Tag: politics

Ron Pope Chases His Dream On ‘American Man, American Music’

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

It may look rough around the edges, but Ron Pope’s journey through life encapsulates the American dream. He buffs out those spots, uncovering a hefty dose of humility, wisdom, and empowerment on his 11th studio record — American Man, American Music.

On it, the New Jersey-born, Georgia-raised singer uncovers moments from his childhood (like waking up before school to unload semi trucks) to the present day that have shaped him into the man he is and made his musical dreams a reality. But despite its title, the album is anything but exclusionary. Just like our nation’s diversity, American Man, American Music is a patchwork quilt of sounds, stories and experiences that serve to remind us that we’re all dealing with the same struggles and desires no matter what we look like or where we came from.

“I want to make music that other people can take and put into the moments in their lives,” says Pope. “The goal is that if I’m doing it right they’ll feel less alone. I want to put that back into the universe because I’ve taken so much of it out that it’s part of what buoyed me to get me to this point.”

This manifests itself in heartfelt vignettes centered around his family and recently discovered meaning of “home” on songs like the ode to his wife, “In The Morning With the Coffee On,” as well as “Mama Drove a Mustang,” an homage to his mom’s “let it ride” attitude that he wound up carrying into his own musical pursuits. But he’s also not afraid to get political on songs like “Klonopin Zombies,” a story about losing his grandmother that directly calls out the callousness of the pharmaceutical industry and sees him painfully pleading, “I swear there must be a heaven, ’cause where the hell else would someone like you go?”

Speaking by phone from his Nashville home between a mid-morning job and picking his daughter up from school, Pope spoke with BGS about home, family, platforming the next generation of artists and the experience that make up American Man, American Music.

You duet with Taylor Bickett on “I’m Not The Devil.” What spurred you to bring her aboard for it?

Ron Pope: Lately I’ve been finding so much inspiration in new artists. Growing up you tend to fetishize the stuff that came before you, almost like hero worship. Luckily I’ve come up in an era where so many of my contemporaries are masters, from Jason Isbell to John Moreland, which is really cool. But now I’m at a phase in my life where I’m getting more and more inspired by the artists coming in behind us. I remember first hearing Taylor’s songs, reading her lyrics, and seeing people making posts about sunsets and storms with her songs in them and was blown away. That’s what I love about music – you’re always finding new ways to be inspired.

What are your thoughts on the practice of platforming younger artists and what you stand to benefit from it as well?

If you make records your whole life, it’s going to be an ongoing challenge to find things that keep you engaged and excited about making music. It’s like a game that I’m always playing with myself. I want to find things about music that make me feel the way I did when I was a kid. Sometimes when people imagine an artist, they assume you’re only listening to people who sound like the same handful of songs that they know and that’s it, but I listen to all different sorts of music. Just the other night I was making pasta with my daughter in our kitchen listening to Dean Martin. On any given day I’ll move from that to some Tony Rice, Jason Isbell’s new song, Turnpike Troubadours, people like Taylor on Instagram, and then John Prine. I find inspiration everywhere and love that the music I make still feels fun and exciting because of it.

You just mentioned your daughter. I know family plays a big role on this record, from “In The Morning With the Coffee On,” to “Klonopin Zombies,” “Mama Drove a Mustang,” and others. Mind telling me about how that helps to serve as a through line on this project?

The central message is that we all share so many of the same sorts of experiences. For instance, in “Klonopin Zombies” I’m talking about this point in my life when my grandmother passed away eight days after my grandfather, leaving me wildly devastated. In life, we’re all going to experience powerful loss in that way; it’s just a matter of if it has happened to you yet or not. It’s the nature of living. My goal for doing that was to reach people on a more general level. If you are blessed enough to love people, then one day you will suffer because you lose people.

When I was first starting out, one of the complaints that music industry people would have about my music was that my songs were too specific and didn’t feel general enough, which was weird because for me those are the [kind of] songs that I always felt the most attached to.

Think about the Eagles’ – “Standing on the corner Winslow, Arizona/ Such a fine sight to see/ It’s a girl, my lord, and a flatbed Ford/ Slowin’ down to take a look at me…” or James Taylor’s – “Just yesterday morning, they let me know you were gone/ Suzanne, the plans they made put an end to you.” You’re in the room, but you don’t know who he’s talking to or why. It’s like, how many times in your life have you watched someone struggle with the expectations people put on them? Even though he’s telling a very personal and very specific story, you’re brought in and it reminds you that there’s a human being on the other end of this.

We got to go to all these places and meet a lot of people, and what I have found as I have done that is most people want the same things – they want opportunities for themselves and for their children. They want to know that they’re safe, and that their kids are safe and are going to get educated. We have a lot more in common than we do that separates us, which can be hard to see when you’re just watching videos of people yelling or complaining about how differently they believe your neighbor is.

How does that idea tie into the album’s title – American Man, American Music?

It’s inherently political to say “I am an American man and this is American music.” It’s inherently political, but I didn’t want to make something to bash people over the head, because it’s hard to write stories that are both protest songs that feel like they matter and are actually good songs. So I decided to, with the exception of “I Gotta Change (Or I’m Gonna Die)” – which is a pretty open rebuke of the pharmaceutical industry expresses my anger towards it about the opioid crisis – I try to speak in more sweeping terms and not focus in on the things that I was angry about, instead focusing more on humanity and openness.

I’m following myself from when I was a child in these stories all the way to this moment in my life. I’m singing about the car my mother drove when I was six years old in “Mama Drove a Mustang,” then I’m singing a little prayer for my family that I wrote while I was out on the road in “The Life In Your Years” or how my wife and I have been together for almost 18 years on “I Pray I’ll Be Seeing You Soon.” It makes me realize that I have lived the American dream.

I’m just a regular person from a blue-collar family born to very good-hearted, well-intentioned teenage parents who didn’t have a lot of resources and did their best with the opportunities that were in front of them. There was no reason to believe at the start of my story that I would end up in this place. All of that is in there because I am an American and I am an American man, and I am making American music, but I don’t mean any of that to be exclusionary. So many people that are using all of those words do so to exclude others and I have lived the American dream and want others to be able to do the same. On this album I wanted to focus on telling great stories that highlighted my journey and my humanity and what it took for me to get to this place where I got to as a way of showing that I don’t think it’s something that we should hold hostage. We should want other people to be able to reach these things in a nation built by immigrants on stolen land.

What does “home” mean to you – both as a physical place and as an idea – in relation to this album?

My mom loved us a lot, but we also moved often, which can be destabilizing. When I got to the point in my life where I was out on the road I almost felt engineered to do it, because I never had a real sense of home growing up. When I went on tour it felt like I was supposed to be there, which made it easy to wake up whether I was in Lincoln, Nebraska; Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, or Pompano Beach. For a long time I thought you had to live that way to write songs.

At one point I was living in New York and hung out with my wife during a break from the road, who at that point I’d known since we were kids in Georgia, but had never dated. Suddenly everything changed and I started feeling her no matter where I was and yearned to be back in New York. I didn’t feel at ease unless I was with her, before realizing that she had become home for me. I’d never understood that homesick feeling that others get until then.

I feel that even more now with our little girl. It’s different, because my wife chose me and knew what I was and what I wasn’t, whereas we chose to bring our daughter into this world. Because of that I feel an even stronger pull from home than I have in the past because this little girl doesn’t care that I sing songs for people, and at the end of the day she doesn’t need that – she just needs me to be her father. It’s important that I’m able to make a living with my music, but it doesn’t make up for the fact that I wasn’t there to witness her losing her first tooth and other core memories. You have to grapple with that every day if you’re going to do this for a living. At the end of my life, if people say I’m a family man before they say I’m a musician, then I did it right.

What has the process of bringing American Man, American Music to life taught you about yourself?

There are points in the process of making any record where you look at yourself in the mirror and ask “Am I full of shit? Or can I actually land this thing?” The content on this album, what I’m talking about, it felt heavier and deeper than some of what I’ve done in the past. And I hate the idea of taking myself too seriously. At the end of the day, I’m an entertainer; everyone who makes music is supposed to be one, no matter how much they call themselves poets and stare at their expensive loafers oh-so-thoughtfully. Whether you’re Bob Dylan or Jackie Wilson or Tom Waits, at your core, you’re fundamentally the same as a clown or a breakdancer. Your job is to bring people joy, to entertain them. Walking around with this understanding has always made me sort of sick to my stomach whenever I find myself taking any of this noisemaking I do too seriously.

But on this album? I surprised myself. We are making music about serious things and I didn’t feel embarrassed or disgusted by it. It’s serious because it’s supposed to be serious; I’m not being a self-important asshole. Somebody needs to talk about the opioid epidemic and no one else was doing it in a way that I felt satisfied with. I did it because I felt like I had to, not to feed some inflated notion I had of myself as a capital A “artistè.” So I guess I learned that I’m not full of shit. Or at least, not entirely full of shit.

Photo Credit: Blair Clark

Dust Bowl Balladeer Reboot: AI Woody Guthrie Releases New Songs

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

TULSA, OK – Generative AI company Altosphere released an album of “new” Woody Guthrie music, courtesy of their first artificially generated resurrection of the famous folk musician, who died in 1967.

“Artists like Woody Guthrie have been silent for years,” declared Altosphere CEO Blake Mundy. “So we thought, like, what if Woody dropped a new joint now? Wouldn’t that be sick?”

Guthrie, once a towering figure of American folk music, championed themes of equality, socialism, and anti-fascism and laid the groundwork for the socially conscious folk music later popularized by artists like Bob Dylan and Joan Baez. But apparently, AI Woody didn’t get the memo.

After initial testing returned some positive song outputs, researchers quickly discovered that their creation, dubbed “WoodyBot,” departed sharply from the views typically associated with Guthrie.

While the flesh-and-blood Guthrie was best known for “This Land is Your Land” and a guitar with the inscription “This machine kills fascists,” WoodyBot cranked out tunes praising corporate consolidation, touting a lower minimum wage, and lauding police militarization.

In one tune called “Good Guy with a Gun,” the bot crooned, “I’m a fella who ain’t yella/ This country’s headed down/ I’ll get my AR-15/ Run the leftists outta town!”

Attempts to course-correct the model with additional data from the Guthrie canon were not received well by WoodyBot. “I tried to give some feedback when it wrote ‘No Women in the Voting Booth,'” said AI researcher Pico Dhaliwal. “But WoodyBot called me a commie pinko and doxxed my whole family. From then on, I just let it do its thing.”

Other WoodyBot “hits” included “Take a Ride in the Cybertruck!,” “Jesus Was a Snowflake,” “Unions Make You Gay,” and “A Jar of Monster Energy (Makes Me Feel Alive!)”

“We still have some tweaking to do,” Mundy admitted, before adding with enthusiasm, “But actually, I think these songs slap way harder than the original stuff.”

Greg Hess is a comedy writer and performer in Los Angeles. His work has been featured in The American Bystander, The Onion, Shouts & Murmurs, Points in Case, and he cohosts the hit satirical podcast MEGA.

LISTEN: Julie Williams, “Big Blue House”

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Artist: Julie Williams
Hometown: Tampa, FL
Song: “Big Blue House”
Album: Julie Williams EP
Release Date: May 12, 2023 (single); June 2, 2023 (EP)

In Their Words: “‘Big Blue House’ is a song about racism and violence through the eyes of a six-year-old girl, who is told by her father that she can’t play outside with the other kids, but she doesn’t know why. Originally written as a poem, the story came to me after reading the news of Keyon Harrold Jr., a teenager who was assaulted by a white woman who thought that he stole her cell phone. It made me think of the conversations that parents of color have to have with their children — that you might be a child, but some people in the world will see you as a threat. I knew that this story was special and that I had to bring it to life with my friend and one of my songwriting inspirations, Brittney Spencer. I brought her the poem written on scraps of white notebook paper and together we created the song that you can hear now.

“What really brought the magic was working with Nicole Neely — an amazing violinist and composer who arranged the strings and brought together an all-female lineup of players, including Monique and Chauntee Ross of the SistaStrings and Josée Weigland-Klein, to record the strings. Together with Gabriel and Gideon Klein’s production and Rodlin Pierre’s mixing magic, the song and stories came to life.

“I originally planned to release ‘Big Blue House’ with the rest of my EP that comes out on June 2, but after the recent Covenant Shooting, the expulsion of the Tennessee Three, and the continued news of gun violence and political inaction, I felt called to release the song and its message into this world. I wrote this song over two years ago, and it is heartbreakingly still relevant.”

Photo credit: Mackenzie Ryan

Kacey Musgraves, ‘Oh What a World’

Posted on by Editor

In these tense and fraught political times, the desire for country artists to become more outspoken and opinionated has started to reach a fever pitch: After Route 91, will they speak out about gun control? Will they respond when Trump stokes hate on Twitter or refuses to condemn white supremacy? Will they support equal rights and reinforce that love is love, no matter the gender of the lovers?

Kacey Musgraves has always been one of the few outliers who existed on Music Row without having to play by the rulebook of being politically neutral — particularly in the arena of human rights (and, of course, marijuana use). She praised equality on “Follow Your Arrow,” from her debut LP, Same Trailer, Different Park. The line that gets the most attention is “kiss lots of boys, or kiss lots of girls,” but the more simple phrase of “love who you love” is equally poignant. Inclusion has always been part of who she is and her process — a bit ironic, considering that her attitude toward inclusion is exactly what’s had her excluded from country radio.

Her third album, Golden Hour, has been discussed and deconstructed as being less inherently political or mischievous (though, overall, she’s rarely been explicitly partisan in terms of left or right) and more about love … specifically, her relationship with her husband Ruston Kelly. It’s filled with meditations on kindness and romance and self-worth, and what it means to be alive, and on what it might mean to die, too, and the infinitely depressing and unstoppable passage of time — particularly the difficulties in enjoying a moment while knowing that its about to inherently be gone forever.

But in 2018, under a Trump presidency, Golden Hour is actually new kind of political, and, along with the songs of May Your Kindness Remain, the new LP from Courtney Marie Andrews, presents a different breed of protest song: one where there’s protest in kindness, in the appreciation of beauty and a sense of being grateful about the world. “Oh What a World,” a superb work of gauzy modernist folk-pop that balances both vocoder and traditional country orchestration in uncanny ways, is perhaps the album’s best example. “Oh what a world, don’t want to leave,” she sings, “There’s all kinds of magic, it’s hard to believe.” They’re simple words, really, but they sting.

Musgraves proceeds to lists some various wonders, from neon fish to magic mushrooms, and then moves on to a simple reminder: “These are real things,” she sings softly. “These are real things.” Fake news, Twitter wars, social media profiles don’t actually reflect who we are at all. Here, Musgraves is doing something just as mischievous and political as she’s always done, but in different clothes. She’s reminding us all that life is short and the world is beautiful. It a simple idea, but one too often forgotten.

Love, beauty, kindness, appreciation … these are real things. And, these days, they’re resistance.

Hangin’ & Sangin’: Grant-Lee Phillips

Posted on by Editor

From the Bluegrass Situation and WMOT Roots Radio, it’s Hangin’ & Sangin’ with your host, BGS editor Kelly McCartney. Every week Hangin’ & Sangin’ offers up casual conversation and acoustic performances by some of your favorite roots artists. From bluegrass to folk, country, blues, and Americana, we stand at the intersection of modern roots music and old time traditions bringing you roots culture — redefined.

With me today in the Writers’ Rooms at the Hutton … Grant-Lee Phillips!

Hey, how ya doin’?

Hey, welcome!

Good to be here! This is a nice little cozy shack you got here.

 

…

You’ve got a brand new record, Widdershins.

Yeah, out a week now.

Tell me if I’m getting this right: To me, this record is you reflecting back your experience of the current sociopolitical times in song form.

That’s pretty close, yeah. Sociopathic political maelstrom. [Laughs] Yeah, that’s it. This album was written pretty quickly — maybe November of 2016 into the early month of January 2017. Really encapsulates that time period especially.

Yeah, it just kind of barreled out of you.

Yeah, I mean sometimes I take my time, but sometimes you have to just get out of the way.

Well, the album opens with “Walk in Circles” and, in that tune, you sort of tick off all the people you’d rather … not make them mad, but …

Maybe you’re right, though, unintentional double entendre. [Laughs]

[Laughs] I’m sometimes smarter than I know! But you sort of list all these people that you’d rather be hangin’ with than the “righteous goons” which aren’t actually righteous — they’re self-righteous and greedy.

That’s right, yeah.

And then you proclaim that “You’d rather go down fighting for the water than start another war for oil.” Does that sort of sum up this moment for you, where you are in your life?

I think that’s a big part of it. It’s kind of like we’ve built our house on these sticks on the side of a hill and now the earth is shaking, and we ask ourselves “How do we deal with this? Do we add more sticks? Or maybe we have to rethink a whole lot of things in our life,” you know? Yeah, that’s the idea. I’d rather side with nature and those who move in accordance with nature. Maybe they walk counter-clockwise. Sometimes some of the old ways have their wisdom.

Oh, more often than not.

Yeah, when folks had no choice but to live in accordance with the earth and the stars and the animals.

…

There was an article circulating last year about how you can’t teach empathy. That’s something that you kind of have to have. And it seems like there’s a whole population of people who just don’t have that in them, and I don’t know how you teach somebody to care?

I’m not certain. I’ve seen such ugliness in the last week or so, in the wake of this horrible tragedy in Florida, and the ideas that have been floated out there, trying to take the wind out of the sails of these kids who have been through hell. And that’s a hard thing to understand, really, where one would come from. But I don’t know. I suspect that a lot of times, if we could sit down face-to-face, maybe we would have a different kind of discourse than we do online, where we’re just sort of hurling these Molotov cocktails at one another.

With some level of anonymity.

Right, we can run back and Google and get our stats together, and hurl another one.

…

You mentioned the shooting in Florida, and I do feel like this all-too-common experience that we’re having lately … your song “Totally You Gunslinger,” my interpretation of that song is you shining a light on what’s underneath someone’s need to be armed, whether it’s an ICE agent with a Rambo complex or a teen with social anxiety or whatever it is. And maybe I’m reading too much into it, but I’m gonna give you credit for this. I do feel that what’s underneath that is the toxic masculinity idea that is at the core of the violence, whether it’s rape culture or gun culture or whatever.

Yeah, I think you’re hitting it on the head there. Maybe this is a symptom of a culture where people feel fearful and powerless, you know? Where maybe your masculinity itself isn’t enough, you know?

Or what your idea of masculinity is.

Yeah, all of that. And these things are so easily exploited — our fear of the other, where we’re turned against one another so easily. We find ourselves scapegoating the immigrant or some branch of government, maybe they’re to blame. We’re always looking for the blame.

…

Do you feel like it’s enough to simply shine a light on those darker corners? Do we need to transform them, even a matter of degrees, and can a song do that?

I think what the role of a song is and the role of a songwriter, it’s like a tea kettle. When the conditions are such where the water comes to a rolling boil, and things are really intensified, then we whistle, we sing. We’re a symptom of that. “Wake up, you’ve got a fire on the stove!” [Laughs] But sometimes it’s the kind of thing where it will play its role in affecting change. I don’t think by itself it can. It’s just part of the human mechanism, you know? Shout out, sing out.

And serve as a connecting point.

Yeah, that’s right. I would hope that you would listen to some of these songs and maybe you see yourself or hear your own questions. You don’t feel so alone, maybe, that you’re the only person who has these crazy thoughts. There’s two of us. [Laughs]

One of the things that I think is a major part of this record, both in the writing and the making of it, is being fully present, in and to the moment, right? Do you feel like part of what we’re being tasked with right now is being fully present to history unfolding in a bigger way than we’re used to? A much more dangerous way?

More dangerous?

Well, they’re perilous times right now. I read that you were saying this [era], to you, echoes the early ‘90s and that time — in your career but also in the world. There was a war going on, and all sorts of stuff.

I think for me maybe the age I was — I was in my later 20s then — and waking up to, kind of late really, everything that was going on and wanting to express it and make sense of it. That’s the stuff that was on my mind more than anything. There have been artists that have really inspired me for years — Billy Bragg, for instance, R.E.M., as well — artists who can talk about the moment but also reflect the feeling of that moment, as well. It’s not a diatribe. It’s presenting this whole basket of parts that you can put together yourself.

I feel like you’ve done that with this record.

That’s what I’m hoping for.

Watch all the episodes on YouTube, or download and subscribe to the Hangin’ & Sangin’ podcast and other BGS programs every week via iTunes, Spotify, Podbean, or your favorite podcast platform.

Hangin’ & Sangin’: Ani DiFranco

Posted on by Editor

From the Bluegrass Situation and WMOT Roots Radio, it’s Hangin’ & Sangin’ with your host, BGS editor Kelly McCartney. Every week Hangin’ & Sangin’ offers up casual conversation and acoustic performances by some of your favorite roots artists. From bluegrass to folk, country, blues, and Americana, we stand at the intersection of modern roots music and old time traditions bringing you roots culture — redefined.

With me today in the Writers’ Rooms at the Hutton … Ani DiFranco.

Hello!

Hello! So glad you’re here.

Nice to be here.

…

Your latest record, Binary … I want to get granular on some of the themes because you have recurring themes going on here. And I love your brain because your music makes me think and feel so much about the world around me. So let’s get into that.

Alright!

Connection with each other, with nature, with life in every possible manifestation… do you feel like advances in technology have helped or hindered all of that?

Yes. [Laughs]

[Laughs] Okay.

Yeah. I feel all of that and more. Yeah, see, this brings us right to my ongoing meditation of late in my life which is that everything is binary. And, by that, I mean not either/or. I mean both. Always. All the time. Everything is made of relationship. That’s my new way of looking at stuff. Ones and zeros … it brings us closer together. It increases our information. And, yet, it separates us and isolates us and makes us less conscious through that separation and isolation. So, it’s all happening.

Do you think it just enhances what was already there? So, like, if you’re, prone to connection, it enhances that; but if you’re someone who is prone to isolation, it enhances that. Potentially?

Possibly. Yeah. I don’t know. I’ll pontificate with you all day. Let’s go!

Yeah!

Seriously, who knows? I mean, it seems like we are being pushed to recognize that it does bring out something that is very dark, something that is latent, in terms of that disconnection — that sort of road rage that happens between two metal boxes that doesn’t happen between two faces.

When you’re up in someone’s countenance …

Conversing with their heart! BAM! [Laughs] Yeah. I think it has a propensity to draw that out of us. So I think there’s a danger in it. There really is. Of course. Anything that powerful of a tool is going to be dangerous.

Yeah. I’m assuming you’re familiar with Brené Brown’s work to a certain extent …

Yeah. Yeah.

That’s one of her ideas, that you can’t hate close up, so get close up with people.

Yeah. Get to know your neighbor who’s too loud.

If that’s what it takes.

Totally. Mr. Rogers. He rocked that stuff back in the day.

…

Which points to the premise of “Pacifist’s Lament”… which is, who among us is ready and willing to step fully onto the high road? You have to have a bigger vision and a lot of humility to know that winning at all costs isn’t winning at all. So, how do we get there?

Yeah. Yeah. This competitive advancement of the species. Yeah, maybe, to some degree. But, really, cooperating is how we succeed.

I guess that song, “Pacifist’s Lament,” comes right out of that moment of recognition when I’m sitting there watching the NRA lady say whatever the talking points are and I’m so full of anger that I just want to shout at her. Then I remember when that kid shot up that church in South Carolina and the families of the victims stood before him and spoke to him like a human being, said, “I forgive you.” They said just the most humbling solution to the world’s problems. They’re living and breathing and showing us the way. And I have so far to go, myself.

But I think, as a society, we’ve slipped so far from this idea. We can’t dismiss each other. We just can never give up on each other. We have to reach out and build bridges over even the most turbulent waters. So, I mean, it’s a daily struggle for me as much as anybody.

The idea in “Telepathic” of putting yourself in someone else’s shoes, that sort of deep empathy of trying to imagine what burdens they’re carrying, what fears they’re facing … is that something you do?

Yeah. And you don’t have to think about it at all. You just feel it. You just feel it in a moment sometimes with people. All the distance that can lie between you and someone on the other side of the counter. All of the walls. All of the veils. I guess, yeah, connected to what we’re talking about, I just want it to all go away. I want us to all be family, but we can’t because of so much in society and history. It’s that searching around — and not even intentionally — just when you feel what someone else feels, it can be overwhelming.

Watch all the episodes on YouTube, or download and subscribe to the Hangin’ & Sangin’ podcast and other BGS programs every week via iTunes, Spotify, Podbean, or your favorite podcast platform.

Jason Isbell, ‘Hope the High Road’

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As 2017 draws to a close, one thing is pretty clear: This last year was a son of a bitch for nearly everyone we know. Jason Isbell was talking about 2016 when he wrote these words in “Hope the High Road,” but they couldn’t have resonated more in these last 12 months. It hit hard, right out of the gate, and kept going relentlessly, a perpetual run of the bulls through everything that once felt near and dear. American life has never been anywhere near perfect, but, nowadays, we’re only feeling more and more frayed.

But “Hope the High Road” isn’t just about lowering ourselves into that ditch of depression and disaster; it’s also about the simple act of choosing to keep going, to keep being a better person, to helping others, to taking the high road somewhere greater when everything around us is falling. Isbell’s been a steward to us all through this past year with the songs off The Nashville Sound that are all moments to look at our country’s inescapable patterns, our own personal crutches, and the promise that lies around us — even in the darkest places or death, itself.

So there’s hope, too. And there’s been hope this year, even from the beginning … with millions of people marching for women across bridges and streets in January, to Danica Roen making history as the first out transgender elected official in Virginia, to Doug Jones beating a bigoted, pedophile homophobe in Isbell’s blood-red home state of Alabama. It’s easy to look back on 2017 and feel despair and fear as we approach the falling ball of the New Year. Will things get worse? As Isbell tells us, nothing good ever comes from living life that way. So, when you raise your glass of champagne this Christmas or at midnight on December 31, look into the eyes of another — or just your own — and repeat this wise phrase: “I hope the high road leads you home again.” Maybe it just will.

Amanda Shires Calls Country Out on the Carpet

Posted on by Editor

The slogan tee has been around for a minute, but lately they have evolved from funny pop culture references — “My neck, my back, my Netflix, and my snacks” tee comes to mind — to thought-provoking and political statements. Some of my personal favorites include Third Man’s “Icky Trump” tee, Midnight Rider’s “Nasty Woman” tee, Rorey Carroll’s “DIY Choice” tee, and Amanda Shires’ “Nashville Sound” tee. They’ve even found a place in high-end fashion. Dior’s artistic director, Maria Grazia Chiuri, sent models down the runway wearing the titles of two different feminist texts, “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists” and “We should all be feminists.”

Slogan tees are a portable billboard, allowing wearers to open up a dialogue about issues that are often ignored. So, whether this latest trend has you rolling your eyes or loading up your shopping cart, you can’t deny its success in sparking curiosity and conversations this past year.

Singer/Songwriter Amanda Shires knows how to get a message across and she did just that earlier this month at the 2017 CMA awards. Ditching the request for formal attire, Shires stood tall on the red carpet wearing heels, fishnets, a pencil skirt, and a mauve tank top with lyrics “Mama wants to change that Nashville sound” (from Jason Isbell’s “White Man’s World” off The Nashville Sound) printed across the front. These lyrics acknowledge the struggle female artists face in mainstream country music, and Shires felt there was no better place to display this message than at the CMA Awards.

In order to keep the conversation of gender inequality rolling, I sat down with Amanda and asked her a few questions.

Earlier this month you wore a tank top to the CMAs with Jason Isbell‘s lyric “Mama wants to change that Nashville sound.” Why do you feel those lyrics were important to wear to the CMAs?

I feel like it’s important because I feel like there’s room to let more women’s voices be heard and there’s not enough being done about it in the moment we’re in right now.

What is the change you would like to make in the “Nashville sound”?

I mean, ideally it would be equality — the number of female singers to male singers being played on the radio. A shorter distance in the earnings between the two sexes, but that would have to start higher up because the industry is still being run by old-ass white dudes, and you know it could use a lot more women, a lot more people of color, it could use a lot more as far as diversity goes.

I listened to the radio and, out of 28 songs, I heard two women voices and one of them happens to be in a band that also has male singers, and I feel like that’s a step, but there are a lot of steps to go from. Okay one of the problems, one of the defenses that country radio stations have is “There aren’t requests for female singers,” and that’s a weird cycle, a weird catch-22 because if there were more women being played, then the audience would have more women to choose from as far as requests goes, but as it is, you can really only name two if you’re just a general country listener. Whether or not it changes, I mean, TBD.

We have to try and speak up for one another and try to do it together.

When you wore that tank, you were voicing a desired change for equality in a male-dominated genre. Do you think the lyric was also written with other country music minorities in mind?

I don’t know because I didn’t write it, but I do know that it applies to me, and that’s why I feel I can pirate that and take it to be mine because, whoever said it or wrote it first, Jason Isbell, that’s fine, but it is also like, “Oh cool. There’s a guy out there actually thinking about that, too.” It’s good to know there are more socially aware and empathetic persons out there than just those of us who are struggling.

I know that we can stand to see more diversity than just being a woman vs man struggle. I don’t even it’s like a versus — I think it’s just a thing that exists. I think if there was more education and more thoughtfulness in what was being played on the radio and not treating ladies like they’re a garnish or tomatoes on a salad, we could be getting a lot further. I feel like country music is behind the times in a lot of ways. Pop, rock, hip-hop … they play lots of ladies. Country? Behind. That’s not even talking about the musical part, which needs to change, too.

Country music subject matter is lame these days, too. That’s another soapbox, but part of the change we need. We can’t wear a tank top and skirt to an awards show while a guy wears a tee shirt and jeans? “Oh my God, someone call the E! Online!”

Do you feel your message was well received at the CMA Awards?

At the CMA Awards? I don’t know, but I know as far as fans of my work and people that are like-minded, it was well received. I don’t really hang out with industry folks, so who knows?

Why do you think E! chose to focus on the outfit being inappropriate and Rolling Stone chose to focus on the statement?

Because E! is base. Rolling Stone, I think Rolling Stone knows what time it is. E!’s not credible. No one thinks “Oh, I should listen to what they think of someone’s style opinions.”

You mentioned earlier about how the woman’s role in country music has changed a little, but is still stuck in 1957.

Yeah.

Kelly Garcia, Amanda Shires, Ledja Cobb, and Dave Cobb at the CMA Awards.

What do you think are the steps needed to progress a little bit (or a lot!) more here?

Women championing other women. So much in music is, “Oh, how do you explain it?” Say that there are 10 slots for you to make a top 10 record. They give one, if you’re lucky, to a female. And all the girls are fighting for this one spot, so naturally they’re sort of like, “Oh no, if this person gets it, that means I’m less than,” but it’s not that way. Everybody who makes something great is worthy of a spot. It’s just they don’t make enough spots.

I would say for every time they play that Keith Urban “Female” song, which this article is not about that, they should probably spin three-to-five female artists directly following, if that’s the message that they are trying to send. If Urban is really wanting to do something, he should probably really do it. I really hope folks aren’t treating this idea as a trend, and I really hope the ultimate goal isn’t to monetize this important shit. Because right now, to me, it feels a lot like, “Oh, this is a cool trend to follow. This is what they want. I’m gonna go cash in on that right now.”

Other steps would be to hire women engineers etc. I know a few engineers and women producers. I don’t know.

What role do you think listeners/fans have in raising awareness and affecting change?

Just have the conversation… They can call their radio stations and complain when women aren’t being played. They can count the songs and write down who sang them and have proof when questions are asked. They can also go support live lady artists. A lot of people claim that they don’t like a female voice. Well, it’s just they haven’t heard enough of them. Everybody likes fucking Joni Mitchell. Yeah call in, make things happen like that. Actually support live music because as hard as it is for a parent, a mother or father, to go out and see live music, pay to park the car, and buy dinner and all that, it’s the same amount of difficulty for a woman who is a performer with a child and all that kind of stuff.

I think to make a difference you have to be active and you have to actively participate within your community further than just messaging on social media. That’s not enough. You have to participate. You have to actively support and actively show up. You might get to bed an hour later, but you’re doing something. Anything you can do to support is good past being on a screen. I think that being in the moment and showing up with your physical self — body  or whatever I don’t know — means more and it’s more noticeable.

Rachel Baiman: Ain’t No Shame

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The night before Rachel Baiman and I spoke about her new record, Shame, she played her Nashville album release show at the Station Inn, dressed in a Little House on the Prairie-esque dress she also wears on the album’s cover. She sang about “old white men” looking happily down on others, about sexual abuse, and about preferring jazz over heaven as a final destination after life — all unusual themes among the typical messaging of folky bluegrass-influenced songs such as hers.

The night after we spoke, she played in Chicago, Illinois. After the show, she followed up on our conversation with this message:

“During a quiet moment, someone yelled at me, ‘We don’t want your politics, just play music!’ Here’s the thing: Music doesn’t exist in a vacuum; it’s born of human experience. My experience right now is waking up each day worried about how I will afford healthcare, worried about what is happening to our planet as the temperature rises, and worried about the hateful rhetoric against women that our president has managed to normalize. And as much as some might enjoy the luxury of not having to think about these things, I don’t have the luxury of not being affected by these political decisions. For me, politics is personal and the personal is musical, therefore, the music is political. No, you can’t just have the music and not the politics.”

With Baiman, you know you’re going to get a healthy dose of fiery fiddling, thoughtful songwriting, and music with politics, but you won’t get a single ounce of shame.

Bluegrass, Americana … these roots music genres that are so close to all of our hearts, that we all have such strong opinions about, we end up — whether intentionally or not — shaming people for how they create their own music or how they express themselves through their music. I know there are the moral, political, and social aspects of shame that you’re calling out, but how does musical shame play into your identity as a musician and the aesthetic of your record?

Being female and not being from the South, there was sort of a decision that I made with the writing and the recording of this album to not worry about anything — to not give any fucks, essentially, about other people’s expectations or opinions or concerns. I think the reason I was able to do that is because it was such an open-ended project, because I was writing and recording purely for the sake of doing it. I wanted to see what would come about. As a result, there was a feeling of liberation behind the project and that became part of the whole concept of not being ashamed of anything, of being completely comfortable with who I am and what I have to say. There were some risks I was willing to take with this project that were sort of new for me, because of the way it all came about — the way I was feeling during the creation of it and the lack of confines around what it was supposed to be. In that respect, the idea of shame, or lack thereof, really did become a bit of a rallying cry around the whole project.

I can feel that listening to the record. Through the voice of the speaker, as it changes song to song, through the production, through the songwriting, it feels like you’re somewhat lovingly flipping off all of these presuppositions that listeners have about a record like this. I know that you have these traditional roots — you’ve studied these forms of fiddling that come from deep within the “tradition.” Where did you get that gumption?

[Laughs] It’s come full circle, in some ways. I grew up with a super-political background in my family. I was maybe brought up to be a little bit rebellious, in terms of my political, social opinions. I didn’t really embrace that for a lot of my adult life. I went down this road of playing music, studying music, and trying to learn those traditions, which I think is important. You can’t just walk in and push the envelope before you know what the envelope is. So I went down that path of trying to learn these amazing musical traditions and being a student of that.

When I was writing for this album, a lot of the writing and recording process was happening during the presidential campaign, the primaries, and continued all the way up until the general election. All of a sudden, there was this kind of reckoning between the person that I was brought up to be and the person that I was in high school, when I was more of an activist and really concerned with social justice and politics. I think, because of the state of the country right now, it came into focus for me that it was a huge priority in my life, that these things are incredibly important to me, and I needed to find a way to address them. Somehow, in this project, those two aspects of my life collided, musically, maybe for the first time.

People sometimes bristle when there are conversations about “women in bluegrass” and “women in roots music,” because their immediate response is to rattle off the names of famous female musicians as proof that women aren’t being marginalized. What is your response to those people when they truly don’t believe that these genres are not equal opportunity spaces for women?

Success stories are not an indication that there has not been an extreme challenge there. If you were to ask any of those famous female musicians about their experiences, I’m sure they’d have a lot to say about it. It’s also about giving voice to women’s issues beyond women’s issues in music. There have been many amazing female songwriters who talk about these things, but that doesn’t mean it’s not still an issue to be tackled.

One of the tough things about the bluegrass scene, specifically, is that it’s very much an instrumentalist scene. That’s an area where women haven’t seen as much success and find it much harder to break in. I don’t know why that assumption exists, but it seems like there’s acceptance and embrace of the female singer. But, for instance, even though Alison Krauss is a fantastic fiddle player, her success was about her vocals. I think that’s often the way it goes. There’s nothing wrong with a successful vocal artist, but there’s still a lot of difficulty for women who are trying to be instrumentalists.

There seems to be this strange phenomenon where people think that, if a woman writes heartbreak songs, she’s undermining the validity of her voice. Did you feel an inclination to keep the political material and the heartbreak material separate? Did you worry that writing a fluffy heartbreak song would make the activist themes less strong?

I didn’t worry about it too much, in the process. I was just writing what I wanted to write about and what felt valid and interesting to me, at the time. I did have a review come out the other day that was hilarious. It said, “Unsurprisingly, this an album of almost completely break up songs.” And I was like, “No! It’s not!” [Laughs] I think that people are hilarious with lyrics, because often they don’t listen to the lyrics. For instance, the song “Take a Stand” is not a break up song, but I would imagine that this guy listened and thought, “Ah. This is a sad love song.” It’s a song about inappropriate mentor relationships with young women, not a break up song! There are a few songs that I can see that, if you weren’t really checked in, you might think they were just break up songs.

We’ve seen this happen before, like in this review of Miranda Lambert’s most recent record where the reviewer said the record is clearly intended to be enjoyed more by women than by men.

What the heck is that?!

At the same time, people think there isn’t sexism in this music, because there are artists like Miranda Lambert putting records out. How do you unpack that for somebody who might be reading this column thinking, “But … heartbreak songs are for women.”

You can’t write music for the benefit of other people. If you start to worry about people’s perception, if you’re sitting there going “I wanna write a song, but I don’t want to write a love song because I’m a girl and people will expect that” — if you feel naturally inclined, if that feels like the most genuine thing you want to write about, that’s what you should do. All you can do for people is to point out the reality of what you’re doing. I try to tell the audience what the songs are about when I’m playing them, so people know what’s important to me. There are so many ways that your music can be construed, not only with societal constructs, but with weird music “things” we all decide to put on it. [Laughs] I’ve been pretty lucky with some of the press really understanding the idea and the feeling behind the album. I’m glad that’s been more of the narrative than the “an album of break up songs.”

I also wanted to ask you about “Let Them Go to Heaven.” The ubiquitous, Judeo-Christian themes through roots music can be exclusive to people of different walks of faith or spirituality. When I listen to this song, I feel like I’m hearing you, rather than just the character of the speaker of the song, telling these more traditional, more Christian fans and musicians that they can go to heaven, but you’d rather go to jazz yourself. Is that how you feel with this song?

Absolutely. I got this idea from an Ishmael Reed poem. I love the concept of music as a spiritual or religious experience. There is this tradition of Judeo-Christian religious threads going through these music traditions and that’s just part of the tradition. I think it’s something really beautiful. I love a lot of the old gospel music and bluegrass, but it is important that this music is for everybody and inclusive of whatever belief one might embody. For me, that is a lack of belief. I’m not a religious person, I struggle a lot with religion, in general — conceptually, no matter what religion. I guess I have more experience being an “outsider,” not having belief, living in the South and not having bought into the general religious consensus that exists in the South. I honestly think that it can affect your hire-ability in certain bands. It’s an expectation that you’re going to be bought in, or people take that as an indication of your moral standing or your ability to be a good person or a good person to work with.

For a lot of people, whether or not you are religious in any way, music and art are things people do for no practical reason. These are things that exist beyond the reasonable, rational fear of human thought. In that way, they’re kind of on that religious plane. You can’t really explain to someone why music affects you the way it does or why it means what it does to you. That’s my way of saying, “I’m not religious. I don’t get it. But here’s what I get and I think you get this, too. I can understand what you talk about when you’re talking about God, because I have this experience. Here’s where we can meet and talk about things that aren’t reasonable, rational, scientific phenomena.”

Photo credit: Gina Binkley

Won’t You Be a Neighbor? (Op-ed)

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It all started in the Hague. I was backstage getting ready for the first night of tour with the Mastersons when the Dutch venue crew turned on a live broadcast of the inauguration. I’d hoped that touring Europe during the early days of the new administration would offer a bit of relief from the constant media bombardment that I’d been experiencing in America, but it turned out that the opposite was true. American politics are world politics, and so the rest of the trip was spent responding to questions about current events that had no good answers.

There was a sense of dread every time I connected to a hotel WiFi network. What executive order had been signed since the last time I had Internet access? Who was the president attacking now? What progress was being undone? Dressing room conversations often centered around feelings of frustration and helplessness at being so far away from home during such a tumultuous time. My friends were back in the States protesting, but outside of attending the Women’s March in Amsterdam, there seemed to be little I could do to participate. That changed after a backstage chat with Shovels & Rope in Gothenburg, Sweden, though. I left the venue that night feeling fired up and reinvigorated about the power of music and what I could do as an artist to make my voice count, and I decided the minute I got home, I would start work on the Won’t You Be My Neighbor? EP.

This group of songs is my attempt at channeling all of the anxiety and energy and negativity of 2017 into something productive and positive. I wanted to bring together a diverse group of artists I admired and create a collection of political music for a cause I believe in, but I also wanted to push on the idea of what exactly makes a song political. The tracks here are a mix of covers and originals reimagined for a year in which kindness and empathy have become their own form of political statements. I remember lying in a hotel bed in London watching the Super Bowl and reading about the uproar from conservative outlets about commercials that advocated for treating immigrants and the poor with civility and respect. Displays of human decency were being treated as attacks on Trump. (How that doesn’t give his supporters pause to consider which side of history they’re on, I may never understand.)

The collection opens with “This Land Is Your Land,” which includes background vocals contributed by Josh Ritter, but it’s perhaps not the version you’re used to hearing. I peppered it with samples of American political speeches from George Wallace to Donald Trump to highlight that the struggle for equality — whether it be in regard to race, religion, sexual orientation, nationality, etc — is an ongoing one, not simply a part of our past. I also used Woody Guthrie’s full 1940 lyrics, in which he denounces walls and bears witness to the struggle of the poor. “As they stood hungry, I stood there wondering if this land was made for you and me,” he pondered. We don’t teach those verses in school, but I think they’re important. Being patriotic means holding the country you love accountable to its own ideals and asking the tough questions.

The song feels even more prescient in light of the president’s decision to withdraw from the Paris climate accord. Guthrie’s not just singing about the concept of “America” here; he’s very literally singing about the trees and the air and the water. If these things do, indeed, belong to all of us, then it’s our duty to be responsible stewards of them. This land doesn’t just belong to us; it belongs to the countless generations yet to come.

Some of the songs I covered surprised me as I dug into them. Bob Marley’s “One Love,” for instance, revealed itself to be entirely devoid of rhyme. Separated from the music, the lyrics felt like a prayer or recitation (in no small part because some of them are lifted from the Bible), so I decided to recast them over a very solemn, hymn-like arrangement. I’d always been a fan of Tom Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down,” but with a professional bully in the Oval Office, the urgency of those verse lyrics hit me harder than I expected. And I’m not sure “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” has ever served as a protest anthem, but in these days of refugee bans, ICE raids, and border walls, I can’t hear it as anything else.

All profits from sales of this collection will be donated to the International Rescue Committee to help fund their efforts aiding refugees around the world. Everything was recorded at no cost in bedrooms and home studios around the country, and all the guests contributed their time and talent out of the goodness of their hearts. Even the packaging is made with recycled cardboard and is handpainted at home in Brooklyn. I hope that folks enjoy the collection and think about what the songs have to say, and I hope that the money we raise with it can do some real good for people who are in desperate need around the world. I know a project like this is a small gesture in the grand scheme of things, but I truly believe that every little bit counts in the fight for what’s right.

See you around the neighborhood,
Anthony D’Amato

For the Won’t You Be My Neighbor? charity EP, Anthony D’Amato created a stripped-down collection of reimagined political music to benefit the International Rescue Committee’s refugee aid efforts. Musical pals — including Josh Ritter, Sean Watkins, Israel Nash, Michaela Anne, the Mastersons, Lizzie No, and MiWi La Lupa — contributed background vocals. Donate to the cause and pick up a handprinted copy of the EP here.

Photo credit: tinto via Foter.com / CC BY