Crossroads Label Group Sets a New Benchmark With Dolby Atmos

Like a lot of bluegrass musicians, Infamous Stringdusters fiddler Jeremy Garrett had never given much thought to “spatial audio.” He already had a good professional setup for home recording and playback in conventional stereo, and that seemed like more than enough. Getting into the next generation of three-dimensional sound, highly touted though it is, just didn’t seem important.

All that changed, however, as soon as Garrett actually heard his own music in Dolby Atmos, Dolby Laboratories’ surround-sound mixing process. It happened at the North Carolina headquarters of Crossroads Label Group, where Garrett records as a solo act. It just took one demonstration for him to come away a believer.

“It blew my mind,” he says. “Seriously. You can try to explain it ‘til the cows come home. But until you experience it, you won’t understand just how eye-opening it is. Stereo can give you a pseudo-in-the-room feel. But Dolby Atmos is like really being in the room, where you hear everything in depth and full spectrum from low to middle to high range. Even listening on a phone, you could tell the difference.”

This next iteration of surround sound is quickly becoming the sonic standard for the record industry’s high-rent district, with most major-label releases coming out in the format. But it’s also the new benchmark for Crossroads and its labels, Mountain Home and Organic, which is taking a far more proactive approach to high fidelity than most roots labels. Crossroads has been evangelizing about Dolby Atmos for the past year and making moves to put out all its new music in surround sound.

 

 

Of course, doing this takes major investments in terms of both hardware and time. Crossroads has gone so far as to build its own studio facility in California to do Dolby Atmos mixes and stay in control of the process. Company management is firmly convinced that this will be essential to survive, with Crossroads co-founder Mickey Gamble touting it as the future of the record industry – especially online, where the vast majority of business takes place now.

“Every single reproductive method before this, from wax cylinders to vinyl and up through the chain including compact discs, has had flaws,” says Gamble. “This doesn’t, which is why it’s important for us to be there. We still sell a little bit of physical product, but that’s mostly by artists at the table at their show. The business is drastically different now, and everything we do is aimed at increasing an artist’s streaming profile. This is just another piece of that. The time is not too far off where, if you want to have a streaming profile, it will have to be with Dolby Atmos because the technology is taking over the music business. If you can’t or won’t do it, you won’t be in the business.”

This kind of high-end immersive surround sound has long been the standard in movie theaters, but it’s only recently emerged for listening to music. Major streaming services including Apple, Amazon and TIDAL all use variations of three-dimensional surround sound — although Spotify and YouTube remain two notable stereo-only holdouts (and for that reason, Mountain Home continues to do conventional stereo mixes of its music alongside the Dolby Atmos versions).

Nevertheless, the overall trend is running toward universal adoption of three-dimensional surround sound for music, and major labels have been busily upgrading their catalogs. Among the albums that Gamble routinely plays for visitors to show off Dolby Atmos sound are Queen’s 1980 album The Game (“which I swear will take your head off,” he says) and the 1959 Miles Davis masterpiece Kind of Blue.

 

 

One metric to track surround sound’s rapid growth is the number of studios set up to mix in Dolby Atmos. There were just 30 Dolby Atmos-capable studios in the spring of 2020, but that figure has gone up to around 600 in 2022, according to Billboard. On the consumer’s end, there are also more and more playback devices for surround sound on the market, including car-stereo systems.

“The business aspect of it is huge and growing really fast, which is why we feel like we need to be in it,” says Gamble. “Personally, I’ve been listening to almost nothing but Dolby Atmos for the last year and a half – classical, jazz, rock, bluegrass, everything. And if I go back and try to listen to something in regular stereo now, it sounds dull and uninteresting. The difference is just that powerful. Without exception, every artist we’ve brought in to hear it has come out saying, ‘I want this for me.’”

To that end, Crossroads started by releasing immersive-audio mixes of its top songs of 2022, from artists such as Balsam Range, Tray Wellington, The Grascals, Lonesome River Band, Sister Sadie, and Sideline.

Surround sound is not the record industry’s first new technology to be touted as a major sonic revolution, going back to four-channel quadraphonic sound in the 1970s. But where quadraphonic failed to catch on because it required listeners to shell out for new hardware, Dolby Atmos doesn’t require an equipment upgrade to get improved fidelity (although the effect is more impressive on modern playback devices).

 

 

“The amount of immersion you get changes depending on the device,” says Crossroads Music chief engineer Scott Barnett. “But the immersive experience will scale to the system you’re listening on, automatically and in real time, whether it’s in your living room with 13 surround-sound speakers or on an iPhone through earbuds. The sound is object-based rather than channel-based – not just left or right but with a three-dimensional field. Dolby Atmos can present an enhanced experience without sacrificing any tone or dynamics.”

Another improvement that Gamble cites is that surround sound does away with the sonic compression of stereo sound, which limits the tones you can hear, and that improvement applies to any listening device. Indeed, Garrett has been demonstrating the dramatic differences of surround sound to friends using mobile phones – dialing up his song “River Wild” on Spotify stereo on one phone, and then in immersive audio on Apple Music on another. Even when heard on small phone speakers, there’s an audible difference.

“There’s a curve to go along with this, of course,” says Garrett. “It’s an extra process, and it takes quite a bit to get an entire record mixed for surround sound. But if it’s at all possible, I want every single song of mine to be in Dolby Atmos from now on because there’s no comparison. The experience is over the top, nothing else comes close.”

If Gamble has his way, that will be possible to do.

“I’ve always believed that presenting music with clarity will have an influence on listeners’ attachment,” Gamble says. “That’s true for the casual listener as well as the audiophile. What makes it dramatic are the placements in space, and the harmonics you can hear because there’s no compression. It helps music sound the same way it does if you’re standing right in front of the people playing it.”

With a Fighting Spirit, Town Mountain Branches Out on ‘Lines in the Levee’

With its latest album, Lines in the Levee, Town Mountain has justified itself as one of the most interesting and promising acts in an ever-evolving musical landscape, with the quintet purposely blurring the lines between the Americana, bluegrass, folk, and indie scenes.

Known for its raucous live antics and “good time Charlie” attitude, the Asheville, North Carolina, group is a juggernaut of raw power and boundless energy onstage and in the studio — something that’s remained at Town Mountain’s core since its inception in 2005 atop a ridge of the same name in the city of its birth.

Lines in the Levee also symbolizes a milestone for Town Mountain as its debut release for famed Nashville label New West Records. For an entity that’s remained fiercely independent amid a longtime DIY mentality — whether artistically, sonically, or in its business dealings — the signing to New West breaks the band into the mainstream arena of possibility, nationally and internationally.

While navigating an industry that tries to pinpoint just what direction a band will go in next, Town Mountain charges ahead, come hell or high water. Recorded at Ronnie’s Place studio in Nashville, the album is a snapshot of where we stand as an American society, in sickness and in health, and each selection puts a mirror up to the face of the listener. Ultimately the project poses several urgent questions, the most important of which being — where to from here?

BGS: Lately, Town Mountain is really starting to crack into this different, unknown, and exciting level for the band. From your perspective, what do you see?

Phil Barker (mandolin): This is an evolutionary period for us, where we’re kind of moving into a new realm of soundscapes, this new sound for the band. It’s just a new place for us in the world of Americana or whatever you want to call it. It’s a bigger sound and bigger expression of who we are as artists and what we are as musicians.

I feel like Lines in the Levee might be the most true-to-form album of where the band is, and what it actually is tonally.

PB: Yeah, I think you’re spot on with that. You know, maybe in the past we tried to fit our songs into a formula, or a little more of a formula, given our instruments. But now we’ve let our instruments not define our genre, even though that’s still our voice and still what we speak with. We’re using bluegrass instruments, but in our own way, and trying to make our own sound. That’s really been the focus of ours since the beginning of writing our own material and doing original music. [Lines in the Levee] is just a further example of us trying to come up with a sound that’s our own, and hoping people enjoy it.

Jesse Langlais (banjo): Bands are built around a sound, so that kind of almost makes it what it’s going to be. We’re a democratic band, and sometimes nothing gets done because of it. But everyone has an equal say. You know, there’s the three of us (Barker, Langlais, and guitarist Robert Greer) that are the “business owners of Town Mountain,” but the other guys in the band, [fiddler] Bobby [Britt] and [standup bassist] Zach [Smith], are just as equal partners as anyone else. Everybody’s voice is heard, and that’s important to have a workplace environment like that.

The last thing you want to do is to fit a song into a box of whatever you think it should be — you want to serve the song. It’s about quality songwriting.

PB: Right? And we have done that in the past, feeling like maybe we had bought into the pigeonholing of bluegrass sometimes. We’re not the first band to travel down this road of taking bluegrass instruments and doing different things with it. But it was time to branch out, as musicians and as people, and see where the road takes us.

JL: We’ve been playing bluegrass for a long time, and it’s easy to get [pigeonholed] because of the love of the music, and then you’re just kind of choosing to be pigeonholed. And that’s okay. In some genres of music, it’s about preserving the legacy of the sound and whatnot. But we know for things to progress for Town Mountain, we’ve got to keep it fresh for ourselves, fresh for our fans, and to expand the fan base. Changing up the sound, then allowing more influences to come through in our live shows and in our albums — that’s what needs to happen.

So, how does that play into your songwriting? Especially on this album, it’s very clever songwriting — commentary on the fragility of where we are as a country, and people trying to make sense of all the noise out there.

PB: For sure. This album is the most personal record we’ve ever made. A lot of the songs are super autobiographical. We’re expanding on some social commentary, and just having the time to reflect on all that as a songwriter — if it’s on your mind that much, it’s going to come out in your writing. With [“Lines in the Levee”], that song is a reflection of the changes happening around us in society, where I wanted to capture the fighting spirit of people maybe feeling disenfranchised by everything that’s going on around them.

[During the shutdown], we had a lot of time to reflect on who we are as people, where we are as a band, where we are individually as far as a career in music or our place in the music business, the struggle we’ve been through to make a living doing this. Thinking back, I ran the gamut all the way back to when I decided to become a musician and try to do it full-time. It’s a commitment — to your art, and to priorities in life. And I feel I’ve covered a wide swath of who I am as a musician, and who we are as a band.

JL: If you go back and listen to our catalog, our recorded music, you’ll see that [social commentary] has always been splashed in there to a certain degree. We’ve always touched upon certain subjects on our albums, but it was never fully realized until now. Personally, for me as a songwriter, there were other things that I needed to say, and sometimes the thing you need to say doesn’t fit inside of a box [of an album], so you let it go. And we broke out of that box because we were always trying to still bear that flag of bluegrass music. We also felt pressured by the bluegrass community to do that, because we were trying to be part of different festivals and scenes.

But with this album, everything just clicked. It evolved, it moved into this thing that was completely a subconscious move. It feels good to not have to pander to any one audience. We can now bring whatever songs we want. It doesn’t have to be what Town Mountain expected a song to be eight years ago — and that’s liberating. I think we kind of maximized our potential within that [bluegrass] scene, which is not to say we couldn’t ever go back and be part of that scene, and maybe one day record a bluegrass album. Who knows? [Lines in the Levee] is for our loyal fan base and for the potential to bring new people in, who maybe didn’t necessarily like bluegrass music, but could get onboard with the acoustic sound.

What sticks out most about those early years starting out in Asheville and starting to tour around Southern Appalachia and beyond?

PB: Well, in the early days, there really weren’t any goals. We were just excited to get out, go across the country, see new places, meet people, and have fun playing music — that’s been the genesis of it. We feel like we were doing something exciting, let’s take it to as many people as we can. In those early days, we would be sleeping on people’s floors. We couldn’t afford to get hotels. Just some of the struggles we went through financially those first years. But we have always tried to figure it out. It’s a struggle, per se, but each year has been a little bit of progress.

What does it mean for y’all that the original core of the band — Phil, Jesse, and Robert — is still together and still “doing the thing,” to look over and they’re still right there onstage after all these years?

PB: It’s just a testament to our belief in each other. We’re all on the same page with our musical vision, and we still believe we can take this thing to new heights, to make it bigger and bring more people into the fold, to connect with more people. It’s hard to keep a band together, it’s real hard. But the fact we’ve managed to keep the core together for as long as we have is a testament to our musical friendship.


Photo Credit: Emma Delevante

LISTEN: Ashley Heath, “The Letter”

Artist: Ashley Heath
Hometown: Marshall, North Carolina
Song: “The Letter”
Album: Something to Believe
Release Date: October 21, 2022
Label: Organic Records

In Their Words: “I was listening to a lot of country and Americana songwriters when I wrote this song. This song was written about when you’ve exhausted every avenue of trying to fix a problem that even hand writing a letter and spelling it out wouldn’t change it. My favorite line is ‘If you had a heart to break, I wouldn’t know any better.’ I think that clearly sets the tone. The instrumentation has more of a Nashville country vibe to it with some big guitar swells and this one is probably also the most radio-ready song from the EP.” — Ashley Heath

Crossroads Label Group · 03 The Letter

Photo credit: Sandlin Gaither

Through the Lens of American Music, Rhiannon Giddens Tells Her Story

Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia once said that the goal was not to be the best at what you do, but the only one who does what you do. In a way, that applies to Rhiannon Giddens’ high-profile career — except what she does is pretty much everything.

It can be more than a little dizzying to try and keep up with Giddens’ far-flung doings across multiple platforms as musician, actor, songwriter, composer, activist, musicologist and more. Her work draws from a range of classical as well as folk traditions, drawing accolades including the 2016 Steve Martin Prize for Excellence in Banjo and Bluegrass, a 2017 MacArthur Foundation “Genius Grant” fellowship and a Grammy Award for Best Folk Album for They’re Calling Me Home.

2022 found Giddens touring and collaborating with various ensembles — the classically inclind Silkroad collective, the Nashville Ballet, the Black female Americana supergroup Our Native Daughters and with multi-instrumentalist Francesco Turrisi — while the Spoleto Festival debuted her first-ever opera, Omar. Somehow she also finds time to do the Aria Code podcast for the Metropolitan Opera, too.

Whew.

As for future endeavors, Giddens has multiple projects percolating, including hosting the 2023 PBS series My Music with Rhiannon Giddens. In the meantime, she hits bookshelves for the first time this fall with Build a House, the first of her four children’s books to be published by Candlewick Press.

BGS: Thanks for taking the time. Where are you calling from?

Giddens: Ireland. I’m mostly here when I’m not on the road because it’s where the kids are. It’s hard. I have them half the year, so I have to fit a year’s worth of work into the other half because the bills don’t just pay themselves. It would be different and easier if I were still with their dad, but we’re not together anymore and I’m on my own when I’m with them. So I’m a single mom, working full-time to cram all the work into as little time as I can. It’s difficult not to feel pulled in a lot of different directions, while constantly feeling jet-lagged.

I haven’t been able to have much of a balance, to be honest. I’m doing everything I can to fit three lives into one and something’s got to give because I don’t want it to affect my kids. I’ve said it many times, but I just have to start making space on my calendar. In my working life, a bunch of projects got pushed into this year because of the pandemic, which has been insane. I am fortunate to have a lot of work, because a lot of people don’t. But it’s sometimes hard to enjoy what’s happening.

Your first children’s book is coming out, Build a House, illustrated by Monica Mikai. How did that start out?

It began as lyrics, and that one was kind of always a song. Sometimes I write poems that turn into songs, but this one was always lyrics. It goes back to the pandemic, when Ireland had a hard lockdown. That was going on when the protests over George Floyd started in 2020, which was super-frustrating to watch. I was over here feeling useless and sitting at my kitchen table thinking, “Forget Covid, I’d be on the front lines in the States right now.” I was trying to explain to my children why I was crying at odd times.

At times like that, I often write about it. “Cry No More,” that one was after the Charleston church massacre. Emotions will pour out: “What the hell do you people want? You brought us over here to build your frickin’ country, now what?” That became, “You brought me here to build your house,” and it went from there. Yo-Yo Ma reached out to ask if I wanted to do something for Juneteenth, and this song was perfect for that. So I recorded and filmed my part and we put it out on Juneteenth 2020 to an amazing response. That made me feel a little better.

At what point did it go from song to book?

It was actually on Twitter, where somebody said, “Hey, this should be a kids book!” And that got me thinking, huh, yeah, cool idea. I’ve been wanting to write a book about American music history, and my book agent Laura Nolan has been patiently waiting, checking in periodically. So I asked her, “What do you think about a kids book? Here’s an idea.” We set up meetings, Candlewick Press came in with an amazing offer for four books, and this is the first. We struck a deal and they sent us a short list of illustrators — all women of color, I did not even have to ask — and I picked Monica, which was pretty much the beginning and end of it. I’ve never spoken to Monica, which is how it works with kids books. Authors and illustrators communicate through the editor without getting together, each doing their thing. Next thing I knew, I was sent a sketch of the story she got out of the song, which was amazing. I was totally blown away and might have cried a little bit. When I saw her finished work, I could not have imagined it better than this.

That seems so odd, that writers and illustrators work completely separately on kids’ books.

I actually like that it’s separate. She’s an artist and I’m an artist, too, and these are two different forms coming together. She brought her art to bear on my words, so I feel like I did what I’m supposed to do. She got it without having to talk to me, which is the point of the book. It was an amazing experience, and not so different from when I bring another musician into the band and tell them, “Do what you feel like doing, and I’ll tell you if it jibes with what I’m doing.” But I never start with saying, “Do this” – unless it’s telling a bass player, “Don’t do 2-5-1 bluegrass bass-playing in anything I do.” I hire them to bring their expertise, working with them to do their thing.

The next book will be We Could Fly, out next year, based on a song I did with Dirk Powell and illustrated by Briana Mukodiri Uchendu. And the rough draft of the third one is done, about Joe’s First Fiddle — riffing on my mentor Joe Thompson. The fourth one will be about the banjo. But I’m really excited about paying tribute to Joe this way because I’ve wanted to write this since he was alive and would tell the story about his first fiddle. What I wrote is not exactly the same as the story he’d tell, but I sent the rough draft to Justin Robinson [her fellow Carolina Chocolate Drops alumnus], and he gave it a thumbs-up.

Tell us more about the book about American music history.

It’s American music through my lens, based on all the speeches and keynotes and lectures I’ve given over the last few years. Mostly it’s about the myths of American music, like the idea of where the banjo came from. That’s the most obvious myth, that it was born in Appalachia and invented by Scotch-Irish immigrants. No they didn’t, even though they played it. The banjo came from Africa. So what are the myths, and whose intentions do they serve? It’s the idea of looking at the culture we have in America through music, the misunderstandings we have and how that hurts us as Americans by obscuring a true understanding of who we are as a country. Basically, I’m talking shit all the time, and I want to put it in book form.

You were just in Tryon, North Carolina, filming for My Music with Rhiannon Giddens at the birthplace of Nina Simone. What can we expect from your show?

It’s me taking over David Holt’s State of Music, starting next year. That filming was really special. I had not been to the Nina Simone house before and it was cool even though I’m not a thing-and-place person, you know what I mean? Maybe I’m just too cerebral in an emotional-deficit way because it seems like those experiences don’t affect me so much. But I love seeing how they affect other people. It was really joyful to see Adia (Victoria) in that space, how she was affected by it with prickles all over her back, and my sister was blown away when she visited. For me, what’s important about Nina Simone is captured in her songs and performances. The rest, I’m not sure standing in her childhood house does anything for me. I live so much in the ether, the material aspects of life don’t hit as hard for me. But that’s okay, and others feel differently.

After studying opera in college and then going on to folk music, you performed on an operatic stage for the first time in almost two decades this year – Porgy & Bess in your hometown of Greensboro, North Carolina. What’s it been like to return to opera after so long?

It had been 18 years and it’s been really interesting to log back into that and realize how much I had missed it. I loved the Chocolate Drops and everything I’ve done since then, but a lot of it was more of a calling than pure joy because of the work I do. There have been a lot of transcendental moments on stage, but I realized I’d been missing a lot. Like standing on stage and just singing, no mic, just you and the orchestra and other singers. A beautiful thing. It was nice to come back to that as a performer, writer and composer.

As an art form, opera has such power. It gets a bum rap, the way it’s been taken over by the elite as a way to differentiate. They go not because they enjoy it but because it’s what they’re supposed to do at a certain level. It’s been great to get back into the art form, engage with it as itself without expectations as a young singer or having to deal with all the European dead white guys. I’ve come into it with a totally different perspective, with this grounding I had years ago.

With everything you’ve got going on, it must be hard to find time for your biggest project of all, composing a Hamilton-esque historical musical about the 1898 massacre in Wilmington, North Carolina. What’s the status of that?

I’m in constant contact with my collaborator, John Jeremiah Sullivan, who is a slow burner himself. The New Yorker interview profile he did on me took five or six years – I went through three different managers! But he takes time because he is extraordinarily thorough, and he keeps finding important things. I keep wanting to be in that space with him, getting together and creating. I think we are close to getting the institutional support we need. I don’t like to force things. Whatever is ready to go, I try to create a space for it and so far things have worked out in a beautiful way. Another project just came onto the burner and it might get going before Wilmington, or it might not. It depends on timing and co-creators, where they are and what they’re doing. But this is an important story and we’re gonna do it.


Photo Credit: Ebru Yildiz

Basic Folk – Caleb Caudle

Caleb Caudle has lived a lot of his life on the road. His father was a truck driver and Caleb learned early on that making a living often meant long days away from home. The North Carolina-born musician started out in a rock band before he found his calling as a thoughtful alt-country singer-songwriter. When Caleb released his debut solo album Red Bank Road in 2007, he was just beginning to realize what made his songwriting voice distinctive, and his numerous releases since then have been a journey deeper into his own sound and point of view.

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Caleb has driven a hard road in music, releasing albums and touring relentlessly since ‘07. Albums like Carolina Ghost and Better Hurry Up gained him a reputation as one of the Americana performers to watch in Nashville. As Caleb opened up about getting sober and being more intentional about his legacy, his gifts as a songwriter truly started to blossom. He recorded his latest release, Forsythia, at the Cash Cabin with a close group of trusted collaborators. It is an album whose imagery brings you home with him to North Carolina and into himself. He even came full circle with a new recording of “Red Bank Road,” the title track from his debut album.

Caleb brings the past with him while challenging himself to make something new with his life and with his art.


Editor’s Note: Basic Folk is currently running their annual fall fundraiser! Visit basicfolk.com/donate for a message from hosts Cindy Howes and Lizzie No, and to support this listener-funded podcast.

Photo Credit: Joseph Cash

WATCH: H.C. McEntire, “Soft Crook”

Artist: H.C. McEntire
Hometown: Durham, North Carolina
Song: “Soft Crook”
Release Date: October 4, 2022
Label: Merge Records

In Their Words: “‘Soft Crook’ was an exercise in vulnerability and trust. At its narrative core, the lyrics expose my struggle with depression through an unfiltered lens — calling it what it is, shaking hands with it, unapologetically honoring the power of its grip. It’s a mysterious and unpredictable companion that can make walking this world feel like slogging through unforgiving fields of mud. Navigating the nuances of pandemic isolation while under a debilitating depression fog was the most alone I have ever felt. To embody grief honestly, to embrace its clumsy and unhinged corners — to survive — required efforts and elixirs of self-preservation. The chorus became an anthem, of sorts; a mantra for letting go of guilt in needing these things — whether medication or TV shows or other vices — to offer myself some grace.

“I also wanted to capture a moment in time last fall when I’d opened myself back up to love; a way to summon the feeling of resting deeply in my girlfriend’s arms — that safety in hold, that transfer of both white-hot surrender and soft certainty, being touched strong and gentle at the same time; when guards are down and there is peace, if only for a moment, in the quiet consent of joy. So I walked to the front porch and snapped a photo of the late afternoon sky as proof, a reminder that there is much to feel, and much to lose. That love needs to be nurtured, even if stacked with unknowns. And we need to nurture ourselves as best we can, with whatever it takes to move towards another dawn.” — H.C. McEntire


Photo Credit: Heather Evans Smith

WATCH: Barrett Davis, “Carolina Still” (Live From Echo Mountain)

Artist: Barrett Davis
Hometown: Asheville, North Carolina
Song: “Carolina Still”
Album: The Ballad of Aesop Fin
Release Date: October 7, 2022

In Their Words: “Since the late 1800s, North Carolina moonshine has made its way into the lips and livers of its avid supporters. ‘Carolina Still’ is a story I wrote to honor the memory of my great-grandfather Gus Davis, a descendant of Buncombe County and a lover of a good corn mash. After spending most of his life as a Cavalry Sergeant, my great-grandfather eventually returned to his home of Asheville where he lived the remainder of his life on Hillside Street. With every word and note, ‘Carolina Still’ reminds me of my family’s heritage, Asheville ancestry and familiar memories of Appalachia. This history is more than memory. It is burned into my very existence like my first drop of moonshine.” — Barrett Davis


Photo Credit: Capturing WNC Photography

The Show On The Road – American Aquarium

This week, we’re back for the fall season with the first face-to-face taping in nearly two years. I was able to catch up with the fearless deep-voiced frontman BJ Barham of North Carolina roots-rock favorites American Aquarium, in the front bar of The Troubadour in LA as his tour was passing through.

 

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American Aquarium’s rawly personal new LP Chicamacomico dropped earlier this year and focuses on the twin losses of BJ’s mother and grandmother — as well as a dark point in his own marriage when he and his wife lost a child. He was already building a room for the little one during the pregnancy when everything changed. While fans have been following the band as a roaring country-tinged rock outfit since they formed in Raleigh around 2006 (the masterful Jason Isbell-produced Burn.Flicker.Die put them on the map right as they thought they would quit), it’s with Barham’s more poetic, stripped down offerings like 2020’s Lamentations and his searing solo work Rockingham that he is breaking new ground. Barham isn’t shy about processing his adoration for The Boss as the preeminent living rock-n-roll intellectual king, and there are cuts off the new LP like “The Things We Lost Along the Way” that feel like they could have been recorded in that haunted place alongside Nebraska or Darkness on the Edge of Town.

As a new dad myself who just experienced my wife going through a terrifying birth, BJ’s songs hit me a little harder these days. I can’t think of a country artist today with as big a following from North Carolina to Texas who would center the title track of his record around the unspoken tragedy of a late miscarriage, but Barham pulls it off with a remarkable sensitivity. Like Isbell, Barham notes that his career really began when he got sober and could finally examine the dark corners of his history, his relationships and the fractured history of the South he grew up in.

Though hard to say, naming a record about working through deep loss Chicamacomico makes all the sense in the world. It’s a real place of course, a life-saving station built in 1874 on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, and a beach area where BJ and his wife tried to go to blow off steam and forget their sorrows. Now a proud dad to a little daughter (see the cheerful country banger “Little Things”) Barham has learned that in the end, being a father and husband first doesn’t make him less of a hard-working, deep-thinking artist. In fact, it’s finding that balance that has allowed him to write the most powerful songs of his career.


LISTEN: Jeremy Squires, “Juniper”

Artist: Jeremy Squires
Hometown: New Bern, North Carolina
Song: “Juniper”
Album: Hymnal
Release Date: October 14, 2022
Label: Blackbird Record Label

In Their Words: “This song is about life playing out in front of my eyes. Watching my childhood, my ex-wife’s childhood and my kids’ lives change as they grow up and their lives flash before my eyes and ultimately realizing that people change, evolve and sometimes people can’t escape their trauma. It’s a sad but beautiful metaphor about two people in love fading and morphing into something beautiful. When writing this song I wanted it to feel just as clear as the imagery I tried to create in my lyrics from my memories. I truly wanted this song to be something that anyone could relate to in some way.” — Jeremy Squires


Photo Credit: Jeremy Squires

LISTEN: The Tallest Man On Earth, “Metal Firecracker” (Lucinda Williams Cover)

Artist: The Tallest Man On Earth
Hometown: Dalarna, Sweden
Song: “Metal Firecracker” (Lucinda Williams cover)
Album: Too Late for Edelweiss
Release Date: September 23, 2022
Label: ANTI-

In Their Words: “This past year, I’ve spent a lot of time touring but also writing and recording an album that I’m wildly proud of and which will see the light of day eventually. But in the small hours in between trips and sessions, mostly in my house in Sweden and an AirBnb in North Carolina, I lo-fi recorded some covers here and there. Many times as a reset button for my own song writing, to cleanse the palate from my whirlpool mind while writing songs. A little document of songs I had on my mind during those nights.

“I was in the middle of my teenage punk rock years when somehow a copy of Car Wheels On a Gravel Road made it into my stereo. Little did I know at the moment it would stay in there for 24 years and counting, being one of the most important albums in my wildly shuffled bag of influences.” — Kristian Matsson, The Tallest Man On Earth


Photo Credit: Shervin Lainez