BGS Podcast Roundup // May 8

In this week’s podcasts, we take you everywhere from Nashville’s Lower Broadway, to Compass Records, to the culinary scene in Montreal, and even back to a time when touring was a thing.

If you enjoy spending your weekend with the BGS Podcast Network, make sure to follow along on our social media [Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram] and right here, where we’ll consistently gather our new episodes, as well as some past favorites:

The Show on the Road – Jamestown Revival

On the latest episode of The Show On The Road, we feature Jonathan Clay and Zach Chance, two Texans and expert harmonizers who for the last decade have toured the world as Jamestown Revival.

Right before all tours got sent home, host Z. Lupetin was able to hop on the Jamestown Revival tour bus to discuss their intimate new record, San Isabel. While their previous record, The Education of a Wandering Man, saw them harnessing the muscular roots-rock that can be heard at their powerful live shows, San Isabel strips everything back to their intimate two-voices-around-one-mic, “southern and Garfunkel” sound that brought them together in the first place — and has rightfully won them hordes of fans coast to coast.

They say sibling harmony can’t be compared and we’ve had several sets of twin bands on the podcast, but what about soul-brother harmony? If one thing is clear just sitting on the bus and listening to them weave their stories and songs together, it’s that Clay and Chance were born to sing together.

San Isabel was laid down at Ward Lodge Studios overlooking the San Isabel National Forest in Buena Vista, Colorado and often includes the natural sounds of the nature all around them. Give it a listen — it’s peaceful and powerful and raw and maybe just what we all need right now.


Toy Heart – Alison Brown

Banjoist and record label head Alison Brown speaks with host Tom Power from her studio at Compass Records headquarters in Nashville, Tennessee. They begin with her early records made with Stuart Duncan, “finding her people,” and winning the Canadian National Banjo Championship (as an American), then on to her time at Harvard, where playing banjo became “something you’d talk about at cocktail parties.”

She describes the moment she decided to leave investment banking and commit to music full time, her cocktail napkin dream, and the two talk women in bluegrass, women in banjo, and the First Ladies of Bluegrass. The story they dive into together is ultimately about figuring out what makes you happy, and pursuing it bravely, against all odds.


The Shift List – Chef Dyan Solomon (Olive et Gourmando, Foxy) – Montreal

This week, The Shift List closes out its miniseries focusing on the food of Montreal with chef, restaurateur, and cookbook author Dyan Solomon. If you’re from Montreal, Dyan Solomon needs no introduction. She’s the co-owner of multiple restaurants there, including Foxy, one of the city’s essential fine dining establishments. Back in November 2019 she released the Olive + Gourmando cookbook, a collection of 150 recipes from the namesake cafe that put Solomon on Montreal’s culinary map when it opened back in 1999.

Host Chris Jacobs checked in with Chef Dyan via email the other week to see how her restaurants have been affected by the stay-at-home orders in Canada. She replied with cautious optimism, saying that while all of her restaurants are closed until further notice, they are surviving and trying to remain positive about the future.

If you’ve listened to the last two episodes of The Shift List with Chef John Winter Russell of Restaurant Candide, you’ll know that he highlighted the work that’s being done to help support the Montreal Restaurant Workers Relief Fund, an organization set up to provide emergency relief to restaurant employees who are facing economic hardship due to COVID-19. Coincidentally, the fund was set up by Kaitlin Doucette, the Sommelier at Solomon’s fine dining restaurant Foxy, and donations are still being accepted at mtlrestorelieffund.org.


The String – Paul Burch, Thomm Jutz

Paul Burch moved from Indiana to Nashville in 1995 when his friend Jay McDowell (BR549) told him about the burgeoning indie country music scene on sleepy Lower Broadway.

In the 25 years since then, Burch has made uncompromising and original music with shades of classic honky tonk and timeless rock and soul. On the latest episode of The String, we talk with Burch about his role in the fascinating band Lambchop, the evolution of his band the WPA Ball Club and his new album Light Sensitive. Also in the hour, German-born bluegrass songwriting star Thomm Jutz.


 

BGS 5+5: Paul Burch

Artist: Paul Burch
Hometown: Currently Nashville, Tennessee. I was born in Washington, D.C.
Latest album: Light Sensitive
Personal nicknames (or rejected band names): The members of Lambchop call me WP

Which artist has influenced you the most … and how?

Bob Dylan and Hank Williams were the twin Apollos of songwriting in my youth. And I loved the fearlessness of Roger Miller. Elvis Presley — when inspired — gave his audience his soul. But the four writers who most echo my temperament and drove me to compose are Chuck Berry, Smokey Robinson, John Prine, and Sam Cooke.

Smokey has a gift for literacy. “I Second That Emotion.” John, like Hank Williams, had the gift for sincerity. The taller the tale, the greater the parable. John was seldom at the center of his songs so much as caught up in the center. He could be both in the story and above it. Sam was easy on the ears. “Cupid.” “Having a Party.” “A Change Is Gonna Come.” A Sam Cooke title was exactly what the song was about. By all accounts he was a man of sharp intelligence, a true believer in decency, a hater of bullshit, and a fan of all kinds of music. Chuck could make the past contemporary and the here-and-now heroic. “Johnny B. Goode” is like a film coming into focus — so much detail delivered in less than 20 seconds. “Deep down in Louisiana close to New Orleans / way back up in the woods among the evergreens / there stood a log cabin made of earth and wood / where lived a country boy named Johnny B. Goode.”

All of these writers feel like my relatives. Something bubbles inside me when I hear them. All four had a touch of melancholy which they employed to remind you to keep having that party. Chuck is the poet of rock ‘n’ roll. Smokey is the poet of time and place. John was Jimmie Rodgers crossed with Mark Twain and inspired Sam Phillips to come out of retirement. And Sam — well — Sam was Mr. Soul.

What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?

I was playing on my own in a bar in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, one Saturday night. It was about 90 degrees at midnight. All I had was a microphone and an electric guitar and a little 15-watt amp. To try to keep the show dynamic, I kept a tick-tack rhythm on the bass strings when I sang and then added loud accents in between the verses. There were about 10 couples or so dancing in front of me and I could hear the scrape of their shoes on the dance floor.

I thought to myself: “This must have been what Charley Patton heard when he played a dance — the sound of the dancer’s shoes on the floor.” It was so wonderful to think I was doing well enough with what little I had that I could keep them dancing. It made me appreciate that audiences are willing to meet you more than halfway. The intensity of what you’re doing is more important than volume.

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

I get dreamy over paintings and great photography. I love the photography that Sheila Sachs and Catie Baumer Schwalb took for Light Sensitive.

Film noir is great for a sense of place and for the dialogue. So much had to be conveyed by gesture or innuendo. It was years before I realized that when Ilsa goes to see Rick in Casablanca for the letters of transit, the spotlight tells you they made love one last time. Every time I see it, the ending feels different. I used to think he gave her away. But then you remember Rick said he doesn’t deal in buying and selling people — and that extended to love, too. Now I see that Ilsa was always going to be trouble. She was right for Paris, just nowhere else. And life can never just be about Paris. Even if you live in Paris.

Also, in a film — like in songs — everybody has a job. The cab driver is important when you need that cab. Lately, I’ve been paying close attention to plays and musicals, listening for the rhythm and syncopation in dialogue. Frank Loesser’s songs for Guys and Dolls are spectacular. “I got horse right here / his name is Paul Revere…can do!” Louis Jordan’s songs sounds like musicals to my ear. I’m always on the hunt for an idea. I’m a flint and life is a white-tipped match.

What rituals do you have, either in the studio or before a show?

If I’m recording, I love walking into a studio with a fresh reel of tape under my arm, knowing that when I walk out the door, we will have created something that didn’t exist on Earth a few hours before. When I perform, I take time to walk all around the venue to get an idea of what the show will feel like from every vantage point. I like to talk to the sound engineer — usually someone I’ve never met — to get an idea what their job is like, if it’s a hard venue to deal with.

I ask them if they think the sound in the venue will respond to the kind of show I want to do. I try to make them feel like it’s our performance, not mine. Before the show, I think about my favorite people and my favorite performers. I’ll often write old friends just before a show — “How ya doin?” — just to demystify the whole thing. Other than having a new song in your pocket, there are few better feelings than walking on a stage at the beginning of a show.

Since food and music go so well together, what is your dream pairing of a meal and a musician?

I often imagine a perfect day of music would be some kind of outdoor event with a pile of fried catfish, margaritas, and then a show at twilight with a great lineup of the WPA Ballclub. In reality, outdoor shows are usually a drag. Bugs, bad sound, the drummer falls into the generator. I do think loud guitars and BBQ go together pretty well.

I used to stare at a photo of Little Richard playing at Wrigley Field with his band in the ’50s and thought it was the perfect gig. It must have been hot because the band were all wearing plaid shorts. Now that I’m older, I realize they were probably miserable — with an out-of-tune piano, distorted amps, and a lousy PA. But you know that first beer and smoke after the show must have been delicious.

As for a particular musician and food pairing, I hear that in the 1930s, all the jazz joints served Chinese food. If I could have seen Charlie Christian play guitar or heard Billie Holiday sing in a little joint with Teddy Wilson on piano over a hot plate of home-cooked crispy duck, I would have been very happy.


Photo credit: Emily Beaver

The String – Paul Burch, Thomm Jutz

Paul Burch moved from Indiana to Nashville in 1995 when his friend Jay McDowell (BR549) told him about the burgeoning indie country music scene on sleepy Lower Broadway.


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In the 25 years since then, Burch has made uncompromising and original music with shades of classic honky tonk and timeless rock and soul. Here we talk about his role in the fascinating band Lambchop, the evolution of his band the WPA Ball Club and his new album Light Sensitive. Also in the hour, German-born bluegrass songwriting star Thomm Jutz.

Past Perfected: Carrie Rodriguez in Conversation with Paul Burch

On paper, the concepts behind new projects by Carrie Rodriguez and Paul Burch might sound a bit formalistic — hers, a cross-cultural translation of generations-old Mexican ranchera songs and appreciation of her great-aunt Eva Garza’s overlooked recordings; his, a fictionalized musical memoir of pre-electrified pop star Jimmie Rodgers detailing, among other things, Rodgers's final, tuberculosis-hobbled trip to record in New York City. But, in reality, Rodriguez’s Lola and Burch’s Meridian Rising are truly dynamic albums, animated by the imaginative work of Rodriguez and Burch mastering nuances of musical style and cultural context, then allowing themselves ample room to play.

The seeds of both song cycles were planted years ago. Early in her fiddle-playing career, before she’d established herself as a duet partner to Chip Taylor or ventured out as a solo singer/songwriter, Rodriguez received a package of CDs burned from her great-aunt’s hard-to-find vinyl records and found herself transfixed. As for Burch, one of the driving forces behind a vintage country revival that overtook Nashville honky-tonks two decades ago and a standard-setter for roots smarts ever since, he was quite taken, too, when he came across an obscure recording of Rodgers and blues guitarist Clifford Gibson.

Have you two crossed paths before?

Paul Burch: Well, we actually did a long time ago. I think I opened for you, or we played a double show, at the Borderline.

Carrie Rodriguez: Yeah! With Chip [Taylor], right?

PB: Yes. Ages ago.

CR: I do remember that.

So you’re talking a number of years ago.

PB: Yeah. I’d say 10 or more. Does that sound right?

CR: Uh huh. Yeah. Because I was playing with Chip in my early 20s up through maybe 2006 or something. So it had to be before that. Whoa. Old.

PB. No, no. You’re not old.

It occurred to me that it might not seem immediately clear why I’d want you two to get on the phone together.

[Both laugh]

From my perspective, you’ve both released remarkable new albums that conjure long-gone musical figures in fascinating ways, but your approaches to doing that are very different. I thought it would be illuminating to put your ideas in conversation.

CR: Okay.

PB: I love it.

You both work in contemporary roots music, which often gestures backward in very general ways. But, with these projects, you’ve each brought such specificity to the act of engaging the past. Did you think of what you were doing as upping the ante?

PB: Hmmm. I’ll let you go first, Carrie. Ha!

CR: [Laughs] I was really hoping you’d go first!

PB: Okay, alright, alright. I’ll go first. For me, I don’t think of what I’m doing as reviving anything, or even revisiting anything old, because it all feels contemporary to me as long as it speaks to me. And I don’t mean that defensively at all. I think that’s part of my sort of cuckoo clock sense of time. I understand that it can be seen as old or revisiting an old style.

The record that you’re talking about is based on the life of Jimmie Rodgers. So I thought, “Why not fill the songs with the sounds of his contemporary life?” which is everything from the Mississippi Sheiks, which was the African-American fiddle group, to early Duke Ellington or early songs of Hoagy Carmichael. But to me, that was fun. Because as much as I love the Mississippi Sheiks, I had never sat down to try to write something with their rhythm and chord changes in mind. Hoagy Carmichael and Johnny Mercer and those guys, they all had a real interesting way of writing melodies, you know? And as much as I like it, I had never thought [of trying it]. This album, though, sort of gave me license to stay in that world; whereas, typically, when I wrote songs, I don’t know where the inspiration’s gonna come from. You know, I can be in a great mood and I’ll write a bunch of dark things.

Typically, when I go into the studio, as much as I love a lot of old music, I want what everybody wants — I want to make something that’s loud and energetic and all that kind of stuff. I guessed it upped the ante for me. … In a way it was kind of harder. Previous times, when I’ve written, I’ve tried to be sneaky. I’ve tried to be contemporary but find a way to put something in it that was part of my personal roots. And this was kind of the opposite. Even though this record has a lot of nods to older music, it ended up sounding kind of contemporary. I don’t know how that happened.

CR: I like this. This is a lot more interesting than doing an interview one-on-one. Getting to hear another artist answer a question, that’s really fun.

It’s been such a journey making this record. I mean, my initial idea was that I wanted to take a group of Mexican songs — ranchera songs, classic songs — and reinvent them for my time, for my era of music, for my tastes. I wanted a mariachi band that was not your typical mariachi band. So I thought [revered jazz guitarist] Bill Frisell was a great guitar player for the project. I put together this band, and that was the initial idea. But, as I started researching my favorite songwriters from the ‘40s, ‘50s, ‘60s — Mexican songwriters — and learning songs, I became so inspired to write, that the album ended up being half classic ranchera tunes, half originals. And the originals mostly came out in Spanglish.

PB: [Laughs]

CR: Not really on purpose. That’s just how they came out. So I think my original idea was that it was going to be kind of an album of classic music reinvented a little bit, but in the end, I don’t know. I think it is something new. Even the classic ranchera tunes … I mean, with the band we put together, they’re pretty different than any versions I’ve ever heard of them.

PB: I think it’s great that you chose Bill, because I think of him as being the kind of guitarist who would love to learn something, if he didn’t already learn it as it was written. But then his natural inclination as a songwriter and arranger would be to accent things that appealed to him. Was that sort of how it worked out with him?

CR: Yeah, in some ways. I didn’t wanna send anybody in the band too much advance music. I think I sent a few tracks by my great-aunt, Eva Garza. Part of the initial inspiration for this project was my great-aunt and her music. She started recording in the late 1930s. So I wanted them to hear her music, but I didn’t want to send the band too much, because I wanted them to hear these songs for the first time in the way that I was bringing [the material] to them. So for example, Luke and I — Luke Jacobs is my partner. Well, I call him my husband. We’re not married, but he’s like my husband. Musical partner, as well. We came up with sort of the grooves and feels for all of these ranchera tunes. And they are very different. But those are the only demos I sent to the band. … I wanted these tunes to be fresh, for the most part. We did an instrumental of a Cuco Sanchez song called “Si No Te Vas,” and I think I did send maybe my favorite version — which was Chavela Vargas singing that song — to Bill, but that one was an instrumental. So I knew he would listen to the way that [Vargas] sang it. He often will take a melody that’s sung and transcribe the whole thing and be able to play the melody exactly the way someone sang it. And then, of course, from there, he turns it into his own odyssey.

PB: [Laughs] I had a similar experience in that the group of musicians I used I’ve worked with for a long time, but not all of them are that well-versed in, say, the era of blues and the era of jazz that Jimmie Rodgers was working in, which was nice because they just heard it as music. Their reference was rhythm. Also, another nice thing about working that way was that we didn’t have any contemporary rock ‘n’ roll sounds that we could lean on. If we’re recording a kind of contemporary record, whatever records have been in circulation over the last few years, it’s gonna show up a little bit, no matter how hard you try — unless you play with musicians that are kind of out of the western world.

Carrie, you mentioned your great-aunt, Eva Garza. You recorded a song for the album that she’d recorded and you also have some originals depicting both the atmosphere that she recorded in and what it’s like for you now on the road. I hear you drawing connections between her experiences and your own as a professional performer and Latina woman. Do you feel like you’re staking your claim to a personal and musical heritage?

CR: Hmmm. That’s a nice way of putting it. I do really feel like this record is maybe more representative of me than anything I’ve done before. I never thought about it that much, but being a Chicana fiddle player is still a little unusual in this country. I don’t know how many there are of us. But thinking about my great-aunt’s music and my heritage got me thinking about my place in the Americana music scene. Really, there aren’t that many Latinas in that scene yet. I mean, there are a few. It definitely made me think about that being a unique part of who I am. Just, for example, with the sound of the record, I didn’t want to shy away from it sounding like country music, because that’s such a part of me, even when I’m singing the songs in Spanish. We had pedal steel all over the ranchera tunes. I do feel like it’s very representative of me in a whole way, whereas my records in the past, of course they’re often very autobiographical, but there was this one element that was maybe missing. And I think singing in Spanish, too, just naturally helps bring that to the surface. That’s the language of half my family.

And it’s something that’s you’ve very gradually woven into your live shows leading up to this point, right?

CR: Yeah. I was pretty chicken to make a whole album in Spanish. I thought about it for a long time. Frankly, I don’t think I was ready to record much in Spanish until now. It’s better if you’ve lived a few years and had some serious heartache, I think. It’s better for singing ranchera.

While Carrie has a strong personal and cultural connection to these songs, Paul, it occurs to me that your connection to Jimmie Rodgers is also about musical identity, but in a different way. You’ve talked about your fascination with how Jimmie Rodgers fashioned himself into a popular entertainer using any kind of music that struck his fancy. What is attractive to you about that?

PB: I think one element of it is that I’ve never felt like what small abilities I have are the kind of things that … my sense of music, I feel very confident about, but I’m not the kind of singer that will stop people in their tracks with anything that I sing. And I’m not such a superlative guitar player — or the other instruments that I play — that I can make an impactful entertainment kind of impression on people. So I think I’ve had to kind of make a personal style.

First, I find something I love and I think that I can sing. But I also have to sort of find a way to sing it, because many of the singers I admire, I don’t have the voice that they do. … In a way, that’s been helpful, because I haven’t felt like I had to be one kind of a singer. I know not everyone will like what I do, but I’d like to give everyone the chance to like it. So many of the performers I liked growing up, they played every kind of music. Jimmie has never been my number one person I’ve listened to, but it’s a very usable kind of model because he was very generous with the musicians he played with. He’d see people on the street. He’d meet people in the studio. And he would say, “Come record with me.” That’s a really healthy thing to do as a musician. A lot of musicians find it really hard to gather a combination of friends and strangers in the studio to make something. They either keep it kind of impersonal, or they keep it with the same crew. Neither of those situations are always ideal. Jimmie seemed to be someone who, he liked his own work. … In the same way that Louis Armstrong seemed to be a very generous musician, [Jimmie] loved to play. I relate to that. For all my many shortcomings as a musician, I always want to get better, and I think the only way to do that is to reach out to people you admire and say, “I love what you do. Could you come? I think you would be perfect to help me make this song really good.” I don’t know if that shows up in the record, but that’s the feeling that I was trying to imbue Jimmie with.

Carrie, you mentioned your awareness that you’re one of the few Chicana performers in the Americana scene. And Paul, you’re zeroing in on how Jimmie Rodgers was way more interested in incorporating an array of popular, current sounds than much of Americana is now. I could see both of your projects making people think a little differently about what’s possible in contemporary roots music — what it looks, sounds, and feels like. Are you finding that to be the case?

CR: I sure hope so.

PB: I hope millions and millions feel that way.

[Both laugh]

CR: Young ones that’ll keep coming to shows for a long time.

PB: Right.

CR: I wrote that song “Z” as a song for young women, honestly. I mean, it’s my story and it talks about being a Chicana fiddle player. The chorus is about showing up to a gig and my name is misspelled on the marquee, which has happened. And, you know, “Rodriguez” is kind of like the “Smith” of Mexicans; it’s pretty common. So it felt pretty good to tell country music where to put the Z. But honestly I’m waiting for the next big Latina — well, I haven’t seen one. I’m waiting for that Latina country superstar. I haven’t seen her. Where is she? Because, if you look at the demographics of our country, I just can’t believe that country music doesn’t have one yet. It doesn’t make any sense to me. So I was hoping with this song I might inspire some young girls to get into songwriting or whatever.

Paul, how about your tendency to take a little more stylistically promiscuous approach to roots music?

PB: Well, that’s Jimmie Rodgers in a nutshell. I don’t think I’ve ever heard it described that way, but that’s a beautiful description. I hope people think so. What I’ve most enjoyed now that I’ve performed these songs live is that they become contemporary feeling very easily. … When your ammunition is a song, you’re asking a lot of that song to really get through to people. When you’re telling a story, there’s always the chance that it could just get swallowed up. Luckily, these songs are not typically narrative. I tried to give them what Jimmie does, which is a sense of conversation, telling a story in a way that is a little bit cut off sometimes, is clipped, where you have to suggest intention without words somehow, almost in the rhythm and the beat.

It seems to be working. People seem to like it. I’m a very practical guy. If people like it, that makes me happy. Of course, I have high expectations, but I’m also glad to have music that I want to play that just seems different to me. … It doesn’t feel as conventional a rocker as I’ve written before or a ballad where there’s kind of a lot of signposts that people might recognize. This doesn’t feel like that. Hopefully, it’s new to the audience and it’s still new to me, too.

It says something about the audiences you’ve both built over the years that they respond to albums with some pretty involved musical concepts.

PB: I hope so. Whoever they are, bless their hearts.

CR: So far, so good.

PB: There was one part of me thinking that there could be no less commercial thing for me to do than to make a record about Jimmie Rodgers. It was so uncommercial and so not the kind of thing that anybody wanted to sell that it seemed to come completely around to the kind of thing that might work. I think the punk rocker in me just kind of enjoyed doing something so different, even if it didn’t work.

It’s so punk of you.

PB: Yeah, that’s me. Mr. Punk.

Thanks very much to both of you for being up for this.

PB: Oh, thank you! I can’t wait to hear your record, Carrie. It’s lovely to talk to you again.

CR: Yeah. Ditto, Paul. I’m gonna have to get online and get that record as soon as I get home. Now I’m completely curious and fascinated.


Illustration by Abby McMillen. Carrie Rodriguez photo courtesy of the artist. Paul Burch photo by Emily Beaver.

WATCH: Paul Burch, ‘Fast Fuse Blues’

Artist: Paul Burch
Hometown: Nashville, TN
Song: “Fast Fuse Blues” 
Album: Meridian Rising
Release Date: February 26
Label: Plowboy

In Their Words: "'Fast Fuse Blues' imagines Jimmie's [Rodgers] last visit to Coney Island — one of his favorite places to visit in New York. Jimmie was a frequent visitor, and there are several photographs taken of Jimmie enjoying the beach and boardwalk with his producer Ralph Peer and their families, as well as unknown female admirers. Jimmie visited Coney Island shortly before he died in May, 1933." — Paul Burch


Photo credit: Emily Beaver