Tag: premiere

WATCH: Malin Pettersen, “Queen of the Meadow”

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Artist: Malin Pettersen
Hometown: Oslo, Norway
Song: “Queen of the Meadow”
Album: Wild Horse
Release Date: October 16, 2020
Label: Die With Your Boots On Records

In Their Words: “My grandmother, my father’s mother, died a few years ago. She lived on this tiny island and she is buried in the graveyard by the small island church. There is a kind of flower that grows out there called Queen of the Meadow (Mjødurt) and it has the sweetest most distinct smell. It makes me feel a quiet kind of happiness that is so pure and whole. After my grandmother died I tried writing her a song, but I just couldn’t find the words that could express how I felt about her. Words can only express so much — emotions are much more complex and textured. It ended up being a song about my own funeral. I hope I can be buried at the same graveyard, and I hope it’ll all align with the bloom of Mjødurt — because it holds everything I could ever dream of being remembered by.” — Malin Pettersen

Photo credit: Jonathan Vivaas Kise

LISTEN: Chris Smither, “Caveman”

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Artist: Chris Smither
Hometown: Amherst, Massachusetts
Song: “Caveman”
Album: More From the Levee
Release Date: October 2, 2020
Label: Signature Sounds

In Their Words: “This is one of those songs that began very innocently, pretending to be a harmless little ditty… then about halfway through it turned on me and showed its teeth, not so much with a snarl, just a simple expression of hunger and a desire to eat me up. I thought it was going to be easy to write, and it was, as long as I thought it was a ‘four stages of man’ kind of theme. But then THE WALL kept climbing into every verse, and things got heavier. Finally it consumed me. This is one of those ‘surprise hits’ in my repertoire. It’s a frequent request. Maybe I’m the only one who’s surprised.” — Chris Smither

Photo credit: Joanna Chattman

LISTEN: Mike McClure, “A Little Bit of Love”

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Artist: Mike McClure
Hometown: Ada, Oklahoma
Song: “A Little Bit of Love”
Album: Looking Up
Release Date: September 25, 2020
Label: Crow and Gazelle

In Their Words: “Chrislyn Lawrence and I wrote this one together. I had it started, some of the lines in the second verse were from a poem she was working on, then we worked out the chorus together. The past couple of years I’ve worked to let go of things in my life that weren’t doing me any good. As my partner, Chrislyn showed me how letting go is the only way to make room for the things your soul is crying out for — it’s like burning away the driftwood to get down to the essence. ‘Little Bit of Love’ is about what can come from that release: letting certain things die away, so there can be rebirth and ascension. Love, in action, is the only thing I know of that can make that kind of transformation happen.” — Mike McClure

Photo credit: Chrislyn Lawrence

LISTEN: Elvin Bishop & Charlie Musselwhite, “If I Should Have Bad Luck”

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Artists: Elvin Bishop & Charlie Musselwhite
Hometown: Elvin: Born in Glendale, California, raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma; Charlie: Kosciusko, Mississippi. (Both artists now live in northern California)
Song: “If I Should Have Bad Luck”
Album: 100 Years of Blues
Release Date: September 25, 2020
Label: Alligator Records

In Their Words: “‘If I Should Have Bad Luck’ is a song I wrote about something I know a lot about: being on the road and far from home for long amounts of time. All the ups and downs one goes through on the road are pretty bleak and empty if you don’t have somebody you love and loves you at home waiting for you to get back home. That’s why I say ‘Your love will keep me going.’

“Another line, ‘passing people’s houses on a dark and lonely road; looks mighty cozy but it’s a place I can’t go,’ is a scene out of my life that I’ve seen so many times. There you are rolling down the road in the dark and you look over and see a little home in the distance with a cozy light coming from the windows and you feel like there’s happy people there all cozy in their home. You don’t know them and they’ll never know you and itinerant strangers are not welcome there and this just makes you miss your own home that’s hundreds or even thousands of miles away.

“Same with ‘I’m making 90 miles an hour up down this highway in the dark; yonder kitchen lights make me wonder how you are,’ another similar scene. You can see that warm inviting light from a stranger’s kitchen window as you speed by in the dark thinking again of your own home and how you look forward to having a seat at the kitchen table and enjoying a home cooked meal… if you ever make it back home… one of these days… again.” — Charlie Musselwhite

Photo credit: Pat Johnson

LISTEN: Thomas Csorba, “What’s Left of Mine”

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Artist: Thomas Csorba
Hometown: Dallas, Texas
Song: “What’s Left of Mine”
Album: Thomas Csorba
Release Date: September 25, 2020

In Their Words: “When Beau Bedford and I sat down to write this song, we fell into a story of a man at a pivotal moment in his life. The speaker in this song is looking his lover in the eye and saying, ‘I love you, but there’s some living I need to do.’ He’s at a crossroads: Do I spend this precious time with the one I love, or do I go and find myself? The risk there is heavy, and you can hear it in every line he utters. I found a big part of myself in this character. As I’ve stepped into marriage, I’ve been thinking a lot about sacrifice. Wherever I devote my time, my love, my energy, I know that another part of me needs to be sacrificed.” — Thomas Csorba

Photo credit: Austin Leih

WATCH: Handsome Ghost, “Weeds”

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Artist: Handsome Ghost
Hometown: Worcester County, Massachusetts
Song: “Weeds”
Album: Some Still Morning
Release Date: September 18, 2020
Label: Photo Finish Records

In Their Words: “‘Weeds’ may be the brightest song on our record. The melody, the production — and the lyrics too. It’s about anticipating the inevitable end of a relationship (sounds sad, I know), but recognizing that you’re both going to move on and find your own way, independent of one another. In the simplest terms, it’s: ‘I’ll be here, you’ll be there — but I’m still going to care about you and I hope you think about me too sometimes.’ The song comes from a good place, a steady state of mind.

Nick Noyes has worked on all of our music videos for Some Still Morning and ‘Weeds’ is his latest creation. Typically the three of us will build up a visual concept together — but ‘Weeds’ is all Nick. He had a vision and we trust him and basically said, ‘Go for it, brother.’ Nick and I didn’t speak about the meaning of the song beforehand — and I’m glad we didn’t — because he interpreted it completely differently. To Nick, the song is about memory. About longing for a moment in time that is no longer there. The visual focuses on that feeling and explores it further…without explicitly referencing memory or flashbacks or anything of the like. I love how the video turned out, I find it very powerful and strange at times. And I mean that as a compliment.

“I also love that listeners, in this case someone extremely close to the band, can interpret a song completely differently than it was intended. That’s the best part about music, in my opinion. Once you put a song out there, it’s any listener’s right to make it their own and define what it means to them.” — Tim Noyes and Eddie Byun, Handsome Ghost

Photo credit: Mitchell Wojcik

LISTEN: Ron Pope, “Turning Back” (Feat. Emily Scott Robinson)

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Artist: Ron Pope
Hometown: Marietta, Georgia
Song: “Turning Back” (featuring Emily Scott Robinson)
Album: The Builder
Release Date: September 17, 2020
Label: Brooklyn Basement Records

In Their Words: “There are so many songs about those first few seconds when you’re falling in love and your brain is constantly on fire. ‘Turning Back’ is about something that happens long, long after that. Jeff (my writing partner on this song) and I were talking about grown up love (we’re both married and have little ones); at this point in my life, a quiet moment with my wife feels like a real luxury. Whenever we get those simple, sweet moments, we cherish them. This is an entire chapter of the love story that nobody ever writes about; here we are, deep in this thing, still loving each other with absolutely no intention of turning around. It’s different than the beginning, but it’s deeper and that much more beautiful as a result.” — Ron Pope

Photo credit: Blair Clark

LISTEN: Garrett Owen, “Souvenir”

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Artist: Garrett Owen
Location: Fort Worth, Texas
Song: “Souvenir”
Album: Quiet Lives
Release Date: September 18, 2020

In Their Words: “I wrote the opening guitar figure and first verse to ‘Souvenir’ a long time ago. I showed what I had written to a friend — ‘I put our love in a jar and drove it around in my beat-up car….’ He thought it was catchy. I started slowly trying to coax the rest of it out of myself and used it as an opportunity to take some really tricky chord work in the chorus and impose a massive key change for the second chorus. I have a lot of songs inspired by a long-term relationship I was in; the rest of the lyrics are a mix of abstract expressions of pain and emo-dramatic statements about how things with her ended.” — Garrett Owen

Photo credit: Melissa Laree Cunningham

WATCH: Alan Bibey & Grasstowne, “Hitchhiking to California”

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Artist: Alan Bibey & Grasstowne
Hometown: Walnut Cove, North Carolina
Song: “Hitchhiking to California”
Album: Hitchhiking To California (set for release January 2021)
Label: Billy Blue Records

In Their Words: “When I was 16 years old, I got the opportunity to play in a regional band that included a musician named Wes Golding, and the seeds of a lifelong friendship were sown. A few years later, I began playing professionally with the New Quicksilver, and we recorded the original version of a song Wes wrote called ‘Hitchhiking to California.’ That was back in 1985. So when we started to record this new project for Billy Blue Records, I had the idea to redo the song, and Jerry Salley and I both agreed we’d love a third verse, which was not included in the original version. With Wes Golding’s blessing, Jerry and I wrote a new verse and reworked a few other things in the song for its new release.” — Alan Bibey

Photo credit: Tina Farmer
Video by Solid Rock Studios, Point Pleasant, WV

LISTEN: Victoria Bailey, “Tennessee”

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Artist: Victoria Bailey
Song: “Tennessee”
Album: Jesus, Red Wine & Patsy Cline
Release Date: September 18, 2020
Label: Rock Ridge Music

In Their Words: “I first heard Johnny Cash’s rendition of this Rick Scott song while driving through snowy Tennessee a few winters back. I was heading down toward Leiper’s Fork in my little rental car, stopping all along the road to pet horses and listening to all my favorite country legends along the way. This song really sums up how I feel about the South and Tennessee as a whole. I love the little pleasures in life that Tennesseeans hold near and dear: family traditions and small town simplicities.

“My favorite verse in the song is, ‘We got a cabin in the country / And a creek that rolls nearby / And a dog that won’t even bark at a firefly.’ That’s exactly what I saw all around me exploring Tennessee on that trip — just a lot of pure joy and friendly folks! Recording this song was SO much fun. My band fell in love with the lyrics as much as I did. We tried to stay pretty true to the sound of Cash’s recording, but we sprinkled a little bit of our own sound into it as well. It was such an honor recording this song, especially because it represents a state I have come to love oh so very much!” — Victoria Bailey

Photo credit: Stefanie Vinsel Johnson