Tag: Paul Simon

You Gotta Hear This: New Music From Dan Tyminski, Liam Purcell, and More

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Americana, alt-folk, bluegrass – whatever form these tracks may take, You Gotta Hear This! Our premiere round up this week includes plenty of Texas, a dash of Missouri, and a heaping helping of the Southeast, too. From new bluegrass numbers by the legendary Dan Tyminski and up-and-comers Liam Purcell & Cane Mill Road to thoughtful and intentional Americana by John Calvin and Goodnight, Texas. Plus, there’s a musical tribute to Godfrey, Missouri, a small town on the mighty Mississippi River, by Lost on the Metro and the Steel Wheels reunite with Malena Cadiz on a Paul Simon cover.

Our second-to-last installment of our DelFest Sessions – featuring Mountain Grass Unit – is included here as well, as it premiered on the site earlier this week. It’s a mighty fine collection of music and you know what we think… You Gotta Hear This!

John Calvin, “Austin Chalk”

Artist: John Calvin
Hometown: Recently Boca Raton, Florida, but this record was written living in Dallas, Texas (and this song is very Dallas-centric).
Song: “Austin Chalk”
Album: Greener Fields & Fairer Seas
Release Date: July 25, 2024 (single); January 24, 2025 (album)

In Their Words: “North Texas rests on an ancient deposit of chalk and marl that sits about five feet below the topsoil and runs for hundreds of feet below that. Living in North Texas, you realize how much of our present is determined by an ancient past. The Austin chalk formation leaves torrential rain with nowhere to go. Rivers, like the Trinity River, flood easily and entire neighborhoods and can be underwater in a matter of hours. There are beautiful communities on the banks of the Trinity like Joppa and Bonton that were only able to stabilize and grow with the extension of the levee system by the Army Corps of Engineers in the early 1990s. Our foothold is always more tenuous than we think, and that’s truest for those that can least afford to move.” – John Calvin

Track Credits: Written by John Calvin.
Produced by Nate Campisi.
John Calvin – Vocals, acoustic guitar
Greg DeCarolis – Piano, bass, electric guitar, OB-8 synth
Pat Coyle – Drums, percussion
James Hart – Pedal steel
Eric DeFade – Alto, tenor, baritone sax
Robert Matchett – Trombone
Joe Herndon – Trumpet
David Bernabo – Brass arrangement

Goodnight, Texas, “A Bank Robber’s Nightmare”

Artist: Goodnight, Texas
Hometown: San Francisco, California (Avi Vinocur) and Chapel Hill, North Carolina (Patrick Dyer Wolf); the real town of Goodnight, Texas is the exact mile-for-mile midpoint between the two locales.
Song: “A Bank Robber’s Nightmare”
Album: Signals
Release Date: July 19, 2024
Label: 2 Cent Bank Check

In Their Words: “We’re enjoying some light world building. Our most recent single, ‘The Lightning and The Old Man Todd,’ fleshes out the tragic story of a character from a previous song of ours, ‘The End of the Road.’ Meanwhile, ‘A Bank Robber’s Nightmare’ checks in a decade later on the once carefree, now world-weary and estranged heroes of our 2014 song, ‘A Bank Robber’s Nursery Rhyme,’ which has been a fan favorite and staple of our live shows. The scene is kind of a bittersweet reunion, emphasis on the bitter. What do you say to your former partner in crime?” – Patrick Dyer Wolf

Lost on the Metro, “Godfrey”

Artist: Lost on the Metro
Hometown: St. Louis, Missouri
Song: “Godfrey”
Album: Resonance and Regrets EP
Release Date: July 25, 2024 (single); September 20, 2024 (EP)

In Their Words: “We have this giant river confluence here in St. Louis, and it’s common to take a drive along the river road from St. Louis to get away from the city for a while. Godfrey is a real town along the Mississippi River. Imagine bluffs, eagles flying overhead, touristy shops and restaurants, and the river road cutting through it all carrying cars, trucks, boats, bikes, to some unknown destination. The lyrics focus on getting older in a relationship, and the doubts that creep in, and that need to find a way to clear your head. There’s a dark element to Godfrey as well. It’s definitely a driving song on the surface, but the undercurrent holds all the worries and doubts and fears and hopes that float around as we find our way alone. It’s those thoughts in your head that you’re not sure you want other people to know you’re thinking. Driving down the river road with an open window and the wide Mississippi next to me lets me think those thoughts and then let them go.” – Lost on the Metro

Track Credits:
Jilly Morey – Songwriter, lyricist, lead vocals, percussion
David Morey – Songwriter, composer, arranger, rhythm guitar, vocals
Chris Dunn – Composer, arranger, lead guitar, vocals
Lucan Stone – Composer, arranger, bass, vocals
Josh Bayless – Composer, arranger, drums, vocals

Liam Purcell & Cane Mill Road, “Old Man’s Dream”

Artist: Liam Purcell & Cane Mill Road
Hometown: Deep Gap, North Carolina
Song: “Old Man’s Dream”
Album: Yellow Line
Release Date: April 5, 2024
Label: Pinecastle Records

In Their Words: “This song is one of the most personal stories I’ve ever released. I wrote it one day while my father and I were working at my folks’ place in Deep Gap. The land next door had been sold off for housing development and we had to prepare for them to widen the road. Over the next few months, I watched the trucks come and go, watched the bulldozers change the shape of the mountains, and watched the destructive path of progress as it made its way through our little mountain community.” – Liam Purcell

The Steel Wheels, “Gone at Last” featuring Malena Cadiz

Artist: The Steel Wheels featuring Malena Cadiz
Hometown: Harrisonburg, Virginia (The Steel Wheels) and Kalamazoo, Michigan (Malena)
Song: “Gone At Last”
Release Date: July 19, 2024
Label: Big Ring Records

In Their Words: “This Paul Simon song has been a favorite of ours for awhile. The plain spoken, down to earth writing with a gospel-sounding flare. We have been known to sing a cappella from time to time, but this was an opportunity for strong vocals with a bed of active bass and drum parts.

“Last February we were asked to play as the house band for the International Folk Alliance Music Awards in Kansas City. The house band job comes with the joy of meeting and playing with a variety of musicians. When we got a chance to play and sing with Malena Cadiz, we immediately fell in love with her voice. We were inspired to look for a chance to record together and ‘Gone At Last’ was that chance.” – Trent Wagler

Dan Tyminski, “Whiskey Drinking Man”

Artist: Dan Tyminski
Hometown: Originally from West Rutland, Vermont. Lives in Nashville, Tennessee
Song: “Whiskey Drinking Man”
Album: Whiskey Drinking Man
Release Date: July 19, 2024 (single); August 16, 2024 (album)
Label: 8 Track Entertainment

In Their Words: “My first single off of the new project is one I’m very excited to release. It’s written to be a toe tapping burner in the party spirit. This one should get your juices flowing.” – Dan Tyminski

DelFest Sessions: Mountain Grass Unit

Our second-to-last installment of our DelFest Sessions features Birmingham, Alabama-based jamgrass group, Mountain Grass Unit. Videographers I Know We Should were on hand at this year’s DelFest in Cumberland, Maryland over Memorial Day Weekend to capture a collection of beautiful, fun, and engaging live sessions on the banks of the Potomac River. (See all of our DelFest Sessions here.) For their shoot, Mountain Grass Unit played a pair of exciting cover songs.

Their first selection, “Big River,” is a funky and charming re-imagination of a Johnny Cash classic with a mash-tastic, blues-inflected groove. Drury Anderson, the group’s mandolin picker and lead vocalist on the track, sings with a drawl seemingly from right down the proverbial road from Cash’s homeland (near Memphis, Tennessee). It fits the bluesy undertones of their rendition perfectly, equal parts Muscle Shoals and Bean Blossom. Cash is a common cover subject in bluegrass, and MGU’s version of “Big River” demonstrates exactly why that’s the case.

Watch the full session here.

Photo Credit: Liam Purcell & Cane Mill Road by Pinecastle Records; Dan Tyminski by Jeff Fasano.

MIXTAPE: Bridget Kearney’s Photographic Memories

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

From my early days of being photo editor of my high school newspaper to my current tour hobby of photographing bizarre regional potato chip flavors in their native lands for @chipscapes, I have long held a fascination for photography. As life rushes by us at a mile a minute a camera has the ability to freeze the frame for a second, capture a moment in time, and provide photographic evidence that the moment actually existed. Though the waves may have crashed into your impossibly magnificent sand castle, you can keep it standing forever in a photo. And though time may have drowned out a love that once burned impossibly bright, a security camera may have accidentally captured the most blissful moments of that love and if you can track down the footage and find those moments, you could potentially kick back on the couch and watch those moments on infinite loop forever.

This is the premise of my song, “Security Camera,” from my new album Comeback Kid. Beyond that song, the subject of photos, memories, and trying to hold on to a moment for what it was, to love that moment forever in spite of its ephemeral nature, weaves its way through the album as a common thread. I put together a playlist of songs on the theme of cameras and memory and it turns out a lot of my favorite songwriters and biggest influences have also been fascinated by this subject. Recorded music is basically the audio version of a photo/video, so it makes sense. Hope you enjoy these songs as much as I do. – Bridget Kearney

“Kamera” – Wilco

Jeff Tweedy seems to be using the camera as a self-revealing truth teller in this song. He’s lost his grip on reality and only a camera can tell him “which lies that I been hiding.” I have loved Wilco for a long time and have a very specific visual memory of listening to them on headphones in college: I was on a semester abroad in Morocco and I was going for a run along the beach in Essaouira and came upon these big sand dunes. I spontaneously decided to run up to the top of the dunes and then bound down them into the water. This joyous discovery of dune jumping on a perfect sunny day will always be soundtracked to Wilco’s song “Theologians” in my mind.

“Kodachrome” – Paul Simon

Paul Simon was always playing around the house when I was growing up and this song has a particular significance to the origin story of my band, Lake Street Dive: We were on one of our first tours and we were driving my parent’s minivan around the Midwest. The only way to listen to music in the van was through the CD player. It was in the pre-streaming era where we all would have had a big library of digital music on our laptops (probably illegally downloaded from Napster or the like). So we decided to co-create a mystery mix CD by passing around someone’s laptop and letting each of us put in songs one-by-one, not telling each other what we’d put it in. Then we burned out the mystery mix CD and listened to it together.

As four students studying jazz at a conservatory we had mostly listened to Charles Mingus and The Bad Plus together thus far, but the mystery mix exposed all four of us pop music fiends. Song after song kept coming on and we’d go, “Oh my god, you like Lauryn Hill too?!” and “You also know every lyric to David Bowie’s ‘Life on Mars’?!” This culminated in the moment when the mystery mix played Paul Simon’s “Kodachrome” THREE TIMES IN A ROW! That was when we knew we should be a band forever. The groove on this song is also part of the inspiration for the song “If You’re Driving” from Comeback Kid.

“Hey Ya” – Outkast

Not actually a song about photos and you’re not actually supposed to shake Polaroid pictures, but Andre 3000 is one of the greatest musicians of our time and I’ve learned so much from him about music and language and spirit! Also this song is a total jam.

“Security Camera” – Bridget Kearney

I live in Brooklyn and there are security cameras everywhere here – at the bodegas, at the clubs, on the rooftops. Their purpose is to capture criminals in the act of committing a crime, but they are also capturing so many other things. Everyday things and extraordinary things. Moments of extreme beauty and moments of extreme pain. The idea behind this song is to track down security camera footage of the very best moments of your life so you can watch them on repeat.

“Pictures Of Me” – Elliott Smith

I went through a huge Elliott Smith phase in college and had an instrumental Elliott Smith cover band. His harmonies and melodies are so good that you don’t even need the lyrics, but adding them in, of course, makes it all the better. This one seems to say that pictures can lie to you, too.

“Picture In a Frame” – Tom Waits

This is one of those songs that seems like it has existed forever. “Ever since I put your picture in a frame” sounds to me like he is saying, “Ever since I decided to love you.”

“Body” – Julia Jacklin

My friend Michael Leviton (a great photographer and musician!) told me about this song and its passing but gutting reference to a photo. We were talking about how I had realized that a lot of my songs are about cameras and photography and how funny it is to look back at your own songs and see patterns and discover what you’ve been obsessed with the whole time. Michael said his thing is “curtains,” which appear over and over again in his songs.

“Bad Self Portraits” – Lake Street Dive

A song I wrote for Lake Street Dive years ago about what happens when the person you want to take a picture of steps out of the frame. What you’re left with and how to make the most of it.

“Videotape” – Radiohead

I always thought this song was about when you die and you are at the pearly gates of heaven, they are deciding whether you get in or not and watch back videotapes of your life to see if you were good or bad. I don’t know if that’s what Radiohead meant, but that’s my interpretation! The production is so cool, the way the drum loop is slightly off tempo and moves around the phrase slowly as it cycles around. Damn, Radiohead is so cool!!

There are a few songs on Comeback Kid that are directly Radiohead influenced. “Sleep In” is like Radiohead meets Ravel (or that’s what I was going for!) When I graduated from Iowa City West High School, I arranged a version of “Paranoid Android” that some friends and I played instrumentally at the graduation ceremony. In retrospect, that is a really weird song for us to have played at graduation! But I think it’s cool that they let us be brooding teenagers and go for it.

“When the Lights Go Out” – Sarah Jarosz

The song that gave Sarah’s brilliant new record its title, Polaroid Lovers. I feel so inspired by the music that my friends make, and Sarah’s songs from this album really knocked me off my feet when I heard the album and even more so when I heard them live!

“People Take Pictures of Each Other” – The Kinks

A festive little song about taking photos of things to prove that they existed.

“I Bet Ur” – Bridget Kearney

This is a song from the album I put out last year, Snakes of Paradise. The narrative is built around seeing a picture of something that you don’t want to see, letting your imagination fill in the details, and learning to accept it as truth.

“I Turn My Camera On” – Spoon

Groove goals. The camera here puts a bit of distance between you and the world.

“Photograph” – Ringo Starr

A song about photographs by my favorite Beatle? Yes, please!

“My Funny Valentine” – Chet Baker

I love Chet Baker’s singing, his pure, dry, affectless delivery, his deadpan panache. And I love the way this song manages to rhyme “laughable” and “un-photographable” and stick the landing.

“Camera Roll” – Kacey Musgraves

Photography has been around for a long time now but carrying thousands of photos of our lives organized in chronological order in our pockets at all times is relatively new. And both wonderful and terrible.

“Come Down” – Anderson .Paak

Just a passing reference to pictures in this song, but I had to get Anderson .Paak on the playlist because he’s the best!

“Obsessed” – Bridget Kearney

A song about falling quickly, unexpectedly, insanely in love with someone and trying to understand how it happened. You look back at the pictures as evidence trying to gather clues, see the train of events that led to this madness.

Photo Credit: Rodneri

BGS 5+5: Ellis Paul

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Artist: Ellis Paul
Hometown: Charlottesville, Virginia
Latest album: 55 (available June 9, 2023)

Which artist has influenced you the most … and how?

I can’t say which artist has inspired me “the most,” there’s too many great ones in the generations that came before me and too many new ones popping up as I go. And some of them are unconscious influences. I don’t go to James Taylor or Paul Simon consciously, but they are such a part of my youth and DNA that I know they are there. The Beatles are my go to teachers, as is Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell. Their entire catalogues. When I listen to them with a magnifying glass, I’m constantly awe struck. They make my humility rise as a dominant emotional state. I’m good at what I do. But the gap between them and me is clear to me – but it is also where my great frontier lies. The best version of me is somewhere out there ahead — in that direction — and I need them as inspiration to explore it. To guide my improvements. So I dissect their music. And thank them. While their songs lie like frogs in the biology class of my mind.

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

All of it! Everywhere I’m engaged in life can create a song — so I’m constantly on the lookout. I see what I do as a form of literature. There is a reason why Bob Dylan is walking around with a Nobel Prize in Literature. It’s storytelling, poetry, lyricism wrapped in imagery, dressed within melody and colored orchestration. It’s a visual medium in people’s brains as they watch the details unfold in a song while they are listening. So it’s like a movie or a painting. The music is a dance. It’s flowing. It’s a kind of geography.

Everything from a great meal to a great movie can inspire. Anytime I’m stuck, I try to get out and see a film or go to a museum or take a walk. Read a book. Watch how film makers tell their stories. It’s all a deep well to drink from, aren’t we incredibly lucky? I love my job.

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

One of the best rituals I have in the studio is working with a grid sheet and stickers to watch the progress I’m making as the album evolves. I put it on the wall so everyone involved can see it. It’s a big piece of paper usually 18” by 24”. The songs are on the left side going down and all the tracks run across the top. After a musician plays their part, I give them a sticker to fill in their square for the song. It helps me project out, to see what’s left to do, and to see how much has been done. It helps to focus my thoughts on the parts left to finish and I can be creatively thinking about how I want the remaining tracks to lie against the ones that are completed. It also makes the musician feel good for some reason. They always love it. The stickers are usually cool, like Wizard of Oz characters. It brings out the first grader in people. They choose which sticker and then find their empty box and fill it with Toto.

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

Mainly— create beauty in every part of your work.

Now, since I’m in my fifties, this would be by making the most of your talent and my skill set. Focus on the writing because that is the part that will be left behind when you part from the earthly side of things. The recordings will tell the story of you in the years to come when your gone. So I’m editing the songs until they shimmer, working more in the studio to get things right and less as a road dog doing shows. I was always writing and recording on the fly. Coming into the studio with a voice torn up by the road. And songs written on airplanes. I’ve got more space now, because I’m established, and can live off of fewer shows. I can’t sing as high or sustain notes the same way, but I have more patience and wisdom now. I’m a better writer for those things. And the best is yet to come.

How often do you hide behind a character in a song or use “you” when it’s actually “me”?

I like character driven songs and usually have a couple on every album. The latest album, 55, has a song from the perspective of a tattooed lady in a circus. I did it as a writing exercise where I was assigning circus characters to my songwriting students. So I had to assume a lot of different things with this song: a woman’s perspective, a time/era perspective – because I felt like it was occurring in the late ’40s – and then someone who is essentially a circus act in a freak show. It was fun to write. Unlike, say a “bearded lady” or conjoined twins, the tattooed performer chose to look as she does. I don’t feel like she is a victim of circumstance in the same way, so the character invites the listener to gaze upon her physique. Circus life can be tough as well, doing show after show, so you sense her boredom. Despite the fact that she is lighting the wick on the big gun of the human cannonball. She’s a bit over it.

Photo Credit: Jack Looney

BGS 5+5: David Wax Museum

Posted on by Editor

Artist: David Wax Museum
Hometown: Charlottesville, Virginia (David is originally from Columbia, Missouri, and the band formed in Boston)
Latest Album: You Must Change Your Life
Personal nicknames or rejected band names: Honestly, the name David Wax Museum started off as a tossed off joke, but it’s stuck around for 16 years. The name was suggested by a friend Anna Henchman who supposedly gave Evan Dando the band name idea Lemonheads.

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

My songs are constantly in dialogue with literature, specifically novels and poetry. I keep a stack of poetry by my side whenever I’m writing — Pablo Neruda, Denis Johnson, James Wright, to name a few — and I’m often making random word lists as I thumb through the pages. The title track of the record “You Must Change Your Life” is based on a line from Rilke. His exhortation has always moved me quite powerfully. In the poem, “Archaic Torso of Apollo,” a headless sculpture “sees” inside the poet and stirs him so deeply that he cannot go on living like he was before. While the phrase captures the change that can come through witnessing art, I realized I needed to bring this lofty idea down to earth through a specific character at a specific moment in time. Literature often serves as this type of springboard for me.

While writing the songs on You Must Change Your Life, I was deeply immersed in Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle. This Norwegian author’s six-part series explores his life (from the most mundane to the most profound aspects) with such searing honesty that it gave me the courage to write these songs, to shine such an unsparing light on my heart and the questions of desire that animate this record.

Which artist has influenced you the most … and how?

Paul Simon. He’s had the most consistently inspiring career, and his lyrics, his phrasing, and his musical curiosity have sent me down so many fruitful paths as a songwriter. Graceland remains a musical north star for me, and I return to it again and again for ideas and sustenance. He showed what was possible, as a musician unconstrained by genre and as a lover of folk music from all over the globe. There are definitely other artists (David Byrne comes to mind) who have likewise continually evolved and challenged themselves as artists, but no one else has so consistently made music that resonates for me personally. Paul Simon has masterfully explored his inner world but has done it in a way that bridges musical cultures, places his introspection within this broad, rhythmic canvas of the world, and all the while held up the artistry and craft of the song.

For me, a deep exploration of traditional Latin folk music, specifically son mexicano, has informed much of my songwriting and the development of the band’s sound. While living in Mexico studying folk music I began to write songs that used Mexican rhythms and song structures but were clearly not Mexican folk songs. I started to envision a way to bridge these two musical influences — the one of my upbringing and the one of my passion. This current doesn’t run through every song of ours, but it pulses through the records and the live shows and continues to inspire me. The instruments and rhythms are a deep well I return to time and time again. And through this exploration, I found my voice and discovered a way to be a part of a larger conversation.

What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?

We were once invited to perform in the Czech Republic at the Colours of Ostrava festival. It’s a wild setting for an event, tucked in under the looming towers of an old steel factory. It remains one of my favorite memories from being on stage because the audience was so welcoming and emotive. The thousand or so Czechs who had gathered under the tent with us had never heard of our band, but it’s as if the whole crowd collectively decided they were going to embrace us for who we were and have a transformative, magical experience together. They learned the songs as we went and started singing along. They improvised group responses. They danced. They cheered. It felt like the perfect gig.

It was made all the more meaningful because Suz’s father was with us to take care of our 9-month-old daughter. It had been a formidable trip to get five musicians, a grandparent, and a baby to this distant town, but when Suz and I were first falling in love on tour, we imagined a future of traveling the world with a family, and it was so gratifying to be actually doing it all those years later.

And now, looking back, I can appreciate the creative moment that the show represented for us as a band. It was the last hurrah of a particular line-up, one that had been honed for years and that was communicating on such a deep musical level with one another. Suz and Greg Glassman, the bassist, had been singing together for years in bands. And my cousin Jordan Wax, who I grew up making music with, was playing accordion and keyboard with us. We’re practically brothers. Additionally, Jordan and Greg had begun a new band together in New Mexico (Lone Piñon). So there were so many deep musical ties amongst the group, and it translated into this beautiful cohesive musical family.

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

To carve an authentic path with integrity and vitality. When we got started as a band, it seemed like there were these very clear steps to take to become serious, professional musicians. And, to a degree, that felt true for the first five years as a band. But at a certain point, there stops being a template or a model to copy. At least for a band like us, it became apparent that we needed to create our own version of a successful career that was true to ourselves. Initially that meant figuring out a way to tour sustainably as a family. We needed to build and nurture a wide community of support to pull this off.

As hard and disheartening as it can be at times, we’ve created our own model for DIY, family-oriented touring that we can do between record cycles. And the relationships we’ve cultivated with our fans by doing it this way eventually enabled us to raise the money to build this unbelievable music studio in our backyard (read more). This unique path has also led to creative projects that don’t fit within the traditional music industry. One of our favorites is a blindfolded, meditative concert experience called Golden Hour that we’ve created with our dear friends Lowland Hum.

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

I would love to share an Ethiopian meal with Jeff Tweedy. I don’t know if he even likes Ethiopian food, but it’s our go-to meal on tour. We usually order a large vegetarian combo plate to share with our kids and bandmates. And if anything is left over, it even tastes great as a cold, post-show snack. As for the company, Jeff Tweedy is one of my musical heroes. I first started listening to his first band Uncle Tupelo in junior high when someone gave me a cassette tape at jazz camp. It blew my mind, particularly hearing someone from my part of the world (just outside the St. Louis orbit) making a gritty, earnest Midwestern sound, steeped in country, punk, and rock ‘n’ roll. It helped me find my own voice and validated my own instincts and intuitions. My dream is to make a record with Jeff in Wilco’s Loft, so I like to imagine this meal would be a pre-production meeting over Ethiopian food, discussing songs and sounds and instruments.

Photo Credit: Tristan Williams

Basic Folk – Courtney Marie Andrews

Posted on by Shelby Williamson

Courtney Marie Andrews seems anciently wise in general, but on her new album Loose Future, she’s particularly tapped into some cosmic intelligence. Growing up, CMA spent a lot of time alone, so we naturally started our conversation there. People have been isolated in the last few years, which can be sad and scary, but also offer certain gifts. Courtney was able to quarantine during the first summer of the pandemic on Cape Cod. She grounded herself by walking six to eight miles daily and exploring herself “forever against the backdrop of summer.” She painted, reconnected with nature and wrote a song a day. Those songs resulted in the new record.

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She made the album at Flying Cloud Recordings in New York, taking a dip in the creek every morning before getting to work in order to embody the feeling of letting love in: “Sometimes you plunge, and sometimes you walk slowly in,” she says. We discuss how that practice got her ready for the day and the ins and outs of several of the songs. We also get into the intentionality she put into the beat for Loose Future. She wanted to make something modern with a driving percussive beat, but Graceland was also an inspiration. CMA ended up at a few distanced drum circles during the pandemic that felt very healing and communal. Enjoy Courtney Marie! She’s brilliant and offers so much foresight.

Photo Credit: Alexa Viscius

BGS 5+5: Joshua Hyslop

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Joshua Hyslop
Hometown: Vancouver, BC
Latest Album: Westward

Personal nicknames: Do self-appointed nicknames count? I started calling myself “Uncle J Bird” long before I was an actual uncle but people didn’t really go for it. I still try it out every now and then. One of my friend’s kids genuinely thinks it’s my name. A few fans of mine once tried to build up some steam by calling themselves “Hyslopportunists” but, thankfully, no one else was on board. Oh, and my friend Brian once called me “Joshua Thighslop” after he saw a picture of me in short shorts but it never caught on.

Which artist has influenced you the most … and how?

I think it changes. I have definitely drawn heavily on the inspiration I get from Paul Simon, The Tallest Man on Earth, and Daniel Romano, to name a few. Plus I’m always finding new music that grabs hold of me and completely changes my lens for a season or so. But overall I think the artist that has had the deepest influence on me is Ray Charles. Not necessarily stylistically, although there is some of that, but more so because of the feeling his music and more specifically his voice, evoke in me. It’s been the same ever since I was a kid and I heard one of his songs for the first time. Something about his voice just feels like going home. I can’t really explain it, but every time I hear him I smile and it reminds me of how much I love to sing.

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

I find inspiration in all of those forms but I think the one that has had the largest influence on me is literature. I read a lot. In fact, every time I finish reading 10 books I post about them on my blog, even though no one has said the word “blog” since the early 2000s. I’m going down with the ship, I guess. It’s usually just a turn of phrase or a specific description, or maybe just the feeling the book evokes, but there have been no shortage of moments that I’ve reached down into the lyrical ether to find an idea or that last line of a song and come up with something largely inspired by a book or a line I’ve read. It’s also a great break from writing. Whenever I come up against the wall I take a few steps back and just read or go for a walk. I don’t try to force my way through anymore. I’ve never been happy with the results when I’ve forced a song. Reading helps fill up the word bank and shift your creative mind off of “the problem” for a moment — sometimes, just long enough to help you unlock that phrase you’ve been looking for. Sometimes, not. But then, at least, you were reading a good book.

What was the first moment that you knew you wanted to be a musician?

I actually always wanted to be a writer and had a really hard time calling myself a musician. I don’t read music and I don’t know any theory, so I’ve always kind of felt like a bit of an impostor when it comes to being a musician. But I do remember smoking weed with a friend of mine when we were maybe 15 or 16, which was right around the time I first picked up a guitar, and we were watching the Oasis DVD, Familiar to Millions, and we were in awe. After it ended we were both absolutely certain that we were going to be rock stars. I don’t know why or where that came from, but we were determined. So we formed a band and started writing songs and performed locally as often as we could. I still feel like a bit of an impostor sometimes, but they haven’t caught on yet, and I’m lucky enough to still be doing it all these years later.

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

It’s almost always tough. You get the occasional gem that takes like 20 minutes and feels as though it was already written and it’s just being delivered to you, which is an amazing feeling, but it’s also incredibly frustrating because the next time you try and write a song and it doesn’t just flow out of your pen you feel like you’ve lost your touch or that it’s all gone and now you’re finished. Most of the time it’s a bit of a struggle, like doing a pretty difficult jigsaw puzzle. It’s like, if you just focus and stick to it and don’t give up, eventually you’ll find it. But I’ve had a few that have honestly taken me years. In fact, I just finished a song last week where I had two verses and two pre-choruses finished since about 2016. They always came back to me and I could never figure out where to go. Somehow, last week, it finally landed. Now, I just have to hope that it’s actually good.

What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?

There have been many, but the first that comes to mind was when Mick Fleetwood invited me to play with him on his rooftop bar, Fleetwood’s on Front Street, in Maui. I’d never met him and I was only in town for a weekend to play a wedding for a couple who have since become some of my dearest friends. They were somehow distantly connected to him and someone showed him my music and he reached out about playing a show. He’d hired a cello player he’d been wanting to play with and said he wanted to play my songs. The three of us met a few hours before the sold-out show began and we played that night for around two hours. I think I’d maybe played with a band twice before in my life and only after we’d rehearsed extensively. But, magic happened and the three of us connected musically. It was one of those experiences that people call spiritual because it was so surreal it felt like it had to be otherworldly. I’m sure there were glitches as we played, but I don’t recall them. After the show, Mick said some incredibly kind things about me to the crowd and it was a moment I will never forget. The bar was kind enough to film the whole thing with GoPros and send me the files but I’ve never watched them. I got to live it and nothing can do that justice.

Yamaha Guitars Have Guided These Musicians to Their Unique Sound

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Yamaha is on a never-ending pursuit to inspire players to find their unique sound and express their own distinctive, individual musical art. The original FG180 became a bestseller in America, setting a foundation for the development of the L Series and the A series, as well as the FG Red Label series in 2019.

Yamaha leverages their second-to-none technology and traditional luthier craftsmanship to offer high-end acoustic guitars that rival other premium guitar manufacturers. In fact, Guitar Division said of Yamaha, “Their high-end professional grade guitars are made with attention to detail, and even down to their midrange and beginner series you will see quality at least as good as any other popular brand.” Meanwhile, Sixstringacoustic.com observed, “Throughout its history the company has been dedicated to providing novices and professionals with the high-quality guitars, without being too much of a hit on their wallets.”

There may be a number of artists you never knew played a Yamaha Guitar. Since the 1960s, Yamaha acoustic guitars have influenced and inspired many top musicians.

Designed to John Lennon‘s exacting standards in 1977, his custom CJ52 is constructed with a red dragon inlaid on the black body of the guitar. According to Guitar World, “The inlay work employed a traditional Japanese technique called Maki-e, a style of inlay not usually employed on musical instruments because it requires the use of a high-humidity steam kiln that wreaks havoc on the music-making properties of wood. Yamaha’s custom guitars builders found a way to pull it off, creating the dragon from a drawing by Lennon himself. The instrument is the most expensive Yamaha guitar ever made.”

Lennon formulated the idea of that guitar after playing Paul Simon‘s Custom CJ52. Jimmy Page toured with a CJ52 from the 1975 Led Zeppelin World Tour to the 1998 Page/Plant “Unledded” Tour. In addition his own fondness for the Custom CJ52, John Denver often performed with his beautiful L-53 throughout the 1970s (check out that beautiful Yamaha headstock in the video above) Bruce Springsteen‘s CJ52 from 1987 became part of his musical identity at the height of his popularity.

Yamaha made American music history as “Country Joe” McDonald played an FG150 on stage at Woodstock (you can glimpse it briefly around 1:26 in the video below). James Taylor incorporated his L-55 Custom and FG2000 into his exceptional albums and tours in the 1970s.

Yamaha’s current cache of artists is no less diverse or impressive. The acclaimed singer-songwriter Butch Walker, who plays an FGX5, was named by Rolling Stone as Producer of the Year in 2005. He speaks about his producing guitar in this video interview. In addition, David Ryan Harris is an accomplished solo artist and guitarist who tours and records with John Mayer using his Yamaha FSX5. He showed off the Yamaha A5R ARE in a series of videos for the brand.

Yamaha continues to capture the imagination of rising artists, including The Arcadian Wild’s Isaak Horn and Stillhouse Junkies’ Fred Kosak. Don’t miss our Yamaha x BGS Artist Sessions with both bands below.

Yamaha is not finished with their never-ending pursuit of the masterpiece. Senior luthier Andrew Enns in Yamaha’s Calabasas, California, custom shop is teaming up with the master technicians in Hamamatsu, Japan, to develop even more advanced acoustic guitars that will soar to even greater heights. The bluegrass community eagerly awaits their next level guitars that are expected to set a new standard of tone, quality, and playability.

Singer-songwriter Laura Jane Grace of Against Me! and the Devouring Mothers, who plays a Yamaha LL16 and CSF3M, said in a recent interview with the brand, “I believe every guitar has a soul; not quite a consciousness but pretty close to it.”  When it comes to beautiful custom instruments, we couldn’t put it better ourselves.

Discover more about Yamaha Guitars and their custom shop at YamahaGuitars.com

BGS 5+5: Wild Rivers

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Artist: Wild Rivers
Hometown: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Album: SIDELINES
Personal nicknames or rejected band names: We were very close to being called Wolf Island. Someone else unfortunately snagged that Facebook page in 2015 so we decided against it.

Answers provided by Khalid Yassein of Wild Rivers

Which artist has influenced you the most … and how?

Very tough one. We all have many different influences for our songwriting, singing, playing, recorded music, live performances, they’re all different things. I’m going to go with Paul Simon. He’s probably my favourite songwriter, and over the course of his career he’s made so many incredible records with entirely different sounds. He has somehow found a way to have such depth, while sounding so light and casual. Love us some Paul.

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

We all have been doing vocal warmups which has been awesome. It’s basically buzzing our lips for 20 minutes and it’s kind of silly and fun. Then we huddle up and someone does a pre-show speech and we bonk heads and say “TEAM!”

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

Probably movies and TV are the main ones that inform our music. Character studies and stories about people are so inspiring. Recent ones that come to mind are Call Me By Your Name, Nomadland, and Minari. All kind of slow burns about people just getting through it. There’s no better feeling than connecting to someone’s emotion. I think that’s what we try to do with our songs — pursue being as honest as we can with ourselves and dig into how we really feel. And then hopefully someone will connect with that.

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

One of our latest songs, “Long Time,” was a tough one to crack. I took breaks from it and came back to it throughout a year to really carve out the melody and find the lyrics that fit. Sometimes it’s fast and sometimes it takes a really long time (sorry).

What was the first moment that you knew you wanted to be a musician?

I think the moment I fully decided in my mind that this is what I wanted to do for my life was when we were making our first record. Going into the studio and crafting this big piece of art bit by bit was such an ambitious and exciting process. Everything coming together in real time. We had no idea what we were doing, and it was the best.

Photo Credit: Samuel Kojo

MIXTAPE: Jesse Terry’s Pure Seventies Troubadour Gold

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I’m not sure what it is about this era that has permanently ensnared my soul. Perhaps the raw, confessional nature of the troubadour has always reassured me that I am not alone. These are the songs that made me abandon my fine art career at the age of 18 and embark on a lifelong quest to appease the songwriting gods. The fact that all of these songs can be fully delivered with one instrument and one voice has always amazed and inspired me. It was wonderful to record a few of these classics on my current EP, Seventies Roots, part of a double album of covers that I’m releasing in February 2022 called Forget-Me-Nots. — Jesse Terry

Joni Mitchell – “A Case of You”

Was there any doubt it would start with Joni and a song off her masterpiece, Blue? I put Joni in a Jimi Hendrix-type category, where it feels like the artist was transported from outer space, in perfect revolutionary form. Her songs, chord progressions, lyrics and vocals have always been otherworldly to me. It was thrilling to record this song on my Seventies Roots EP. Actually it was intimidating, but in the end I love the song too much not to do it.

James Taylor – “Fire and Rain”

The blueprint for confessional, honest songwriting. It’s awesome to hear JT tell the story behind the song and know that he put every last personal detail into his lyrics. This inspired me to be vulnerable and completely open in my writing. Nobody sings or plays like JT. And to this day, if I’m having a rough go of it, I blast his records and let that warm voice console me.

Jackson Browne – “For a Dancer”

Another true original with an unmatched voice and sense of melody. I think Jackson is without a doubt one of the best lyricists of all time. His lyrics and melodies flow effortlessly off the tongue and never tire.

Bruce Springsteen – “Growin’ Up”

Springsteen is a legendary rocker and performer. But what really impresses me about the Boss is his songwriting. All of his anthems can be stripped down to an acoustic guitar and still deliver with the same emotion. There aren’t many songwriters that can paint pictures like Springsteen. With him, you’re not just listening to the song, you’re IN the song or maybe even one of the characters.

Carole King – “Will You Love Me Tomorrow”?

Like all of the truly great songwriters, her songs transcend and feel universal and timeless. This song feels perfect, whether you’re listening to Carole’s version or The Shirelles.

Tom Waits – “Shiver Me Timbers”

A truly masterful and utterly unique songwriter. Waits writes about characters and tells stories better than anyone. His lyrics and penchant for perfect timing are well-known, but I also adore Tom Waits’ gift for melody and harmony. His melodies break my heart and are married flawlessly to the lyrics.

Paul Simon – “American Tune”

If you created a singer-songwriter in a lab it would be Paul Simon. Some of the most endearing lyrics and melodies of all time. His songs are so perfect, it’s easy to overlook his guitar playing and singing, which are equally remarkable. Music schools often try to dissect his songs to display the craft of songwriting, but I get the sense that this magic simply flowed out of him.

Elton John – “Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters”

Over the years, some very talented folks have sent me lyrics and poetry to set to music and I’ve always been disappointed with my results. That makes me even more knocked out by Elton John’s ability to marry Bernie Taupin’s lyrics to the most perfect melodies, tempos and chord progressions. I recorded “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” on my Seventies Roots EP, but I easily could have chosen “Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters,” or any number of tunes. Way too many great options to choose from.

Neil Young – “Comes a Time”

What songwriter list would be complete without Neil Young? Neil is raw unfiltered emotion, live to analog tape with no rewriting or editing. That makes him so special. I can’t think of another songwriter that can cover so much ground with such authenticity.

Randy Newman – “Marie”

Randy Newman is a genius. His character-based songs are on the same level as Tom Waits and his lyrics are just as evocative, biting and unique. It’s impossibly rare to find Newman’s talents as an orchestrator and arranger in the body of a singer-songwriter. “Marie” especially breaks my heart. I believe every word Randy Newman sings.

Townes Van Zandt – “No Place to Fall”

A mythical figure in songwriting, Townes wrote some of the most beautiful and enduring songs of all time. “No Place to Fall” has always spoken to me and broken my heart. Was an honor to record this one.

Bob Dylan – “Simple Twist of Fate”

I admit, as a young kid I was more seduced by the “singers” in this group — artists like Joni, James and Jackson that could sing the phone book. But eventually I became spellbound by Dylan and my affection for him has never waned since. And as I listened more in my life, I realized what an amazing singer and communicator he was. His phrasing, his lyrics, his melodies and his hooks convey the lyrics perfectly. There will never be another Dylan.

Loggins & Messina – “Danny’s Song”

Kenny Loggins went on to have a huge solo career, but the music that he released in the ‘70s with Jim Messina in Loggins & Messina will always be my favorite work. My father used to sing this song to me when I was a kid and it felt like he wrote it for me.

Stevie Wonder – “Love’s in Need of Love Today”

Admittedly my playlist is Laurel Canyon-heavy and that’s what inspired me the most. But I also remember Stevie blaring through speakers as I was growing up. Again, one of the classic singer-songwriters that will never be replaced nor imitated. One in a billion. And on top of that, one of the best, most flexible voices of all time.

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young – “Our House”

I’ll end my playlist with this classic song that transports you to another time and place. You can almost smell the flowers blooming in this song.

Photo Credit: Alex Berger

BGS 5+5: Matt the Electrician

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Artist: Matt The Electrician
Latest Album: We Imagined an Ending
Hometown: Austin, Texas

Which artist has influenced you the most … and how?

As a songwriter, I have to go with two, often copacetic, though possibly somewhat diametrically opposed forces, Paul Simon and Rickie Lee Jones. The way they both use language in their storytelling has always been inebriating to me, and feels very much like home. They both often stuff words into spaces that feel, all at once, both incongruous and at the same time, absolutely perfect in their placement. It encompasses for me the way I aspire to be as a writer. And musically, they both have a lot of influences in their own songs from early ’50s rock ‘n’ roll and doo wop, which I’ve always felt speaks to me as well. I think that hearing artists that seemed unafraid to change or break whatever rules around the ways you’re allowed to use words and language in a song was always very liberating to me, and made me not feel not quite as weird writing about whatever I wanted to. And all of that freedom, couched in the confines of the pop rock idioms, feels comforting to me, like a cartoon Tasmanian devil wrapped up tightly in a cozy blanket.

What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?

As much as I’m a bit of a planner, I also love it when plans fail, and as a performer, I think I’m often better when I’m improvising. Once when playing a showcase at the Folk Alliance conference, the sound system went out in the room I was playing. It was a smallish room, but was very full of people. The sound guys were gonna go get some more equipment, but knowing I only had a short set time, I stopped them, and did the show unplugged. Everyone gathered in tighter. A friend in the crowd came up on a couple songs and sang backup, unrehearsed. The community vibes were in full effect and the warmth of that particular room is how I wish all shows always felt. I’ve played giant festival stages in front of thousands, and none of it compares to being huddled in a small room with people singing along with you.

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

I’m a voracious reader and a film buff. I’d say that both inform my music a great deal. It never feels super linear, like I rarely sit down to write a song while directly referencing a movie or book, but I know in retrospect, that quite a lot of both filter into the process all the time. I think I tend not to like looking directly at any of my influences per se, but rather, hope to allow them to seep in sideways, when I’m not paying attention. That being said, book-wise, I’m currently reading John Lurie’s memoir, The History of Bones, and watching lots of 1950s film noir.

What was the first moment that you knew you wanted to be a musician?

Watching my dad play rhythm 12-string electric guitar in a ’60s rock cover band at a pizza joint in Rogue River, Oregon, when I was 4 or 5 years old. A few of us kids were allowed to watch the first set, and then we were relegated to a camper in the parking lot for the rest of the night. There was a sax player in the band named Willie, and although I don’t remember watching him play the trumpet, he had one in a case at his feet, and I decided then and there that I wanted to be a trumpet player. Soon after, my parents found a $5 trumpet at a garage sale and gave it to me for Christmas. I played that same trumpet through sophomore year of high school before getting a new one and went on to study trumpet in college.

Which elements of nature do you spend the most time with and how do those impact your work?

I married into a backpacking family, so we spend a good chunk of time every summer in the Sierra Nevada mountains, and I love those wooded forests, always have. But my main draw is the Pacific Ocean. I grew up alongside it, in California and Oregon, and even being in Texas for the last 25 years, I manage to get back to it at least a couple times a year, every year. The overwhelming power of it absolutely hypnotizes me. I think it is literally the rhythm of my thoughts, and I aspire to my actions falling under its spell someday as well.

Photo Credit: Allison Narro