’ve seen you refer to this album as a “breakup record,” and I feel like one song that really captures that essence is the title track, “American Spirit.” How’d it come about?

I wrote that with Gina Venier and Summer Overstreet. It started with this idea of cigarette season or a time in your life where you’re smoking and stressed. But with Gina, who’s also a queer artist, it evolved into a song about becoming someone else’s vice. It’s not an unheard-of story in the South, people not being able to fully speak to who they are or how they feel – there’s a lot of closet cases among us. I’ve dealt with that a lot in my time in Nashville and I know others have, too. The song is mostly a nod to those experiences and being an openly queer person dealing with others who aren’t open but are addicted to your openness and freedom and not being able to let that go.

What has music taught you about yourself?

It’s taught me that I’m resilient and can get through anything along with the power of believing in yourself. I’ve gone through a lot in this industry, but I keep coming back. This is what I love and I’m never going to stop.

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Photo Credit: Natalie Osborne