Artist:Sarah Peacock Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee Song: “House of Bones” Album:Burn the Witch Release Date: March 27, 2020 Label: Road Dog Enterprises
In Their Words: “I wrote this song with my friends, Danny Myrick (‘She’s Country,’ Jason Aldean) and Megan Linville Myrick. The three of us always have a lot to connect over, having grown up in similar environments. So when we get together, the conversation always goes deep.
“‘House of Bones’ didn’t develop on the first go around. In fact, it was a different song entirely when we wrapped up our first three-hour writing session. It wasn’t until months later that we went back to the drawing board. We all felt unsettled about the song, like it wanted to tell a different story. So we went into a darker place and tried to get comfortable there. We channeled our mistakes, our regrets, losses, and death. I’m so glad we didn’t give up on ‘House of Bones.’ It’s such an authentic track, and I think it channels and exposes some of the regrets I’ve held onto from the past. It’s healing to let it out. Somehow that takes away the power of the negative energy surrounding those memories, and I’m so honored and grateful that my co-writers were able to share that space with me.” — Sarah Peacock
Artist:Jess Jocoy Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee Song: “Somebody Somewhere” Album:Such a Long Way Release Date: April 10, 2020
In Their Words: “This is the song of someone who thinks they need something more, so they run. In their running, we’re with them as they parallel themselves with ‘somebody somewhere.’ Aware that their relationship isn’t perfect on either side, as the end of the song reveals, they come to realize it’s a love worth fighting for. ‘Somebody Somewhere’ came together like a dream — from the writing process to recording. It was a gray day in Nashville and I needed a song with some bounce. The band really succeeded in giving it a good, fun vibe — it feels like a good driving song.” — Jess Jocoy
Artist:Rumer Hometown: London, England Song: “Bristlecone Pine” (written by Hugh Prestwood) Album:Nashville Tears Release Date: April 24, 2020 Label: Cooking Vinyl
In Their Words: “In the song, the tree illustrates the continuity of spirituality, mortality, and the natural world. The tree has seen the rise and fall of civilizations, overcome harsh conditions, achieved a long life, and the narrator finds peace in that: ‘Now the way I have lived, there ain’t no way to tell, when I die if I’m going to heaven or hell. So when I’m laid to rest it would suit me just fine to sleep at the feet of the Bristlecone Pine.'” — Rumer
Everyone is making political records. Everyone is making albums that speak to “this moment.” Too few of them are making music that speaks to the people who inhabit this moment.
Kyshona does. The explorations on her brand new album, Listen — which are synopsized neatly on the title track — by many other artists could have easily and offhandedly devolved into a reactionary, “woke” gasp into the void. Kyshona (surname Armstrong), though, is a deft and empathetic songwriter, a storyteller with a penchant for shameless self expression and graceful introspection. Listen is not an admonishment. It’s not an imperative, or an oracle-given ultimatum. Kyshona does not implore her audience to hear her, but each other.
Over ten original and co-written songs the album carries on this mission with empathy, connection, community, and spirituality (but not proselytizing.) It’s a remarkable feat that though society systemically attempts to render her and women like her invisible, assuming that they’ll stand aside or allow themselves to be tokenized, Kyshona compassionately defies those expectations and opts to design her selfhood — and thereby, her art — to interact with the world on her terms and not the world’s.
BGS connected with Kyshona over the phone while she created still more music and community on the road in Los Angeles in early February.
BGS: It feels like you’re trying to hold listeners to task here, but there’s also so much grace on the record and there’s so much understanding in the lyrics. How did this idea of grace permeate the album? It feels so tangible to me.
Kyshona: Maybe a year and a half ago I had to come up with a mission statement for myself, to help me focus on what my point and purpose is. We all get caught up in the glamor, the whole shiny music business. That mission statement was, “To be a voice and a vessel to those that feel lost, forgotten, silenced, and are hurting.” There is no “right” or “left” to that statement. Those that might feel incarcerated — even if it’s not behind bars, but by their fears, their worries, the rules that they have been taught to live by — everyone has that in common, somehow.
What I tried to set forth in this album is just: Listen. From every corner that you look at it, we’re all just screaming at each other. Nobody’s really listening. The thing about “Listen.” is that it’s a whole sentence. It’s the most difficult thing to do. When we’re listening to someone share their story we automatically want to relate to them, “I have a story similar to that!” Or, “I know what I can do to help them!” That takes us out the moment with another person.
Something I learned as a therapist was how to be a reflection for someone else and we’re not really doing that [enough]. A mirror doesn’t try to fix anything. I wanted this album to be like a mirror. The icky stuff, we’ve all got fears we’re walking in. We all know life can get heavy sometimes. We’re all walking around with some sort of baggage we carry with us from place to place. We all hit moments where we can’t go on.
I’m glad you brought it up, because it felt to me like the redemptive empathy — the listening — you’re trying to inspire with these songs is definitely informed by your therapy experience. How else does the music therapy filter in here?
I teach songwriting now at a women’s jail back in Nashville and when I walk into these classes with these women, they all say, “I don’t have a voice. I don’t have a story. I can’t sing.” That’s something they’ve been told since they were young and they believe it.
When I’m writing with someone who doesn’t consider themselves a songwriter, I remove myself from the situation. I try to put their words into it. It can be very uncomfortable if I try to put something the way I would say it in there. I’m always battling myself. I have to remember, this is their story, their words. I’m just there to be a reflection. As I learned in my practice, years ago, I was always there to lead people to finding their voice, to lead people to finding their story, and to lead them to finding how their story can help others. That they can take the torch and carry it on.
When people say they don’t have a story, when they don’t have a voice, I wonder if your experience as a Black woman — someone who is told by society writ large that you don’t own your own story or even have one worth telling — is that what you channel to show other people that they do? Do you feel that connection at all?
Man. Yeah…
First, I feel as though I have to walk into a room in a very specific way, because of the way I look. Especially if I’m playing intimate rooms, like house concerts. I have to come in welcoming, as if I’m not a threat: I’m kind — I promise. I’m not going to say anything to put anyone off. When I start my shows I have to find something that all of us have in common, which for me is that we all come from someone. We come from somewhere. I talk about my grandparents and what they’ve instilled in me. I feel like a lot of people — not everyone, but a lot — can relate to that. Someone in their lives has given them guidelines to live by.
Then, eventually, I get into incarceration, what it’s like being incarcerated, how do we bring light into the darkness. I bring in the heavy stuff. I tell stories of the places I’ve been, the people I’ve seen.
Also, as a black woman, I feel like it’s expected of me to be the “oracle” that’s telling everyone– I don’t want to say it’s a responsibility, but there’s an expectation.
It’s almost projection, right? That black women are always strong, or magical, or spiritual guides–
Yes, and caretakers. People don’t understand even the complexity of what I’m coming in front of them with. They don’t understand all the different levels of who I am, because I can only really present this one side, which is, “I promise I’m not a threat.” It doesn’t matter where I’m walking into, even when I’m walking behind bars I have to do the same thing. “I’m not a threat. I’m not here to judge you.”
I notice if I have a guitar on my back people do move out of the way, I get a little bit more respect. If I don’t, it’s amazing how invisible I can be and how I am perceived by others. Carrying a tool, carrying an instrument on our backs, can change or affect the way someone perceives us, off-the-bat, right away. Walking anywhere with a guitar on my back, it’s like, “Huh…” Cause that’s not common, to see a black woman with a guitar.
It’s always expected of me too, “You must have grown up singing in the church!” No, I did not. I was not leading choirs — people have an automatic story when they see me do what I do! — I was an oboe player and I played piano. That’s what I did.
This is actually another question I had! I wanted to ask you how gospel influences your music, but I don’t mean doctrine and I don’t just mean genre, either. Maybe the middle space between those two ideas, because that’s what I hear in your music. I hear the activist tinge of gospel, the civil rights aspect of gospel. So what does the gospel thread in the album feel like to you? I did wonder if people projected “gospel” onto you, like I did just now!
I grew up in a house with gospel music. My dad and my grandpa played in gospel quartets, so I was hearing it all the time. But what I loved about the gospel music that I was surrounded by was the ideas that were given by it: Joy. You’re not alone. The burden is not all yours. And I loved hearing voices blend. There’s something about voices being together, creating this one sound.
My faith doesn’t come into this. My faith is in people. My faith is in the fact that we can be better. [At] shows, people walk up to me like, “You’re a believer, aren’t you?” I’m not here to point anyone to God or guide anyone anywhere, I’m here just to be a reflection.
I have faith in a higher power. That’s what gets me through. But I also know that that’s not how everybody comes at life. Not everybody has the foundation that I do. I’m just here to let people know: I see you. You’re not alone. I know it doesn’t feel good right now, but somebody is out here. You might not even know them, but they get it. And let someone else know that you see them, too.
I’m glad you brought up being immersed in harmony, because I especially wanted to talk about your background singers on the album, Maureen Murphy and Christina Harrison. You’ve been singing with them for a while, right?
Yes! Well, Christina left us, she moved to Seattle, but yes! Christina and Maureen are who I started out with — like, if I could have a dream team that’s it.
What I hear in the vocals is almost sibling-harmonies level tight. You’re so in sync, on the same wavelength, and so much of that to me seems like it’s stemming directly from the community you have with these singers and musicians as well. These aren’t just studio musicians to you.
I consider these women my family. These are my sisters. These are women that I feel can read my looks, I can read theirs, we can say what we need to say and be done. I feel like they lift me up and support me — because I’m not a vocalist! I’m not a singer, I’m a storyteller. I don’t see myself as a singer. People say, “Surround yourself by people that are greater than you.” [Laughs]
Outside of that, these women believe in the message that the music carries. They also know the mission and they’re there for that. They’re ready to walk in it. And, both of these women wrote on the record. Maureen and I wrote “Fallen People” with our friend Jenn Bostic and Christina and I wrote “We the People.” It’s not only my voice, these are also [ideas] that they’ve been carrying around and feeling.
I had never met Charley Crockett before, though a list of our mutual friends would be long — and would span the country. I first heard his music on NPR a year or so back and was struck by his style and voice.
I figured I was picking up a soon-to-be new friend as I drove up to meet him at the Basement East in Nashville. Within moments we took off towards our location, knowing the rain would begin to fall at any moment. However when on tour and just passing through a town, that one day is often all you have for the photoshoot — rain or shine. Naturally, we got straight to work.
I count it a very lucky thing that Charley happened to have the perfect two suits to completely match the color palettes I was working with. We started with any shots we could outside, and then the rain fell just in time to fog the car windows for our interior shots. I most definitely had to stand in the rain and cover my gear to protect it all from the elements, but it was so worth it to make these images. We talked about photography, working hard, tour, and life. It was nothing short of a wonderful start to a new friendship. Charley is such a world-class person and artist, and it was such a pleasure to finally befriend him and photograph him for this piece. — Laura Partain
Charley pictured in a custom Fort Lonesome suit, vintage Stetson Rancher hat, vintage bolo, and ’70s era Champion boots.
Details of custom Fort Lonesome suit and custom CC ring by Scott James Jewelry.
Charley pictured wearing a Rockmount custom suit from Pioneer House in Knoxville, TN, ’60s Texas Imperials cowboy boots, vintage Stetson Rancher hat, and his 1930s Le Domino parlor guitar.
Detail of the Rockmount suit, chain stitching by Union Western Clothing. A custom belt by Vincent Neil Emerson, CC ring by Scott James Jewelry, and a vintage ancient falcon necklace from Dolly Python.
Vintage ancient falcon necklace from Dolly Python, CC ring by Scott James Jewelry.
Charley wearing the Rockmount custom suit, ’60s Texas Imperials cowboy boots, and vintage Stetson Rancher hat with his 1930s Le Domino parlor guitar.
The SteelDrivers’ new lead singer, Kelvin Damrell, already grasps the driving force behind the band, which is marking its 12th year with a brand new album, Bad For You.
“You couldn’t play our songs if you weren’t passionate about what you were doing,” the Berea, Kentucky, native believes. “It wouldn’t sound right at all, in any position in the band. From the mid-range harmony part to the hardest-playing guitar riffs, to the hardest-playing fiddle, it wouldn’t sound nearly as good as it does if you didn’t love what you were doing, and playing with as much passion as you could.”
On Bad For You, Damrell steps into a role once filled by Gary Nichols and Chris Stapleton for the group’s first album since winning a Grammy with 2015’s The Muscle Shoals Recordings. All five of the SteelDrivers — Richard Bailey, Damrell, Mike Fleming, Tammy Rogers (whose daughter discovered Damrell on YouTube), and Brent Truitt — invited BGS over for a chat.
Kelvin, how long had you been in the band by the time you went into the studio?
Kelvin: Goodness, how long has it been now? I joined in October 2017. I was just so looking forward to the release date of the album that I’d forgotten when we went in.
Mike: He had to go to boot camp first. [Laughs] Bluegrass boot camp! We had to take him out of Kentucky. He had his first airplane flight. You saw the ocean for the first time, right? You left a lot of things laying around. [All laugh] You went through airports with knives when you shouldn’t have. But listen, it was good! We all got comfortable with each other, and we needed some time just to feel that, and it got to that point.
Kelvin: When I joined the band, I was really unsure about what was going on, about my position. I had made the cut as far as getting to be in the band, but Brent kept telling me we needed a couple of months to see how we jibe together. I thought that was just him saying that, but it was the truth. We switched vehicles pretty regularly and I rode with different people. We really saw how we jibed together before we made a full decision on whether we were going to keep me, or if I was going to go back to sweeping chimneys.
The song “Bad For You” has such a cool groove. You sent it out as your first single and you named the album after it. What is it about that song that is special to you?
Brent: To me it was the perfect fit for this band. It was the song that hit me right out of the chute. It encapsulates the sound. It’s really edgy, and we’re a little bit on the edgy side of bluegrass.
Mike: It was one of the strongest songs, as far as that kind of feel. It’s like a “Here we are!” kind of song. You know, “Look out!” The way Kelvin sang it, Tammy told him, “Sing it like a rock ‘n’ roll singer.”
Kelvin: I almost got emotional when we played it for the very first time. I really did, that’s the truth. The first night we debuted it, after we hit that last big note, I almost did get a little emotional because it’s like something is finally coming to fruition with my position in the band. I’d done all this other stuff that vocally belonged to Gary and vocally belonged to Chris, and now this one vocally belongs with me at the lead. And man, that three-part harmony! Everything about it was good, and it really did make me emotional.
I’m glad you mentioned harmony because that’s a really important component of this band that doesn’t get talked about enough — how well you can stack those voices.
Tammy: Thank you. But you’re exactly right, I think that’s always been a really strong facet of the band. It’s this rock ‘n’ roll lead singer with this really strong three-part harmony coming in on the chorus. From a writer’s perspective on this album, I thought about that a lot, and how that was still a big part of the sound, and to keep that consistent because I think that does set us apart.
Brent: In our live set, I’m thinking of one or two songs that end with the vocal trio by itself, doing the swell and bending into a note, and the crowd loves it every time. It’s a big part of bluegrass, period, but it’s a big part of our music too.
Brent, how would you describe the SteelDrivers’ sound?
Brent: For me, personally? It’s gritty, grind-y bluegrass. With a lot of soul.
Tammy: Think about the Rolling Stones if they were to play with bluegrass instruments. That’s us.
Mike: With a blues/rock ‘n’ roll singer. … It’s intense! I’m tired after our set. It’s a workout. We keep the emotion and the intensity going quite a bit, but we let up occasionally and do a nice song.
On this record, you do have that slower moment on “I Choose You,” which brings out another side of the band.
Tammy: Yeah, we’ve always had a song or two like that. On the first record, “Heaven Sent” has always been one of our most-requested and popular songs, and it has that great, easy, rolling feel to it. We call it the hippie dance. And when Thomm Jutz and I wrote “I Choose You,” that was definitely musically where I wanted to go with that, to have that feel to it. But it’s still a very serious lyric, even though it has a positive message, in a way. It has a lot of depth and meaning to it.
Richard, do you have a favorite track on this album?
Richard: Umm… “Forgive.”
What do you like about that one?
Richard: I like what I played on it. [All laugh]
Tammy: See, it’s all about the banjo! We joke about it but people love the banjo!
Mike: It’s got a great groove.
Brent: It’s one of my favorite songs too.
Kelvin: It’s funky. It’s like “Bad For You” is rock ‘n’ roll and “Forgive” is funky!
Kelvin, what were you listening to about three years ago, before joining the band?
Kelvin: Three years ago I was on a really big Cinderella kick. [All laugh] I’m still on the kick. I still listen to mainly rock ‘n’ roll when it’s just me in my truck, driving for hours on end.
Did the band prepare you for the honesty of bluegrass fans, and how they’ll tell you what they think?
Kelvin: I was ready for it before I started! I knew how much of a following they had. I know how much people loved Gary. I know how much people loved Chris. And I was ready for it – I prepared myself for people saying, “This guy sucks. You need to get somebody else.” [I’ve heard that] twice, I think, the whole time I’ve been with the band. It’s been great — because I was expecting it at every show!
Tammy, do you have young women coming up and telling how cool it is to see a woman on stage?
Tammy: Yeah, it’s really awesome and I appreciate it a lot. Because when I was growing up there were very few women playing, and the ones that did were usually bass players. Mama might be back there thumping on the bass or whatever. There were very few women role models for me, of that generation. There were a couple — I remember Lynn Morris was playing and Laurie Lewis was playing a few years ahead of me in those circles. Not many in the country world. I was a huge Mother Maybelle fan and part of that was because she played the guitar. That was fascinating for me as a kid.
And now in the generation after me, there’s just unbelievably talented women – not just singers, but instrumentalists. It’s phenomenal, the jump from mine and Alison Brown’s ages, to Sierra Hull, who is a genius on the mandolin, and Kimber Ludiker and all the Della Mae girls we love, and Molly Tuttle is absolutely slaying it on guitar. Sara Watkins, I’m With Her, Sarah Jarosz … it’s just on and on and on. If I in any way influenced any of those players, I am deeply honored.
What would you want bluegrass fans to know about this new record?
Tammy: We’re excited this year to get out and we’ll be playing a lot of different kinds of venues. We don’t play that many traditional bluegrass festivals anymore, but it’s my hope that people hear the music and still see the thread that’s in there. The subject matter that we choose to sing about is not as cleaned up as some other stuff, but to me it’s just another facet of the music, and I think we’re hopefully carrying it forward and carrying a torch.
In Their Words: “In 2012, I was in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, doing a tintype photo session with photographer Bill Steber. Knowing that I was in the area for a few days, Bill recommended that I try one of the best-known regional dishes, hot chicken. After the session, I made my way over to the strip mall in East Nashville, Tennessee, where Prince’s Hot Chicken, the original restaurant, was located. I was fortunate to have my friend Bill prepare me for what I was about to encounter with this amazing dish. He explained that it would take me on a mystical journey if I ordered the extra hot. So, I decided to indulge in the medium-hot flavor and I was instantly inspired to write this song.
“This hokum song is reminiscent of the 1930s era of music that was developed by songsters like Thomas A. Dorsey, Tampa Red, Bo Carter, and Papa Charlie Jackson. Songs like these use small lyrical vignettes to frame a chorus that has a free changing meaning throughout each verse. The vignettes I’ve created incorporate a lot of animal imagery and parables, which is a strong part of early African American music and folktales. This version from What Got Over (a 2015 EP released for Record Store Day) features my vocals and harmonica accompanied by a muscular guitar vibe from Guy Davis. Here’s something I shared in my podcast about the song in a special bonus episode of American Songster Radio.” — Dom Flemons, The American Songster
When Canadian songwriter William Prince cites his influences, there’s one that is particularly surprising: The Mighty Ducks, a feel-good hockey film from 1992. In one pivotal scene, the kids on the down-and-out team get all-new equipment — a cinematic turn of events that Prince has never forgotten from his childhood.
“It moves you in an interesting way. I’ve always gone back to that,” Prince says during a conversation over coffee in Nashville. “That’s one of the first feelings of joy for another that I remember taking on as a young person. Like, ‘Oh, man! That’s great for the disenfranchised hockey team to get that!’ I was a hockey player and loved it – I knew that feeling, I shared that. And from then on, it was about creating similar encounters with people. That’s what these songs are.”
Raised in the community of Peguis First Nation, Prince grew up listening to Kris Kristofferson and Johnny Cash, as well as the gospel records his father recorded independently. For years Prince barely skated by with an unwavering dream to make it as a performing songwriter. By the end of 2015, he’d released the album, Earthly Days, which led to a Juno Award for Contemporary Roots Album of the Year in 2017, and ultimately the opportunity for an American reissue in 2018 with a new track, “Breathless.”
Five years after Earthly Days, he’s currently in a good spot after grieving the death of his father, getting over a breakup with the mother of his young son, and settling into a stable life in Winnipeg. A keen sense of maturity and perspective informs his newest album, Reliever, but the overwhelming emotion in lead single, “The Spark,” is quite simply love — a reflection of his new relationship and a still-burning passion for making a connection through his music.
BGS: It seems to me that you are writing from a lot of your personal experience throughout Reliever. How much of your own life is in these songs?
WP: Ah, it’s everything. I say it’s just a presentation of different thoughts while going through a plethora of things. Change, transition, all of this. The ever-changing landscape of this adventure we’re on now, making music all the time.
What was that transition like, from wanting to be a musician to now being a musician?
I think I was always a musician, always an artist. People tend to make it become about the album itself: “If I just had a record, I would sell CDs and be an artist.” Or, “If I just had more shows, I would be a musician and artist.” The thing I’ve learned now is that it’s all the time off of the stage. It’s all the time working on the stuff, building it, and the moments in between those short 45 to 90 minutes on the stage. That becomes the smallest part of the whole artist/musician illusion. You are living it all the time. That’s the thing — you will become what you put your greatest effort into. Just writing songs and wanting it that much, you eventually end up with what you dream about.
What took up the most time for you, do you think?
I was going to university for a lot of years, trying to find a path into medicine. I took my entrance exam for college and didn’t get in for the first round of the med school applications. I ended up working on the radio as a morning host on an Indigenous radio station that runs across the country. I was kind of staying alive while working on the songs. I was still finding my voice and how I wanted to build the songs, in a way. It’s all the time spent building. I knew there was going to be one chance for one good first impression, so it was important for me to collect the right things. I’m glad now that it didn’t work out back then. I don’t think the record I made at 20 would have been the record I made at 29.
I’m curious about your First Nations background because I’d think it would give you a different perspective than other songwriters. How has that shaped your musical approach, do you think?
I grew up on a reserve where the conditions are as bad, and sometimes worse – and sometimes better – than what you hear the conditions are for First Nations people in Canada. I was always just singing songs about my family, you know? I never really considered our heritage, in a way. These are songs about loved ones, and that transcends everything – who we are as a family, who we are as a people.
Things can be pretty rough in this living situation, like a house without running water or going to shower at your brother’s, or borrowing jackets because we just couldn’t afford certain things sometimes. When that [burden] is taken off your shoulders, like worrying about how to pay for the place you’re living in, to having groceries and an abundance of things now, it’s been the greatest perspective [going from] the quiet reserve life, to living a life that’s prosperous and doing something you love every day. So that influence and perspective is what it’s given me, for all things.
I don’t have kids, but the songs where you reference your son are very touching. How old is he?
He’s three and a half, and that’s a delicate line to walk. You can get “aw shucks” and then it doesn’t resonate with people who don’t have children. For you to say that is an affirmation of a job done in a direction that I hoped for. You don’t have to have children, but you can see that [the character in the song] takes really good care of what he cares about. That’s the message that I was trying to get across.
And the lessons that you want him to learn are the lessons that you would want your friends to learn, too.
Yeah. A manual for being the kind of person that I’m trying to exit this world as — good and caring and thoughtful and empathetic and conscious of all things around you. People are quite fascinating to observe. That will never go out of style. That will never change in season. There will always be people living life and experiencing great things, and going through things. I understand that’s general, but I get asked this more and more: Where does it come from? What is this thing I’m doing? I’m trying to quantify it for people in a more satisfying way, but the truth is, I’m breathing every moment of it, all the time. Everything is a collection, planting and harvesting, I’d say.
I hadn’t realized that your dad made some records, too.
Yeah. I traveled with him when I was 13 to 17, setting up the amps and we sang songs at all the funerals and wake services, all those traditional hymns. Which is essentially Hank Williams music — it comes from that kind of place. So having that in the center taught me basic structure. Somebody once said there was antiquity within my songs, which is a cool feeling, like you appreciate an old kettle that’s lasted 60 years. That frame for songs is in my life because of that gospel music.
Did all of these songs come to you over the last four years?
Funny enough, after writing through a number of things like grieving my dad passing, and a separation from my partner, and being a new dad and feeling that joy, and finding validity and success in this music thing that I’ve been trying for some time. So, all that is a wild blend to be taking in. I did my best to work through those things. I was writing in real time for a long time and those songs, as they aged, became reflective. They would blend with the songs I was writing in a period where I was past the grief and hurting a little more.
“The Spark” is one of the first half-dozen six songs I’ve ever written in my life. I kept it away because it used to be six minutes long and had this whole other side to it. I got a little nervous coming down to work on this next record with Dave, like, “I don’t know if I have any real love songs like ‘Breathless.’” I wanted something like that to share, and I thought of ‘The Spark.’ I quickly gave it a bit of a haircut and brought it in. Dave made his suggestion to save one lyric for the final line — “You’re the flame, the fire, and most of all you’re the spark.” And we had a song. Funny, too, how things start with a spark. Let’s get it going, now that people are looking. Let’s make it count.
The Wood Brothers have been together as long as they were apart. For fifteen years or so Chris and Oliver Wood pursued separate careers — Oliver out of Atlanta as a blues/rock guitarist and singer, and Chris out of New York as the bass player with the uncanny jazz/jam success story Medeski, Martin & Wood. Then they sat in together and felt a pull energized by family ties and musical curiosity, and their folk duo was born, about fifteen years ago.
Chris jokes that over seven studio albums and uncountable miles on the road, they’ve been on “a slow rise to the middle” but that’s far too self-deprecating. Their last opus, 2018’s One Drop of Truth, was nominated for a Grammy, and not long after it was released the band headlined the Ryman Auditorium and Red Rocks Amphitheatre (their hometown shrine, as they grew up in Boulder, Colorado). In September, they released their fourth live album, culling songs from a two-night stand at the Fillmore in San Francisco, where their highly developed musical telepathy — between the brothers and with drummer/keyboard player Jano Rix — was on vibrant display in a warm sonic atmosphere.
Newly minted is Kingdom In My Mind, an 11-song collection inspired largely by the feel of a new studio. The band and their sound engineer Brook Sutton had to move out of the old church-like studio where they’d made One Drop of Truth, but they found a new place nearby on Nashville’s west side. The brothers spoke to BGS about how that new destination shaped the sound of their latest project.
BGS: I understand that shaking down your new recording space produced proved unexpectedly productive?
Oliver: In our downtime we’ve always had some sort of rehearsal space, whether it was Chris’s basement or something, where we would just improvise and come up with musical ideas. I think all of us enjoy the art of improvising and playing music without thought and without purpose. We’re not trying to write a song. We’re not trying to sound good even. We’re just trying to play something new. Chris and I will react off each other, or off Jano, and do that musical communication that can happen if you just listen. We’ve always done that. And we’ve always recorded it on a phone or on a laptop just to remember. Whereas this time we set up and did the same process but we had a professional studio and an engineer miking everything up so it was usable.
Chris: Yeah, we didn’t know what we were doing. We didn’t know this was going to be the beginning of a record. We’d got a studio and put a lot of work into getting it up and running and sounding how we wanted it with baffles and things like that. But then it was, well, this is a huge room. Where do you set up? Where do you put the drums? Let’s put them over here. Let’s see what that sounds like. And we set up near each other and threw some mics up intuitively. I think we were struck immediately as soon as we heard playback. Even with that haphazard setup, it sounded great. Something about the room made us play a certain way. It felt magical and inspired. So immediately we looked at each other and said, “Maybe this is how we make this record.” So we did maybe five sessions where we set up and improvised in different parts of the studio. There’s a big A room, which you could almost fit an orchestra, and then a smaller, dryer room. So we had fun with all kinds of different variations.
Can you give us a visual and the background of the place and why it became home?
Chris: It’s an old print shop. So what we call the B room is smaller. It’s probably where people came in and got stuff photocopied.
Oliver: And then the back room — after it was a print shop and before we got it — was a dance studio with a dance floor and high ceilings. It was probably a warehouse at some point. This is not a fancy building. It’s cinder block.
So you had to look at this print shop/warehouse/dance studio and imagine a plan?
Chris: It was easy, and it had to do with the layout. It was very clear immediately. The control room goes here. From that room you have access to both tracking rooms. There’s even a lounge. There’s a room with a loading dock that can also be an isolation room. And it’s all in a circular layout. Everything about it was easy to imagine how we could be up and running quickly once we got our stuff in there.
Oliver: It was luck. And it was cheaper than we expected. But I’ll add to that process that Chris was talking about. The improvising we like so much, almost never can you use that stuff on an album. Normally you perform songs to make albums. So Chris got really good at editing these improvs. These are just jams, maybe in the key of A for 20 minutes. Maybe we switch chords every once in a while. Maybe we don’t. But Chris started chopping them up (in audio software). And we realized that we could arrange these improvisations.
And the beautiful thing — which usually gets lost — is your first impression of things. Like when you’re inspired. You play something, and you’ll never do it again. But we actually captured those moments and were able to use them on the album. And so the things that all of us love about albums are these anomalies, little mistakes or weird things that bleed together — things that if you were thinking about a song you’d never have played. To us, that had a freshness that Chris was able to chop up, and we were able to write lyrics over these new collage-y things.
Chris: Like Sly Stone said, there’s a rhythm when you don’t know what you’re doing. And we really take that to heart. I think that’s why a lot of musicians who have been doing this a long time really cherish first takes. Because before all the musicians really know the song, they’ll play things that they’d never play once they really know the song. For a lot of us, I mean for me certainly, it’s always a red flag when we do a take and I feel like I really nailed (it). It’s almost a guarantee that that’s not the take. Not the good one. The good one was the one before, when I was searching and didn’t quite know what was happening next.
Oliver: Discomfort is good.
Chris: A little bit, yeah. You don’t want to know too much.
Right out of the box on “Alabaster” there’s this over-driven sound like a Rhodes piano and I wonder if maybe that was just an accident that worked?
Oliver: Absolutely. That was recorded the first day we set up. Jano was playing drums and keyboard at the same time. He had this keyboard rig with a crappy little amplifier and it just sounded like that. And again, we weren’t thinking about a song at all. We were all in one room in a circle, and it just happened to be cool.
Chris: We were thinking sounds more than anything. Oliver had this great Stella guitar that he recently got set up. I’m sure Jano played that sound on purpose because he liked it. It was very intuitive and in the moment. So he didn’t have to worry if it was fitting a song or not. He just liked the sound. That’s kind of what we were going for.
You both come from improvised music backgrounds, one jazz and one blues-based. When I heard these tracks, I felt like the Medeski, Martin & Wood approach and the Wood Brothers approach have never been closer. Also, Jano plays with even more freedom. This feels like a jazz record in many ways.
Chris: I absolutely agree. This is the most meshed those worlds have ever been. It was definitely a long-term goal to get to this point. Little by little, not only integrating the MMW background with the songwriting, but also, just as you said, Jano is such a talent and can do so many things. Great drummer. Amazing keyboard player, percussionist. Great singer and producer. So to integrate all of his talents into what we were doing as a duo took some time, you know?
I think that’s why it works. When you improvise, all your knowledge, all the music that’s inside you, can come out. It’s not restricted by a song that’s been written already. Jano’s drumming and all of our playing is featured more because we were improvising to create the source material for the songs and were able to keep that. In the past I loved all the songs, but there’s a lot more that we can do. Improvising is a way to showcase that.
Oliver: It does inform how you play live too. We learned that you don’t always have to be right on the money. It’s fun to pretend like you’re in a punk band for a minute or something and kind of let loose and try something different.
Here it is about 15 years into this journey. Maybe it’s been an even bigger force in your lives than you thought. What have you learned, as musicians and family?
Oliver: I bet we take it for granted doing it all the time and being busy with it, but certainly in the last 15 years I feel like Chris and I were slightly estranged in that we were living in different places and playing with different people. We had sort of lost touch. So initially, yeah, the music brought us back together and we were able to combine our shared interests and experiences. That was awesome, and it was how we reconnected as brothers. And it’s nice to have a family business, especially a creative one, where we get to do that together and make a living too.
Chris: Yeah, people usually frame the beginning of this band as if it must have been a casual side project. But I never thought about it that way. It was exciting from the beginning. And for both of us, in different ways, coming full circle. We grew up with our dad playing music live around the house, you know, folk songs. Playing and singing. And that was, we realized, a huge influence.
I always liked singing when I was younger and ended up in Medeski, Martin & Wood, an instrumental band, for 20 years. I hadn’t been singing, so it was scary, but it was something I was really excited about getting into again. And just the way we write songs and composing with my brother is really fun and different. Whereas MMW was, as you said, a lot of improvisation, I also like writing. It was nice to get into that too.
Pulling back, MMW was a band that took real jazz to the jam band audience. And I feel like there are bands that hover between the world of the jam audience, which loves freedom and surprise, and the songwriter audience, which focuses more on the lyrical emotion. And maybe those bands never quite get totally accepted by either camp. How have you all mapped that?
Oliver: That’s well put, and I think we ride that fence, and enjoy it for the most part. It’s a nice balance. Personally I like to hear somewhere in the middle. I like to hear a good song, but I also like to hear some musical interplay. I think a balance of those things is really cool.
Chris: Yeah, one of the things that can be amazing about music is when there’s some mystery. You don’t quite understand what’s happening up there but it still is engaging. And how do you do that? There’s no formula. Nobody knows. Which is why we never get tired of this job. You know, you can’t figure it out. You stumble upon it sometimes, but it’s not always obvious how you get to that magical balance between the two.
Oliver: It’s always a fun challenge for us to take a good simple song but set it apart and give it its own sound. So use a weirder guitar. Use a broken thing. But make it something you haven’t done before and you haven’t heard somebody else do before. That’s kind of what we’re always doing.
We talk about this all the time. Sometimes we’ll write a song and use just cowboy chords and write it like a country song. Then [we’ll] mess up the music completely and make it our own thing somehow. So it’s a combination of all this classic stuff we love. And then, how can we make a new classic?
Craig Havighurst is host of The String from WMOT Roots Radio in Nashville and a longtime journalist covering roots music.
Turns out there are drawbacks to any career – even when it’s your dream job – and you can confirm that with dark-folk favorite John Moreland.
After winning widespread acclaim on the strength of his devastatingly direct songcraft, often by casting an unflinching eye toward himself, it’s a truth the prolific writer and soul-mining vocalist has been forced to accept in recent years. Almost a decade into his solo career, rising expectations and a grueling tour schedule weighed so heavily on him Moreland even admits he “fell out of love with music” for a while. But the Oklahoma talent has fought his way back with his fifth solo album, LP5.
“It’s just that when you go from music being your passion and your hobby … to the point where it’s your job now, there’s an adjustment period where you have to figure out, ‘How do I do this?’” Moreland explains. “So I think that’s what the past five or six or years have been for me.”
Moreland feels like he finally has some of it figured out now — or at least is on the right path. He accomplished that partially by exploring new sonic territory with the help of producer Matt Pence (the first time he’s entrusted someone else with his songs), and also through hard-won personal growth, eventually deciding to treat himself a little better. Building off that foundation with tasteful drums, quirky synth embellishments, and whirring beds of B3 organ, what emerged on LP5 preserves the thought-provoking beauty of his stark songwriting, but adds a layer of intrigue … and perhaps, hope.
BGS: Music is such an outlet for you. How much did it bother you that you basically didn’t enjoy it anymore?
Moreland: Well, it was definitely a bummer. Writing music has always been the way I express myself, but it started to become harder and harder to do. It was like, if it’s just me sitting down with an acoustic guitar, there’s only so much I can do before it starts to feel like “OK, I’ve written this song 10 times already.” So it took messing around with some other instruments to get the creativity flowing again.
Did that feeling creep up on you, or come all at once?
I think it kind of crept up gradually. It just got more and more difficult to write and be creative, and then all of a sudden one day it was like, “Wow, I hate everything I’m coming up with.” I just needed a new context to see it in.
For LP5, you ultimately teamed up with a producer for the first time, and the textures and layers you and Matt Pence created are really interesting, but they don’t overwhelm the songs. What was the approach going in?
When I was writing the songs, like I said it got to the point where I needed to mess around with some other instruments in order to give the acoustic guitar and my voice a new context to live in. I was messing around with different drum machines and samplers, different pedals, getting different sounds at home, and that’s how we did the demos. … [Then in the studio] it was all pretty intuitive. We didn’t really talk about anything. We recorded the basic tracks like guitar, bass and drums together, and then we had a few days where me and Matt and John Calvin went crazy on overdubs. It was just flying by the seat of our pants, like “You wanna play synth on this song?” Or “You wanna put the Wurlitzer on this?”
Have you always played a lot of different instruments? If so, why haven’t we heard it in your previous work?
I actually started making hip-hop music when I was a teenager, so I’ve always done that as a secondary creative outlet. Then I stopped doing it for a few years when I started touring more and was busier with my career, and I got back into it when I needed that extra creative outlet. In the past, there were times I thought I’d like to incorporate it into what I was doing with my songwriting stuff, but maybe I wasn’t sure how to do it yet. I think because I feel a lot more comfortable with myself now I’m more open to whatever. If I like it, then it’s good enough to go on the song.
Is any of that hip-hop stuff out there?
No, not really. It’s just kinda my little home-studio hobby that I do.
I’d love to hear what kind of flow you’ve got, John.
[Laughs] Well, I’ve never actually rapped. I just make beats.
You say you’re feeling more comfortable with yourself, and I know these songs were written during a time when you were trying to be kinder to yourself. What does that look like in your everyday life?
I think it’s just in your thoughts and how you see yourself. I think there’s ways that we’re taught to be cruel to ourselves when we’re kids, and we just do it and think it’s normal. So I feel like I’ve been gaining more of an awareness of that and being able to catch it when I’m doing it, just being more careful and more mindful of how I talk to myself in my head. So it’s not like a big, visible change in my life I guess, but privately I’m in a better headspace because of it.
In “A Thought’s Just a Passing Train,” the central line begins with “I had a thought about darkness.” What were you going through at the time?
That just goes back to being kind to yourself and how it’s all in your thoughts and the way you talk to yourself. I think we place a lot of importance on our thoughts, but they’re not necessarily that important – they’re always just kind of coming and going. I wanted to try to talk about that.
I love the idea of a train as a metaphor for this, since that’s such a part of the country and folk canon. But you’re using it in a very modern setting.
Yeah, thanks. It’s funny, I don’t know if would feel comfortable doing a train-type song unless it was kind of a weird one, you know? [Laughs] I think it would feel a little too traditional to me otherwise.
“I’m Learning How to Tell Myself the Truth” is another interesting one, because to me, your songs have always been about exploring the truth around you. But maybe that’s different than telling yourself the truth?
You know, I think songwriting has always been my attempt to tell myself the truth — or to uncover the truth. So I guess I meant it in more of a personal, everyday life kind of a way. Like, I want to see things the way they are and not delude myself.
Are you getting better at that?
Yeah, I think so, and I think that’s another thing that comes with age and maturity. Hopefully you begin to see things as they are more, and not let things be as colored by your emotions.
The album ends with “Let Me Be Understood,” and that seems important. Why was that the way you chose to go out?
That’s a song that when I wrote it, it just felt like, “Yeah, that should be the last song.” And again, kind of like “Learning How to Tell Myself the Truth,” I think “Let Me Be Understood” is just what the impulse to do this is for me. I just want to understand myself and I want to be understood in the larger context.
To that end, I think this album is at least asking the right questions.
Thank you, that’s all I want to do.
It seems like you’ve learned something about life over these five albums …
Maybe. [Laughs] I don’t know what it is, but maybe I have.
What do you want listeners to get out of this project?
Whatever they can take from it is fine with me. I think I made it because it made me feel good, so I hope it can make somebody else feel good in whatever way they need.
Photos: Crackerfarm
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