Tag: podcast

The Travis Book Happy Hour: Mike Ashworth (Steep Canyon Rangers)

Posted on by Shelby Williamson

When I asked Mike Ashworth’s bandmates and friends to give me a sentence describing him, it was almost comical how similar their answers were. Two of them were identical, describing him as “the most natural, gifted, and versatile musician I have ever known.” One even said, “when God made the perfect musician, he made Mike Ashworth; enormously talented and versatile, but also humble, joyous, and a wonderful listener…” I call Mike whenever I can to join me on the Happy Hour or Travis Book & Friends – and he was my bass player of choice for my record. He laid his heart out for us in this interview and my only regret is that it took me so long to get this episode out.

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This episode was recorded live at The Grey Eagle in Asheville, NC on February 3rd, 2021.

Timestamps:

0:09 – Soundbyte
0:47 – Introduction
2:45 – “Turn Your Radio On”
5:20 – Monologue
7:44 – “I Will Lead You Home”
10:21 – Monologue
14:30 – “Beauty In The Ugliest Days”
19:42 – Interview
48:00 – “First Girl I Loved”
52:06 – “I Want To Sing That Rock & Roll”
55:11 – “Palm Tree”
58:55 – “I’ve Endured”
1:02:50 – Outro

Editor’s Note: The Travis Book Happy Hour is hosted by Travis Book of the GRAMMY Award-winning band, The Infamous Stringdusters. The show’s focus is musical collaboration and conversation around matters of being. The podcast is the best of the interview and music from the live show recorded in Asheville and Brevard, North Carolina.

The Travis Book Happy Hour Podcast is brought to you by Thompson Guitars and is presented by Americana Vibes and The Bluegrass Situation as part of the BGS Podcast Network. You can find the Travis Book Happy Hour on Instagram and Facebook and online at thetravisbookhappyhour.com.

Photo Credit: David Simchoock

Humbird: From Dinner Table Singing to Dismantling White Supremacy

Posted on by Shelby Williamson

Siri Undlin, better known as Humbird, is a talented singer-songwriter from the Twin Cities with deep roots in Minnesota music and the land that surrounds her. Growing up, she was a true cold-weather kid who loved hockey during winter, but also loved music and feeding her vivid imagination. Her interest in music was nurtured by her parents, religious music, church choir, and also her Aunt Joan, who taught Siri guitar at age 12. Hockey actually led her to her first band, Celtic Club, which would play at Irish Pubs, talent shows, and of course, at the local hockey rink. They introduced her to Celtic music and her first live performances.

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In this episode of Basic Folk, Undlin shares her rich experience studying folklore and fairy tales, which greatly influence her musical journey. She discusses her intensive research in Ireland and Nordic countries, exploring how music intertwines with storytelling traditions.

Throughout the episode, Undlin reflects on her upbringing, her time at an art school, and her evolving approach to songwriting, blending traditional folk music with indie music and experimental sounds. On her new album, Right On, Siri is acknowledging and addressing white supremacy in middle America, as highlighted in her song “Child of Violence.” She talks candidly about what writing and releasing the song taught her about white supremacy. Touring has provided Undlin with unexpected challenges and valuable insights, shaping her perspective as a musician and performer. We talk about the importance of being open to chaos and disciplined in one’s mindset while navigating the music industry and life on the road.

(Editor’s Note: Read our recent interview feature with Humbird here.)

Photo Credit: Juliet Farmer

Alison Krauss – Toy Heart: A Podcast About Bluegrass

Posted on by Shelby Williamson

We could hardly think of a better guest with whom we’d conclude our second season of Toy Heart than 27-time Grammy Award winner, Alison Krauss. Arguably the most prominent bluegrass musician in the genre’s nearly one hundred year history – certainly the most well-known in her own generation – host Tom Power’s laughter-filled conversation with Krauss weaves through her childhood and upbringing, from her grandparents immigrating to Chicago (then her parents to Champaign, Illinois) and Alison’s first fiddle contests all the way to her first Grammy win as a young adult.

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In a rare podcast interview, Krauss is funny, charming, and open, her candor painting a picture of the bluegrass community’s lifelong support and the winding journey that has brought her to the present, as one of the most recognizable voices and musicians in American roots music. From her earliest hits like “Steel Rails” and “Every Time You Say Goodbye” to collaborating with Robert Plant, James Taylor, the Cox Family, and more, to her Buddy Cannon-produced 2017 album, Windy City, Power and Krauss talk about song selection, her early days touring and road-dogging with Union Station, and how it felt when her musical career really began to take off.

But these stories aren’t just about awards and accolades. They chat about many moments, the big and small, that define Krauss, the festivals that became like homes, and the bonds that music forged with her band, Union Station, and her many collaborators. They explore how Krauss creates on the boundaries of many roots genres – plus what she views as bluegrass and what’s not bluegrass – the authenticity that she’s tried to capture throughout her career, and the cultural waves made by projects like O Brother, Where Art Thou? and the Down From the Mountain tour.

From personal anecdotes about Ralph Stanley and Larry Sparks to her feelings about Billy Strings’ massive success to a jaw-dropping and exciting revelation that she and Union Station are working on a new bluegrass album, our season finale with Alison Krauss is truly one of our best Toy Heart episodes to date.

Photo Credit: Randee St Nicholas

Basic Folk: Community vs Capitalism, Live from Cayamo

Posted on by Shelby Williamson

We’re live at sea! Our hosts Lizzie No and Cindy Howes recorded this episode onboard Cayamo, which is a singer-songwriter, Americana cruise that’s been sailing yearly since 2008. It’s one of the best music festivals we’ve attended and it’s another edition of FOLK DEBATE CLUB.

This time it’s “Community vs Capitalism.” Our panel features Jenny Owen Youngs (musician and co-host of Buffy the Vampire Slayer podcast, Buffering the Vampire Slayer), Amy Reitnouer Jacobs (co-founder/executive director of BGS) and Natalie Dean (director of events at Sixthman, which presents Cayamo). We talk about both of these concepts through the lens of folk music and the music industry at large. Community building amongst folk artists and fans in authentic and unique ways will help drive your passion. Organically finding community through event production, online presence, or music promotion is at the core of folk culture. Community trust and cultural diversity are key in ensuring that folk music artists will thrive in our capitalistic society.

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How do you build that trust among your audience in a way that allows them to build trust with each other? How do you stay true to your values while being able to pay for your life? How have musical community leaders cultivated their particular communities?

Capitalism is our current reality, but it historically has not mixed well with community. Clearly, one must be pursued vigorously, moreso than the other! Or does it? Is there a way that these two can live side by side in folk music?

If you are listening to this or reading this right now, I can make this assumption: You want to support music financially and with your heart. Music is something that sustains our lives, but it’s also a profession and something people consume. Don’t worry, we “figure it all out” in this episode of FOLK DEBATE CLUB AT SEA!

Photo Credit: Will Byington

The Travis Book Happy Hour: Ed Jurdi (Band of Heathens)

Posted on by Shelby Williamson

I met Ed Jurdi at a taping of The Travis Book Happy Hour in March of 2021. Our mutual friend Nicki Bluhm was on the show and she’d invited Ed, who’d recently moved to Asheville, to attend. I was not yet acquainted with Band of Heathens or Ed Jurdi, but when we met after the show I was struck by his warmth and attentiveness. It was a couple years before I would get him to Brevard to join me, but immediately during rehearsals I knew we’d be friends and this would only be the first of many times we’d share a stage. I had a blast on this episode (as evidenced by my over-playing) and I’m happy to share it with you.

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This episode was recorded live at 185 King St. in Brevard, North Carolina on May 30, 2023. Huge thanks to Ed Jurdi and Tommy Maher.

Timestamps:

0:08 – Soundbyte
0:49 – Introduction
2:09 – Bill K’s introduction
2:45 – Travis’ audience greeting
3:31 – “All I’m Asking”
7:33 – “Bumblebee”
12:52 – “What a joy”
13:27 – “Jackson Station”
18:32 – Interview
34:11 – “South By Somewhere”
38:51 – “The Good Doctor”
42:45 – “Walking and Talking”
48:43 – Outro

Editor’s note: The Travis Book Happy Hour is hosted by Travis Book of the GRAMMY Award-winning band, The Infamous Stringdusters. The show’s focus is musical collaboration and conversation around matters of being. The podcast is the best of the interview and music from the live show recorded in Asheville and Brevard, North Carolina.

The Travis Book Happy Hour Podcast is brought to you by Thompson Guitars and is presented by Americana Vibes and The Bluegrass Situation as part of the BGS Podcast Network. You can find the Travis Book Happy Hour on Instagram and Facebook and online at thetravisbookhappyhour.com.

Photo Credit: Alysse Gafkjen

Jontavious Willis Says Blues Music Is for The Kids

Posted on by Shelby Williamson

Originally from Greenville, Georgia, Jontavious Willis is a blues music phenom. When we talk about the blues, the phrase “torchbearer” comes up a lot when it comes to young, new blues artists. I think of that word as a double-edged sword. When you think of a torchbearer, you think about someone who’s carrying on a flame that was lit long ago. It’s somebody who’s carrying on a tradition, but it also can come with restrictions. Such as oldheads telling you that you’re not doing it right or asking you, “Have you really paid your dues? Are you really faithful to the tradition?” And asking you questions about whether or not you belong.

Jontavious handles that double-edged sword with such alacrity. His writing is firmly contemporary at the same time that his playing is rooted in the tradition of country blues. He knows so much about the genre that he’s basically a walking encyclopedia of the blues. I don’t want to spoil the surprise, but instead of the traditional Basic Folk lightning round, we played a pop-up game at the end of the interview. I put different styles of the blues (like Delta or Piedmont) in one cup and various 2024 topics, ripped from the headlines, in another. Then we just matched them up. He was so quick on his feet.

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Jontavious is a great example of a new spin on a genre that a lot of people think they know already. He is so adamant that the blues is a contemporary genre and always has been. He made the point during our interview that a lot of the blues legends we’ve encased in the amber of memory were young teens or 20-somethings when they wrote their iconic songs. It’s really a genre for free people, for young people, for people looking ahead. It’s not about the past. Another point he made while discussing his Southern roots: When we talk about country, often we’re talking about a musical genre with a certain difficult history. But for him, and I imagine for a lot of other artists, country is a way of life. It’s about being out in the wild. It’s about having a connection to nature. It’s about sitting with quiet. It’s about having time on your hands to experiment with songwriting, or being a singer. It’s about a genuine experience of being connected to a particular place in time.

This interview and live performance was recorded for the podcast live at the Fort Worth African American Roots Music Festival (FWAAMFest). When I was a kid, my dad’s family used to have these big reunions. They’re from a North and South Carolina Baptist family, and it would be a big barbecue at the state park or in a church hall. We would have t-shirts made, people of all ages milling around, catching up. Often there would be an elder getting up to say a long prayer or make an announcement. This sense of belonging and intergenerational connection is what FWAAMFest felt like. Brandi Waller-Pace, the festival founder, is such a visionary, and they bring together artists of so many different genres, all of which fit under the roots music umbrella. There’s this beautiful link between all of the music based on the African American Storytelling Tradition and the Artistic Tradition. In addition to being able to interview Jontavious live onstage, this was my first time headlining a festival, so it couldn’t have been more of a special day for me.

Photo credit: Ben Noey Jr.

Jody Stecher – Toy Heart: A Podcast About Bluegrass

Posted on by Shelby Williamson

For the latest episode of Toy Heart, we embark on a journey through the primordial musical ooze that birthed bluegrass, old-time, and country music with the incredible Jody Stecher. A multi-instrumentalist adept in many styles and traditions – he even plays sarod, a Hindustani instrument – Stecher’s entire career is a fascinating case study in the interconnectedness of American folk music styles.

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Host Tom Power begins their engaging and philosophical conversation by asking Stecher about his childhood in New York City. A grandchild of Eastern European immigrants, he “discovered” country and bluegrass like many in his generation, listening to the Wheeling Jamboree radio program on WWVA and hearing first generation pickers like the Osborne Brothers and Jimmy Martin & the Sunny Mountain Boys, including “Baby Crowe,” a young, just-hired banjo player who went by “J.D.” Soon after, Stecher replaced mandolinist (and one-day industry power player) Ralph Rinzler in bluegrass band The Greenbriar Boys, before joining another group, the New York Ramblers.

From those early years, cutting his teeth in local, regional, and eventually national outfits to iconic albums like Going Up On The Mountain and his current status as a venerated expert and acclaimed elder in American roots music, Jody Stecher utilizes music and his expertise to demonstrate how blurry the lines really are between these folk genres. Power and Stecher discuss teaching, David Grisman – and collaborating with Jerry Garcia! – meditation and music, early sounds and recordings by folks like Bill Monroe and the Stanley Brothers, being a member of Peter Rowan’s band, his duo with Kate Brislin, Utah Phillips, and so much more.

Whether you’re a lifelong fan of roots music or new to these scenes, Tom Power and Jody Stecher’s Toy Heart episode will inspire, highlighting stories, traditions, and techniques that make bluegrass, old-time, and country music exactly what they are today.

Photo Credit: Eric Thompson

Aoife O’Donovan & Dawn Landes on Basic Folk

Posted on by Shelby Williamson

Aoife O’Donovan and Dawn Landes are long-time friends. Coincidentally, they both have new albums with strong feminist themes, so I wanted to interview them together and talk about WOMEN.

Aoife’s album, All My Friends, is specifically centered around Carrie Chapman Catt, a prominent leader in the suffragist movement. Inspired by speeches and letters, one song of Aoife’s, “War Measure,” is based on a letter of support from Woodrow Wilson to Chapman Catt. This album also marks the biggest project Aoife has worked on with her husband Eric Jacobsen, who conducts the Orlando Philharmonic and the Virginia Symphony Orchestras. It’s also the first record she’s released since becoming a mother. Of her song “Daughters,” she says she sings “as a modern woman, not wanting to leave the fight to the daughters of our daughters.”

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Dawn Landes, also a mother, has a broader focus with her new album, The Liberated Woman’s Songbook. It features songs from the 1971 songbook of the same title, intended to inspire second wave feminists’ women’s liberation movement, and modern feminism of the 1970s. The songs span from 1830 (“Hard is the Fortune of All Womankind”) to 1970 (“There Was a Young Woman Who Swallowed a Lie,” “Liberation, Now!“), showcasing how women of the past expressed political activism in the struggle for gender equality.

Both Aoife and Dawn released their albums during Women’s History Month, which led us to a discussion of what that choice means to each of them. We also talk about protest signs, the Taylor Swift movie, gender stereotypes, and of course, all waves of feminism. Chatting about the 19th Amendment, we acknowledge that this only allowed white women to vote, which then leads to talk of how suffragists and feminist protest songwriters – like Meredith Tax – contributed to and gleaned inspiration from the civil rights movement.

Aoife and Dawn are legends! We start with what their internal dialogues were like when first undertaking these ambitious and important projects and end with Aoife putting Barbie on blast. All and all, this one’s a winner.

Photo Credit: Dawn Landes by Heather Evans Smith; Aoife O’Donovan by Sasha Israel.

The Travis Book Happy Hour: Jordan Tice

Posted on by Shelby Williamson

The night Jordan Tice joined me in Brevard for the taping of this episode it was cold, wet, and dark – classic Western North Carolina in late January. We had the garage door behind the stage closed and the lights low. Jordan’s guitar playing, soft-spoken demeanor, and humor made for a wonderfully intimate and enjoyable evening for everyone in the room. Jordan’s a gem and this episode feels like an evening by the fire with a good book, dog curled up at your feet.

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This episode was recorded live at 185 King St. in Brevard, North Carolina on January 31st, 2023. Huge thanks to Jordan Tice.

Timestamps:

0:07 – Soundbyte
0:33 – Introduction
1:48 – Bill K Introduction
2:48 – “Tell Me Mama”
6:07 – “Covers are nice…”
6:24 – “Dayton, Ohio – 1903”
10:30 – “Bachelorette Party”
12:30 – “Why did you name it that?”
13:40 – “Weary Blues”
17:51 – “Matter Of Time”
21:21 – “Bad Little Idea”
25:40 – Interview
43:02 – “Trying To Get To Heaven”
48:33 – “Wild Bill Jones”
52:30 – Outro

Editor’s note: The Travis Book Happy Hour is hosted by Travis Book of the GRAMMY Award-winning band, The Infamous Stringdusters. The show’s focus is musical collaboration and conversation around matters of being. The podcast is the best of the interview and music from the live show recorded in Asheville and Brevard, North Carolina.

The Travis Book Happy Hour Podcast is brought to you by Thompson Guitars and is presented by Americana Vibes and The Bluegrass Situation as part of the BGS Podcast Network. You can find the Travis Book Happy Hour on Instagram and Facebook and online at thetravisbookhappyhour.com.

Photo Credit: Kaitlyn Raitz

Appalachian Bluegrasser Missy Raines Explains The West Virginia Thing

Posted on by Shelby Williamson

Acclaimed bluegrass musician Missy Raines is also a very cool and funny lady, originally from West Virginia – not far from the Maryland border and the city of Cumberland. First of all, I had questions for her about why people from West Virginia are so into their state. She gets into that and also explores the influence of the vast and varied bluegrass music scene she found there, as well as the scene in nearby Washington, D.C..

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Raines has made a significant impact on the genre, earning 14 International Bluegrass Music Association awards, including 10 for Bass Player of the Year. Her latest album, Highlander, showcases Raines’ mastery of the bass alongside an ensemble of top-tier musicians from Nashville – her home base for the last 34 years – and plenty of special guests, too, blending traditional bluegrass with innovative twists.

Throughout our conversation, Raines reflects on her deep connection to Appalachian culture and the Appalachian Mountains, which have profoundly influenced her music. We explore her experiences performing live at music festivals and the evolution of bluegrass music as a genre and community. We recount the passion her family felt for music, touching on the story of her mom and aunt crying their eyes out over John Duffey leaving their favorite bluegrass band, The Country Gentlemen.

Raines also talks about taking care of her late brother Rick, who died of HIV-AIDS in 1994 at the age of 39. Through that experience, she was empowered to help others whose loved ones were also dying and suffering from HIV and AIDS. With her unique blend of banjo and fiddle music, and her activism in a normally conservative genre, Raines continues to push the boundaries of the genre while staying true to its roots, making her a trailblazer in the world of Americana and folk music. Our conversation was in depth, fun and enlightening – I had high hopes for this one and I was not disappointed!

Photo Credit: Stacie Huckeba