Tag: production

Open Mic: Charlie Peacock Pushes Through Chronic Pain on ‘EVERY KIND OF UH-OH’

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

With a 40+ year career spanning virtually every aspect of the music business – from performing and songwriting to production, development and even education – Charlie Peacock has battled myriad creative challenges. A standout in the Contemporary Christian format who was also deeply involved in the Americana folk boom of the 2010s (he was even the driving force behind The Civil Wars’ mainstream emergence), no problem seemed too big to handle. But for his new album EVERY KIND OF UH-OH, Peacock had to overcome an obstacle unlike the rest: a rare, debilitating health condition.

Diagnosed with Dysautonomia and Central Sensitization, Peacock has essentially been experiencing a never-ending headache since 2017 – seven grueling years and counting. Needless to say, it has upended the GRAMMY winner’s life, and while some days are better than others, the chronic pain prevented him from music making all together– until a flash of writing in 2023, that is.

Featuring 10 all-new songs penned in a two-week flurry, EVERY KIND OF UH-OH finds Peacock getting back to work, but with fresh appreciation for life’s messy beauty. Co-produced with his son Sam Ashworth, a peaceful mix of dream-folk and gospel match a tender, feathery tenor, as Peacock explores against-the-odds optimism with spirituality, purpose, and humor. In the end, it feels like a veteran songsmith’s statement of revelation; and a set of life lessons delivered with knowledge, not judgement.

Still fighting symptoms on the morning after a party celebrating the album’s arrival, Peacock spoke with BGS about how his life transformed and how it forever changed the way he makes music. Peacock also plans to release his memoir, Roots & Rhythm: A Life in Music in February.

We’re really interested in the way things like creativity and mindfulness and health intersect, so I’m fascinated by your story. Can you just tell me how you’re feeling today – both in a micro sense and in terms of the bigger picture with everything you’ve been through?

Charlie Peacock: Well, just for the background, I have a neurological disorder called Central Sensitization, which is a pain management disorder between the brain and the central nervous system about how pain is managed. So, my brain got tricked into thinking I am in trouble, and it’s sending me pain signals. Basically in the same way that if I scratched my arm on something, that scratch pain is there to tell me, “Hey, there’s something wrong with your arm. You might want to take a look at it.” Well, the brain functions in that way for all our pain management throughout our entire body.

So mine, this disorder that I have is that everyday for almost eight years, I’ve had an intractable headache. I’ve had an eight-year headache basically, and it goes up and down in terms of intensity. Sometimes it’s “You’ve got to go to the hospital” intensity. And most of the time it’s just sort of like a three or a four [on a scale of one to 10]. And I’ve learned to function through various methodologies and mindfulness and various kinds of treatments that I’ve done.

I imagine on top of the physical side of things, it has impacted your creativity. How did this change the way you look at making music?

Well, it got me back in some ways. It got me out of the music business and back into music making.

Really? How so?

At the point when I got sick, I was just turning 60 years old. So I was a 60-year-old man who’d been in the music business for 42 years, who was in writing rooms with 20-somethings. And even though part of my whole thing as a songwriter and a producer is that I’ve stayed relatively current, you’re still a person of your time and your generation. It’s like, could I make a trap song? Absolutely. But will I make one that is convincing to people who listen to trap? Maybe not. …

I was functioning more as the older, experienced sage that comes in and cleans up people’s songs. And so what the illness did was it put me back in that more childlike place of working on my own music and experiencing just the joy of creating, rather than coming in as the expert who’s going to be the song doctor or the producer who’s going to give that artist that extra 23% that makes them commercially viable or something like that. So that has been a real joy. And then of course, as I’ve said many times, it’s like you take care of the music and it takes care of you. That’s been the case just in terms of imagination and creativity during this illness, where it’s been a part of my medicine for sure.

Here we are eight years after the illness started and you’ve got a new record. What changed to bring this music out?

Well, [before] this illness period I had gone to Lipscomb University and created their commercial music program, and then became the head of the School of Music for a year. And it was during that time that I got sick. I was already kind of moving out of the producer-for-hire model and kind of had this education piece that was on my bucket list. So I had gone and done that and then I was just here working, making a lot of music, doing a lot of writing, working on a family, a screenplay for a family story from the 1800s, just doing a bunch of different creative things. …

[After the illness], I just had a willingness to say, “If my music career is over at this point, then I will have been really grateful.” And this memoir is kind the period on the end of the sentence. Then all of a sudden it was like I woke up one morning like “Is that an idea for a song?” It was brewing. So I started working on it and then a few more. And then I asked my son, “Hey, you want to help me finish this song?” I go out to his house and we hang and work on this song. We’re both super excited about it. And then he finally, after hearing more of the music, he was like, “Dad, you got to promise me you’ll take this seriously. Don’t just tell everybody, ‘Hey, I have a new record out on Friday and buy a couple ads on Facebook and call it a day.’ I think you need to actually do an old school release and get a distributor and have them set the record up.”

I said, “I don’t know if I have the energy for that.” But [Sam] said, “Well, I’ll help you.” And so he did help me. Really, the whole family has been a huge help. Sam came alongside me and he co-produced the record and we co-wrote three songs on it. And literally, it’s a 10-song album. Within 14 days. I had all 10 songs written. And it was just one of those times where it was just time to do that. I didn’t know it was, but it was.

Fortunately, I also had some pretty good windows of health that I could [record]. I had some days when I tried to sing where it’s just like, “Man, it’s just not happening.” But I’d wait a few days and get rested up again and go up to the studio and sing, and it would still be there. I was actually surprised myself, some of the range that I was able to sing at still.

Have the songs taken on a new shape for you or a new dimension, topic-wise and thematically?

Well, my great-grandfather was a fiddler in Louisiana and my grandfather from Oklahoma loved to sing all the Okie songs of the era. And I thought, let me just lean into that a little bit. So I would say this record is a little taste of that, especially the instrumentation is pretty much still the same in terms of rootsy guitars and just simple drums and bass and fiddle and pedal steel. And the only difference between this record is I really leaned into the gospel vocal sound. A lot of my friends that have been dominant in Black gospel music. And so that’s a difference. Narrative-wise, I was really trying to do this kind of literary thing that was a mix of plain-speak American roots, with these literary elements, and then also take a spiritual element, but not make it religious, and try to create a narrative that was uniquely American. I think in its influence, it’s almost like reading some of the classic American novelists.

There’s a wonderful mix of storytelling and deeper spirituality, for sure. Thank you, Charlie. I’ll just leave you with the big picture. What do you hope people take away from this record?

I think for me, even listening to the songs and seeing the reaction from folks, what they said afterwards is, “This is a world that I want to enter into. There’s something about what you’re creating on this record, this musical world, and this invitation to come on in that feels really safe and that I will belong here and I’ll be well loved, cared for, not judged – allowed to just be myself.”

And I think that’s what we want. I mean, I think that’s what makes our heart beat, is that we just want to be known totally. We want to be known like the intricacies of our personalities. We don’t want to be known superficially. And I hope there’s something about this music that sends that signal that, yeah, I do too. Come on in and listen and see if you find some of that here.

Photo Credit: Jeremy Cowart

Nobody Tells It Like It Is, Except Perhaps Anna Tivel

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

“Nobody tells it like it is,” Anna Tivel sings on “Disposable Camera,” the first single from her new album, Living Thing. The song radiates with the joy and pain of reality, climaxing with the lines:

That big black train is rolling
And that deep down scream is growing
A hurricane come howling
A shot heard from the mountain
A blessing and a burden
I swear this will be worth it…

Which are followed by a melodic and cathartic yell. I don’t know how I first came across Tivel’s music, but when I found the song “Blue World,” I got stuck on it. I listened to it over and over, trying to take in every aspect of it, break it into pieces, open it up like a watch so that I could understand how this perfect song ticked. It is still the most beautiful meditation on dying that I’ve ever heard. “You come to the heavy gate and you open it all alone…” is a line I think about often. To me, it sounded like she herself was telling it like it is.

A few weeks after discovering “Blue World,” I was on tour with Kris Drever, who is one of my favorite folk musicians from Scotland. We were trading new music discoveries and I played him that song, after which he became obsessed with it. We traveled around listening to “Blue World” and talking about death for the rest of the tour. Giving someone a new song to love is a special kind of transaction. It’s a gift for the new listener, but also a point of pride to have found something that someone else also finds meaning in – especially when the recipient of said gift is a musician you admire. New song discoveries are an unmatchable currency, a communication beyond words.

“Blue World” sent me on a journey through Tivel’s catalogue, with hours spent listening to Small Believer, The Question, and Outsiders, before the release of her latest record on March 31. With Tivel’s latest collection, I have to come to the conclusion that someone does tell it like it is and that person is Anna Tivel. I spoke with her over the phone for BGS about the inspiration behind her songs and the unique circumstances that led to her production choices on Living Thing.

I’ve been a fan of your work for a long time and I’m curious to know what feels new and different about this record than your past work?

Anna Tivel: I think there are two main things. I’ve worked with Shane Leonard before [who produced Outsiders and The Question], but this is the deepest collaboration we’ve ever done. There is so much of his heart and his sonic experimentation in these songs.

We made this squarely in the pandemic years, so there was no way to call upon a band for live tracking. It was just me and him in his studio. He went insane trying all kinds of sounds, playing all different instruments, and I scribbled extra verses on napkins as I heard what he was coming up with. We worked all day, every day and I slept on his couch for a month. I tried to say yes to everything and I learned so much. I really feel like the sounds feel different than what we’ve worked on before.

The other thing is that going through that year, I was craving soaring choruses… more melody and rise and rhythmic happenings that I normally do. Maybe it was a result of just sitting and looking at the same window for so long. I usually write long and dark monotonous stories with no chorus at all, but I think I craved a little more hope and joy. In general I feel like less people died on this album than usually die my albums… it’s still melancholy as fuck though.

Knowing that these songs were written and recorded during that very existential time, and now that they are being released into a different time, do these songs feel different to you than they once did?

Yeah, it’s interesting, the whole process of putting out a record. I really got stuck in the machine for a little while so it took quite a long time for this album to come out.

They are older songs now in my soul, but the project still feels really fresh. I think because Shane drew them into this more alive, sonic world. It was really exciting and fun to explore joy and rhythm and movement, especially in that isolated time. It felt good to have some hope and just wiggle around and try to feel the good parts of being a human.

So coming back to it now, it feels new and exciting to take them out on the road with a band. It’s making me realize it’s fun to have some songs that we can really move into, rather than building up from the ground.

One of my favorite tracks from your new record is “Desperation” – “Real life is far from fair, you tried and tried and got nowhere/ It’s like somebody rigged the whole damn thing/ Bloody knuckles, empty hands, you want to fight, but all you ever had/ Is desperation.” Can you tell me a little about what led to that song?

I think that one came out of the heart of that pandemic time, watching people, and having an awareness of how close many folks are to the edge, simultaneously knowing how the people pulling the strings aren’t the ones close to the edge.

Maybe your kid gets sick, and you miss work, and then that’s that, you’re evicted, and into the car. You don’t choose what you’re born into and if you’re born with the short end of the stick, it’s so hard to imagine anything but that reality.

You can see getting stuck, because that imagination isn’t generously shared by the people that own it. But if people that are living in a different world reach out to help it can really change the situation. Sometimes that means helping people believe that a different reality is possible. You have to go into your mind to create what you need. It’s sort of the same idea as representation, in the sense that if you’ve seen people that feel like you in very different situations than you, you can imagine yourself into a different situation.

I want to work on making that imagination more widely available.

That’s an amazing point, and a great one to keep in mind especially for artists. Artists can and have played that role for people, I believe. Does this same idea carry through for the song, “Disposable Camera?”

I like songwriting because you’re sort of always looking inward… You think you’re reflecting the world, but so much of yourself gets in there and the things that you’re learning into. A lot of this album is about getting free, getting loose of the way that you’ve  taken in that it “should be,” the way that you should express yourself or the way you should move…

A lot of friends in the pandemic were having kids or trying to have kids and I was thinking about how, when we were all born, our parents were these people. [I was] realizing that everyone making babies has no idea what is going [to happen] and it’s kind of beautiful that it’s this big wheel of nobody knowing what they’re doing. Everyone is kinda hoping that someone else will be like “this is what it is,” but maybe the not knowing is actually a freedom. It feels scary to think you’re supposed to be certain, but you aren’t yet. The freedom is that nobody actually is certain and that’s not going to change.

I was listening to your song “Kindness of a Liar” and thinking about how important escapism was in 2020 and 2021. How badly I needed books and TV shows to get lost in so that I could come back to the present and have energy to cope with what was happening. Is that what this song is about to you?

In this batch of songs I was thinking a lot about what is truth, what is honest, what is listening, and what is being able to have nuance in all of those realms. You don’t just stay certain. To be able to move and shift and read situations and try to be learning in real time, messily, is very different from saying, “This is a fact and I’m going to hit everyone over the head with it until I’m proven wrong, and then I’m going to pretend I never said it.”

To try and tell stories to one another that are compassionate and messy – sometimes telling a story that might not be true is the most gentle and kind thing you can do while something hard is happening.

I think it’s about recognizing how much we crave each other’s stories and being really aware of how we paint the world for each other. The more artfully and more compassionately we tell each other’s stories the more we connect, and it’s not about trying to prove our point.

The most loving thing you can do is to share your mind and heart with people in the most nuanced way. And maybe there’s some fiction and lore in that.

Photo Credit: Kale Chesney

Mike Post: From Hootenannies at the Troubadour to ‘Law & Order’ to Eddie Van Halen

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Whether or not you realize it, the majority of people reading this have been listening to Mike Post’s music for a very long time. Like, a lot of it.

Post is the guy behind the theme songs to Magnum P.I., Hill Street Blues, Quantum Leap, The Greatest American Hero, and countless others. He even invented the famous Law & Order “DUN-DUN.”

But that’s only part of the story. Post began his 60+ year career as a member of the mythologized Wrecking Crew, becoming a Grammy-winning record producer who has worked with the likes of Kenny Rogers, Dolly Parton, and Van Halen whilst finding his niche in the television world with frequent collaborators Dick Wolf and Steven Bochco.

Now, Mike Post adds another chapter to his biographical tome, having released Message from the Mountains / Echoes of the Delta – an ambitious double album that blends his love of bluegrass and blues with his orchestral pedigree.

BGS co-founder Amy Reitnouer Jacobs sat down with Mike for an in-depth conversation, covering everything from Aaron Copeland to Earl Scruggs to Eddie Van Halen.

Amy Reitnouer Jacobs: Mike, what was your introduction to roots music? Because there is a long history, I think, of bluegrass and folk in Los Angeles that a lot of people don’t expect or understand. How did you get into bluegrass and Delta blues specifically?

Mike Post: I think I was first attracted to the harmonies and the melodies that are common to Irish music, to bluegrass, to the blues. There’s this modal sort of a thing that all those genres share, right?

Maybe even as far back as lullabies… My mom used to sing me this Irish lullaby, “Too Ra Loo Ra Loo Ral,” and I still remember it. And then I recall the first time I heard The New World Symphony and Grand Canyon Suite, things my parents were playing when I was 4 years old.

But, like every other white middle class kid from the Valley, when [Flatt & Scruggs’] Foggy Mountain Banjo album came out, it was like somebody handing you the Bible or the encyclopedia or something. I had to understand everything about it.

It wasn’t like [just] one thing that happened. It was a mishmash of The Kings: B.B., Albert, and Freddie. Flatt & Scruggs led me back to Monroe, which led me to Jim & Jesse and the Osbornes, and then I just drowned in this stuff.

This is not just a roots music album though, and I think you’ve kind of just touched on this in saying about how many different things you were pulling from. This is a record that has a really epic scale, often only saved for symphonic pieces and movie scores. It evoked Aaron Copeland the second I heard it. But it also has some of the most legit roots music players in Los Angeles on there, like Gabe Witcher, Herb Petersen, and Patrick Sauber. How did you get connected to those folks for the project? Did you already know them?

I met Herb when I was 18. You know, he just moved down from Berkeley. He’s about six months older than me, but we actually met at Hootenanny Night at the Troubadour. He was in a band called the Pine Valley Boys from Northern California, I had this five piece folk group; we were sort of like an expanded Peter, Paul and Mary. I had a Gibson 12-string and I’m a finger picker.

I heard [Herb] before I met him and I went, “Who was that?” And through Herb, I’ve known Gabe since he was a little boy.

Actually, I hadn’t worked with [Gabe Witcher’s brother], Mike Witcher before. And I’ve heard and worked with the best guys. So when I heard Mike, it was shattering to me because he is so soulful. You know, he’s not the flashiest, overplayer in the world. There’s a lot of them out there that have brought it to a place of technicality and speed that phenomenal. But Mike’s got the thing that Josh [Graves] had, which is the way he vibrates.

You can’t find much more authentic, better bluegrass players than the guys that are on this record. And the reason both the blues piece and the bluegrass piece are weird is because I’m weird.

You know, I’m a rock and roller folky that learned how to read, write, and orchestrate. So the idea for this was an odd idea. It only happened because my TV shows were on the beach, because of COVID. So I’m sitting there with nothing to do and I’m driving down to the desert to play golf. And I go down this Spotify bluegrass rabbit hole. I heard a couple of things I hadn’t heard before. And it just struck me.

I said, “You haven’t done anything scared you in a long time.” Not that I’ve been coasting – I’ve been writing music for television shows and producing some records all this time. But as a composer, you know, I’m the guy that at 23 years of age did this record, Classical Gas, which was supposed to be kind of off-the-beaten-path. I thought, well, why can’t you combine the orchestra and a bluegrass rhythm section? Not just a single fiddle player or a dobro player or a banjo player or a guitar player. Why don’t you put the five guys in front and have a conversation?

To have those things feed off of each other is really the formality of an orchestra and the improvisation that comes with bluegrass. It works really beautifully.

Thank you. I didn’t even know whether this was going to work. But I did it the old way… I got my drafting board out and my papers and pencils and score paper and did it by hand.

The we went into the Sony scoring stage in Culver City and had 80 players, genius orchestral players come in and it was thrilling.

Because orchestral recording, at least for television scoring, is more rare these days, has this inspired you to want to do more? To not just compose for picture?

It certainly was a different kind of rewarding. You know, working with pictures is fun because it’s so collaborative. They bring me their art and I put my art with it. Hopefully the whole thing’s more artful, right? But the truth is, I’m so satiated. I’ve been a member of the union since I was 16. I’ll be 80 in a few months. I’m still working. I was in here this morning working on the last episode of the season of SVU and still enjoying it!

One thing that I have noticed throughout your career is you consistently surround yourself with great collaborators that also seem like friends. First there’s your time starting with the Wrecking Crew and producing Kenny Rogers & the First Edition. Then there’s your ongoing projects with Steven Bochco, Stephen Cannell, Dick Wolf. Can you talk about those friendships and returning to work with people that you love and trust over and over again?

You’re never going to find anybody more fortunate than me. I am – it’s a corny word cause everybody overuses it – but I am blessed. It’s supposed to be a treacherous business, right? Supposed to be a business of people elbowing each other out of the way and climbing over bodies and litigation and getting screwed by the man and by the club owner and the record company. That never happened to me, none of it. I’ve been treated great. So why not give that back in double?

You know, I’ve been so fortunate to meet Steve Cannell before he’d ever sold a script. To be musical partners with a guy like Pete Carpenter… we worked together for 17 years. We wrote 1700 hours of music together for TV and never had an unkind word. So, you know, that’s the way my life has gone. Cannell led me to Bochco, Bochco led me to Dick Wolf. Cannell, Bellisario, Bochco, Dick Wolf. We did all kinds of stuff together, musically and film-wise and fun-wise and business-wise.

I just have never embraced the competitiveness. I’ve either made dear friends with the people I work with, or hired my friends, or the guys that hired me were already my friends. Wow, who gets to do that?

I moved out here to LA to work in film and then kind of stumbled into my musical life. But the whole time, I only wanted to surround myself with good people. It’s not about the competition. And it always surprised me, I guess, how revolutionary that seems to some people.

Speaking of working with your friends, I would be remiss if I didn’t talk about your work with Eddie Van Halen. Eddie is such a consistently referenced and venerated artist by some of the biggest bluegrassers today, like Billy Strings and Bryan Sutton. I read that you and Ed were friends before you produced Van Halen III. What was it about your musical sensibilities that attracted you to work together?

Let’s be honest. Eddie Van Halen is not the first martian that landed on the face of the planet, okay? Look at Mozart! Fast forward… how did Earl Scruggs sit there and go… [imitates the banjo]. Every once in a while, a genius shows up and changes everything.

After becoming friends, Eddie turned to me and he said, “Hey, will you help me with something?” I said, “Sure. What?” And he said, “I’d like to do one sober.”

I’ve never done any drugs. And Eddie knew that. So he said, you know, you can help me do this without any substance.
And I went, am I producing an album or am I the sergeant at arms at the door? Am I your sponsor? And he goes, man, I don’t know, both? And I went, all right, fuck it. Let’s go.

Basically all I did was get out of the way. It’s not a very good album. It’s nobody’s fault. It was an experiment. Unfortunately, [Alex Van Halen] was going through a terrible time in his life. So Al didn’t play on that. Eddie played everything. It just didn’t have magic. That’s all.

Ed was right on that trail of genius martians that look at music a different way. And no one else is ever going to do it like that. That’s just once. When you study Mozart, you look at it on paper and you go, “How in the world did that happen? Look at that.”

It doesn’t make sense, actually. That’s the beauty of it.

Exactly. It doesn’t make sense.

The last thing I wanted to say is what a fan I am and to let you know how grateful I am for taking the time today. I was going through your catalog last night and realizing how many of the songs you have written have been true soundtracks of my life. I kid you not when I tell you that “Hill Street Blues” is still my ringtone on my phone. So, uh, I just need you to know that I still love that song.

That really makes me feel really happy! Sometimes [I look back at my career and] I don’t know that I actually believe that emotionally; I believe it intellectually. I go, “Oh yeah, that’s me up on the TV.” Like, did this really happen to me?

Photo Credit: Lawrence Sumulong

Ruth Moody on Canadian Roots Music, Parenthood, and Being a ‘Wanderer’

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Ruth Moody has a singular voice, whether she’s joining the soaring three-part harmonies of the Wailin’ Jennys, or carving her own path on her new solo album, Wanderer (released May 17.) The project was almost a decade in the making and finds Moody betting on herself as a songwriter, co-producer, and now-label head for her own Blue Muse Records. The album is parallel to Moody’s own journey at continuing to define herself, with its emphasis on confronting the past and carving away detritus that is no longer needed.

Moody splits her time between Nashville and Vancouver Island. The pull between her sense of place, as well as her identities as artist, wife, and mother, characterize Wanderer. The album was recorded at the legendary Sound Emporium in Nashville and was co-produced with Dan Knobler (Allison Russell, Lake Street Dive) and mixed by Tucker Martine (My Morning Jacket, First Aid Kit, The Decemberists).

As discussed below, Moody waited until the time was right to bring her favorite musicians together for the record: her partner Sam Howard, who plays upright bass and provides backing vocals; her older brother Richard Moody; The Wailin’ Jennys’ touring band member Anthony da Costa (guitars); Jason Burger (drums); Kai Welch (keyboards); Russ Pahl (pedal steel); Adrian Dolan (string arrangements); and duet partner Joey Landreth (on “The Spell of the Lilac Bloom”). Moody’s patient commitment to executing Wanderer the way she wanted to shows in its transcendent arrangements.

In our BGS interview, Moody discusses how she establishes her sense of self amidst the competing demands in her life, the factors that give Canadian roots music their own special quality, and the lessons she’s learned from doing Wanderer exactly the way she intended to.

What do you think it is about Canadian roots music in particular? It does have a different feel than roots music in the States.

Ruth Moody: You know, I’ve been asked this question for so long. It’s a very valid question, because I think there is something, but it’s really hard to have a clear answer. In Canada there’s such a range of geography and music culture. You can’t really pin it to one thing.

I grew up in Winnipeg and the winters are so harsh that I think music and art are one of the things that get people through. It’s something you can do in the winter. I also think that there’s something about the landscape and the winter that creates a certain work ethic because you’re so small against the elements, really. So consciously or subconsciously, that enters into the picture for people. And so I think people tend to work hard and really apply themselves. And when it comes to touring, especially if you’re from Winnipeg, it takes some effort to get to the next town. It’s a six-hour drive before you get to the next major town. So I think right from the start, young musicians know they have to go out in the world to tour and get their music out.

We’re pretty diverse and we’re also influenced by so many different cultures and types of music. So I think there is a very exploratory aspect to Canadian music. And a lot of cross-pollination between genres and scenes. We are very lucky to have government support for the arts and I think that helps artists thrive, obviously, but it also helps to create music communities and bring artists together in collaborative situations.

Well, it’s always good to start an interview out by asking you to speak for your entire country! But Wanderer focuses on the idea of home, and I know you’ve lived many different places. Did I read that you grew up in Australia?

I was born in Australia, and my parents are Australian, but they came back to Canada when I was only a year old. I grew up in Winnipeg, but, as an adult, I’ve moved around a ton and that was what inspired the title track. I’ve been touring for over 25 years at this point. “Wanderer” is a love song that I wrote for my partner, because he helped me have that feeling of home for the first time in my adult life.

There are a number of songs about young love and new love on the album. Was there something that was making you reminisce about those times in your life?

These songs were all written across a long time-span – over 10 years really – since my last record. So the songs come from different stages and sides of love, right into motherhood. Some songs deal with heartbreak too and some are more reflective about the past. During the pandemic, I was reflecting a lot about how we internalize the messages we receive from society, how as a woman I took on the expectations of others and how that has affected my life. I was looking back, looking for clues, curious about where fear comes from, where strength and resilience come from. How we learn how to be our authentic selves when there are so many outside pressures and confusing messages. “Seventeen” isn’t about that, at all, but it ended up coming out of that period of reminiscing. It’s a song that came from my own experiences but that is essentially about being in love and not being ready or able to face it or express it, which I think is probably a pretty common experience.

These are all things I’m thinking about a lot now that I have a child, too, because they become very relevant. You’re trying to model behaviors for a young person and it really makes you face yourself. You have to look at why you do and say certain things and what you want to teach and how you want to be.

Speaking of wandering, I read that you split your time between Nashville and Vancouver Island.

I just got back from British Columbia, and I’ll be back in BC in the summer, so yes, I’m back and forth. I tour a lot, so I try to get home to BC when I’m already out traveling. But I work a lot in Nashville and so does my partner, so we’re still figuring that out.

Do you feel you are different when you are in these two different places?

Definitely. That’s been a real theme becoming a mother, really. Suddenly, you’re responsible for another human life. You have to let go of a lot of ways that you used to do things and prioritize what matters. I’m always shifting modes.

When I’m on tour, I operate in a certain way. When I’m in BC, I’m close to my parents and that brings out certain things. When I’m on my own, I have a bit more freedom to maybe be my creative self and when I’m in parenting mode, that goes out the window. Additionally, a partnership requires a lot of work and time, too. There are a lot of different parts of life that I’m juggling. But it keeps it interesting.

This isn’t meant to be a conversation about being a musician and motherhood and “having it all,” but it is a big theme of the record!

It has been a big theme of my life of late. Actually, I wanted to make this record about eight years ago and then I put it on hold, because I wasn’t able to line up all the musicians I wanted involved. I thought, “I’ll do it next year.” And then I had my son and I just didn’t know that motherhood would be such an all-consuming thing. It doesn’t have to be – and everyone’s different!

I really want to do a good job at everything that I do, and so I found it hard [to balance everything.] I felt like I wasn’t doing a good enough job at being a parent and I wasn’t doing a good enough job at performing. That was really hard on me. And I think now, with this new way of looking at things, I’m just being easier on myself and thinking to myself, “Maybe I was enough. Maybe we can’t be perfect at every single thing.” Maybe we don’t have to attempt to be perfect at everything.

First and foremost I think that any woman should have the choice to [balance motherhood and work] in the way she wants to do it. I am still figuring out how to juggle everything – especially since for this record, I decided to put it out on my own label. It’s really exciting and I think will be really rewarding, but it is a ton of work and the learning curve is quite steep.

Wanderer is your fourth solo album. Do you feel this process is different than when you’re working with another artist or with The Wailin’ Jennys?

It is different. The Jennys – I mean, we’ve been together for so long and we have a certain way of working. We’re talking about making a new record, which is really exciting. It’ll be different, because it’s been a while and we’re all changing all the time, you know? That feels like it will be an exciting new experience.

But it is of course different working on my own, especially in this case, because I co-produced this record. When you’re on your own, you draw on a different part of your brain and even your heart. Wanderer is a really personal collection of songs. With the Jennys, we tend to maybe gravitate towards songs that call for three part harmony, so they end up being a bit more anthemic. With these really personal, intimate songs, I connect to them in a different way.

What lessons do you feel like you can take away now that you’ve finished making Wanderer that you want to take with you on your next project?

I’ve learned so much in doing this. Because it took so long to make it and these songs were waiting in the wings for so long, it felt really important for me to make it. The stakes felt high, because it had been so long in the making.

Now that it’s done and I’m putting it out, I am really excited and proud of it. I want to just keep releasing expectations and I’m very excited to dig into creative work again.

Photo Credit: Jacqueline Justice

The True Healing Found in Kaia Kater’s ‘Strange Medicine’

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

A deep reflection born from a time of the extreme silence and noise of the pandemic, Kaïa Kater’s new album, Strange Medicine (out today, May 17), digs into the feelings society tells us not to feel, imagines healing and revenge from abuses, and reckons with themes of racism and sexism of the past and today. While the undercurrents are heavy, the arrangements are gentle and flowing, juxtaposing our expectations of what we think it means to process the darkness in life with the truth that many emotions can exist simultaneously.

Written from home in Montreal, Strange Medicine takes us on a cathartic journey imagining characters interwoven with parts of Kater and parts of the world she observes. Drawing on inspiration from artists like Steve Reich, Brian Blade, and Johnny Greenwood and partnering with Montreal-based producer Joe Grass (The Barr Brothers and Elisapie), she took a different musical path than in the past.

Leaning into her primary instrument, banjo, Grass and Kater built the framework for each of the tracks slowly, starting with bedroom tracks and expanding to include arrangers like Franky Rousseau (Andrew Bird, Chris Thile) and Dominic Mekky (Caroline Shaw, Sara Bareilles) and musicians Rob Moose (Bon Iver, Phoebe Bridgers, Paul Simon), Robbie Kuster (Patrick Watson), and Phil Melanson (Andy Shauf, Sam Gendel). Kater spoke to BGS via Zoom.

Hi! How are you?

Kaia Kater: I’m okay! A couple of days ago I dropped my phone directly onto my laptop screen and it cracked. I had to go to Apple. So I am without a laptop, but thankfully have my 10-year-old iPad, bless her!

Apple is coming in clutch. Also, Apple product destroying Apple product is kind of funny.

Yeah, it’s an Apple-on-Apple hate crime. It’s terrible. I feel so weird about it. But I have AppleCare, which is good.

With the couple of sentences that you just said it’s no wonder the Department of Justice is looking into Apple as a monopoly. Vertical integration. Well, how are things going other than Apple problems?

The record is out in a week, so I’m excited. Thank you for doing this piece. I never take any press for granted, especially after the pandemic, when things were so terrible and hard.

What a weird time. Is that when you started writing this record?

Yeah, pretty much. I wrote my first song in April of 2020. We finished the record in 2023. So I would say like 2020 to 2022, was the writing window.

This album is a pandemic baby!

It is. Yeah, I’m proud of my little pandemic baby. Born out of a lot of feelings of stasis and confusion, but also just so fun to record. I think that there’s a lot of grief in the lyrics. But you can still vibe to sad songs, especially when they feel groovy. So that was the intent.

So when did you start recording it?

Let’s see, we went in to record in October of 2022 but the official recording days were preceded by a ton of demo days. So throughout 2021 and into 2022, I would go to my co-producer Joe’s studio in Montreal. We would just track stuff and either bring people in or ship the songs out to people and pay them a demo fee and have them kind of like splash around and see what their interpretation of the song was. That was kind of like how we selected personnel. I think we had a pretty strong idea of what we wanted to do by the time we got into the studio, which is so different from other projects I’ve been part of and other records I’ve done.

How was it different?

I guess, with the pandemic, I had the blessing of time, which I never had before really. With Nine Pin, I recorded on my winter break from college in my senior year, and then Grenades was done from start to finish in two weeks. And so with Strange Medicine, it was about two years. There are advantages and drawbacks to that. It is very easy to start second guessing some choices that you’d made in the previous calendar year, but I think it was to me such a novelty to be able to write and then listen back, and send the arrangement to someone and have them send their work back. It was so much more thoughtful because we had the time to do that.

That makes total sense. So you started writing it during the pandemic. What was your writing process like? Did you have ideas that you came into the lockdown with, or were you processing things in real time?

Well, originally I was like, “I’m never gonna play banjo again.” I don’t know what I was thinking. I think I was trying, to a certain extent, to escape my roots, transform, or do this phoenix thing. Where people are like, “Whoa! She was a banjo player and now she’s an electronic pop musician.” That was maybe a facet of my mid-20s to late 20s, having that crackling feeling that all the different paths your life can take feel like they’re narrowing. And so you’re kind of like fighting against that and going, “No, I still can transform again, musically.”

Really what led me to write more songs on the banjo, especially for Strange Medicine, was that it was really comforting to me. I think I went back to it after wanting to spread my wings. Once I was alone in a room I was like, “What do I want to do right now? I just wanna play banjo.” And for a long time that’s all I did. I didn’t really write. The songs trickled in bit by bit. But you know I definitely gave up that idea of trying to metamorphosize in the way that I thought I was going to. I think I did it in a different way.

Can you talk a little bit about what it meant to be in Montreal writing this record and just in general? What influence did the town have on this particular record? And how does the music community there influence you?

Well, it’s very experimental there. And there’s a kind of freedom and risk-taking. People are not afraid to have things fail or to have things not quite work. Even now, I’m sort of deconstructing the idea that I grew up with, this idea of what a songwriter is, which is that you work really hard at your craft, you play the song down. And the way that you improve every night is how you perfect and tighten the song as much as possible. I’ve been getting into this idea of improvisation.

I don’t know if it’s because the rent is cheaper there, so you don’t have to hustle as much. I just felt so much more space to play around.

While we’re on the subject of Montreal, you collaborated with Allison Russell on “In Montreal” about your shared hometown. I was curious since Aoife O’Donovan is from Massachusetts and you’re talking about witches on “The Witch” – was that a purposeful choice?

No, but that occurred to me about a week ago. I was making dinner, and I was like, “Wait. Aoife’s from Massachusetts!” It must have been in some way subconscious. I kind of see people as the roots that they’ve grown from. And definitely, when thinking about the features I wanted, I wanted it to make sense with who that person is. For example, with Taj Mahal, he’s who I learned about the black roots of the banjo from first. He was doing that in the ‘60s, and he has a lot of Calypso and Caribbean influences and heritage. Bringing him into a song about a Caribbean revolutionary felt like, “Well, of course.” I even wrote him a little letter explaining the song, because he’s 80. He doesn’t need to be on anybody’s record. And so I was like, “Let me tell you what the song is about, and maybe you’ll want to sing on it.”

That’s so cool. And how did the collaboration on “The Witch” come about?

Aoife has always been really supportive of me as a person and as an artist, going back to 2017. She’s kept me in mind for a lot of things and she’s suggested me for opportunities. She’s also really community-oriented. She’s very cognizant of supporting women musicians and young musicians. I’m a mega fan of hers.

I had written “The Witch” and I thought she would sound great on it. Fast forward to the end of the process, when all we had left to do was harmony vocals and I was really nervous to ask her because I think I was scared to get a no. But I’ve been practicing. You have to ask, because if you don’t ask you don’t receive anything. I texted her, and she immediately responded yes without even hearing the song. Then she laid down all these like really intricate harmony parts. She’s a genius.

Your voices are beautiful together. It works really well. And the Massachusetts thing — it’s perfect. While we’re on the subject of that song, what connects you to the stories of these women who were accused of witchcraft or adultery and were punished for it?

To me, it is the juxtaposition of having this perceived power in the minds of men as being capable of influence, capable of seduction and luring, and superseding a man’s high intelligence and thoughts of himself and overtaking will power. But then, when women were accused of being witches, their already limited power just absolutely disintegrated and they were executed by mobs. I was thinking a lot about these kind of polar ideas of women having so much power over men, but then we’re struggling to be taken seriously in a workplace or struggling to feel like we are on equal footing.

I think sexism and racism today are much more insidious – as are homophobia and transphobia. It’s so palpable. Being able to give voice to someone in history who may meet a different fate; maybe they try to kill her, and she’s like,”Ha! I survived. And now, aren’t you scared of me?”

The influence came from a lot of different places; the witches from Macbeth, and the Roald Dahl witches. They are all in our popular consciousness to a certain extent, and I think we have a fascination with them.

Absolutely. Let’s talk about the song “Floodlights.” It reminded me of Joni Mitchell for two reasons. One is the sonic palette and the orchestration reminded me of her. Second, I saw a video of her recently and she was talking about how a good song should make a listener think of themselves rather than of her. That’s obviously an objective idea, but this song, though focused on a romantic relationship, reminded me of some of my own, but also friendships and working relationships and how the dynamic of one person’s power over another can be so incredibly detrimental. But there is hope and life on the other side of that. It is a special way you tell the story in a cafe where the protagonist is feeling herself rise over a past love for the first time. I was wondering if you find that you have clarity around power dynamics yourself as you grow older as the protagonist does?

I’ve recently turned 30. And to me, that seems to be the absolute blessing of your 30s, that you have this kind of clarity and understanding of who you are and what you are willing and not willing to tolerate. That song itself is about an age-gap relationship that I was in. We had an 11-year age difference. I was super young. I was 18 or 19 when we got together, and this whole conception that I had was, “I’m mature and I’m actually better than the other women my age, because I have someone who is super mature and who thinks that I’m interesting. I’m also better than the women his age. There’s something special about me,” like I felt chosen.

That was such a powerful feeling at that time when so much of my self-esteem was dependent on what other people thought of me. Slowly, through the course of this relationship, I realized that he chose me, but not for the reasons that I thought I had been chosen.

I mean he was a walking red flag and I just did not trust my intuition to understand that. This wasn’t a good scenario, and now, on the other side of it, at 30, I couldn’t imagine dating a 20-year-old. There’s an inherent power dynamic there. I wrote the beginning of the song two years before I finished it, because in the beginning, I couldn’t think of an ending. I couldn’t have seen him at a bar (which really happened) and just been scared and left. I wanted to give the protagonist a better ending than that.

It sounds like you did a lot of processing on this record through your writing, like maybe you released some frozen anger. I think most women can relate to that in general, because we are so often encouraged or told to suppress that emotion. I was wondering how your relationship with anger and revenge evolved and shifted through the creation of this album?

I think therapy seems to be a theme in a lot of artists’ albums these days. I didn’t realize how much anger I carried until I went to therapy. I had always grown up thinking that any kind of anger is debasing yourself. You’re losing power and you’re not being your highest, most evolved self.

Every time I got angry, I felt like I’d failed to access my more evolved emotions. It was through therapy that I learned that anger is, in many ways, necessary. We are refusing to be treated a certain way.

I think adventuring through these ideas of revenge where it’s like, “Well, what if I don’t choose forgiveness? What about that? Why do I have to be the peaceable one? Why do I have to be the one to absorb all of your violence, and then somehow process it out so that we’re good?” I have to say, it was really fun to write these lyrics and not shy away from some more violent imagery, especially in “The Witch.”

I heard someone say something like, “Anything that’s human is mentionable. And anything that’s mentionable is manageable.” I think singing it out is so nice because it’s mentionable. It’s manageable.

Speaking of, this is a great segue. How does it feel to perform these songs live?

It feels really good. It feels vulnerable too, having lived with them so long during the pandemic. It’s interesting to start sharing them with people. I have this ritual where the day before a single comes out, I listen to the song on a walk. And I’m like, “Okay, this is the last time this is gonna be only mine.” I think that ritual has really helped me. It’s a really personal album in a lot of ways for me.

I’m looking forward to trying it out in many different configurations, continuing the idea of play that we started out with this record, and seeing the different ways it can evolve and change.

Photo Credit: Janice Reid

Four Women Producers and Engineers On Studio Challenges and Successes

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Over the past couple of decades, the music industry has seen more women rising to become leaders in audio engineering and producing. However, even as access, acceptance, and opportunity continue to improve, women are still painfully underrepresented in these career paths, making up just five percent of engineers and producers worldwide. Over the past few weeks, I’ve talked to a handful of these remarkable women, in person at coffee shops, over the phone, and via email, about how they built their careers and the challenges they have faced in a male-dominated industry. These women are trailblazers, often without career models to follow, often the only woman in the room when they work. Their tenacity, talent, and dedication are evident, and I feel honored to share their stories.

As a musician who came up in the the bluegrass scene, the first female producer I ever knew of or worked with – and now that I think of it, the only female producer I’ve worked with who was not hired by me – is the legendary Alison Brown, virtuosic banjo player and co-owner of Compass Records. Since Brown has seen a lot of generational change over her tenure in Nashville, I thought I should start by getting her perspective.

Brown had already solidified her reputation as an instrumentalist, winning IBMA’s Banjo Player of the Year award in 1991 and touring with Alison Krauss, when she decided to start a record label along with her husband, Garry West. “We were talking about how to have a sustainable life in music,” she said, “And it was one of those napkin drawing in a coffee shop moments.”

The two were on tour in Sweden with Michelle Shocked, for whom Brown was the bandleader. “When I look back, I can see how a lot of the opportunities I had were carved out for me by other women. I was about to go to law school when Shocked asked me to be her bandleader and then we went on a world tour. At Compass, I never thought of myself as a producer, Garry was more interested in that role. But when Dale Ann Bradley was going to make an album she asked me to produce it, so I said yes, and that’s how I started producing.”

Since then, Brown has produced seven Grammy-nominated records, as well as winning a Grammy for her own song, “Leaving Cottondale,” off of her 2000 record, Fair Weather.

When asked about her production style, Brown interestingly observes that she may come at it from a traditionally female perspective, by observing and predicting other people’s feelings and needs. “Especially in the studio, you need to make people feel at ease…” she explains. “Ultimately your job is to draw the best out of the musicians. Everyone has that thing they’re afraid of having to do under the microscope, but the goal is to make the musician feel comfortable enough to reach out and hit something new.”

“Sometimes with the older guard guys, I’ll say, ‘OK, lets try to play through the chart’ and they will act like they don’t understand me. ‘What did she say? What does she want to do?’ … Like they want someone to translate it for them, because it’s coming from a woman. It’s annoying, but I know they’re acting that way because they are nervous and they don’t want to look stupid. So when I’m producing, I try to intuit those things about people, and stay focused on the end goal of making a great record.”

Engineer and producer Shani Gandhi has been in Nashville since 2011, and has been been nominated for two Grammys, winning Best Engineered Album (Non-Classical) for her work on Sierra Hull’s 2020 album, 25 Trips, which she engineered, mixed, and co-produced with Hull. Originally from Singapore, Gandhi was raised in Perth, Australia. She moved to the U.S. in 2007 to attend Ithaca College, where she received a BA in music with a concentration in sound recording technology.

Gandhi was drawn to engineering and production because of her love of music and her simultaneous dislike for performing. “As a kid, I didn’t even know that that side of music existed as a career, but once I found the Audio Engineering Society, I immersed myself in it, I was obsessed.”

Gandhi told me about her philosophy for building a community you can learn from and create with. “It’s really important to have a strong community of both mentors and peers,” she explains. “I had people that I was looking up to that were holding me to a very high standard, and then I had friends and colleagues where we were all working really hard and trading favors, and that’s how I built my freelance career. So you need really good people at all levels to make it work. You don’t want to feel like the smallest person in the room all the time, but you also need someone around to tell you, ‘I know you think what you’re doing is really cool, but it’s really not,’” she laughs.

Although she works on every stage of recording and producing, Gandhi’s great love is for mixing. “My approach is to always remember that it’s not my record, it’s the artist’s art when it comes down to it and they’re the ones who have to live with it for the rest of their lives. I do like things to be lush and tall and wide and pristine. I don’t go immediately to that tape or garage sort of sound, but I can do it. If that’s what the artists wants, that’s what the artists gets.”

Also hailing from Australia, producer and engineer Clare Reynolds – AKA Lollies – came to Nashville via LA, where she was signed as a songwriter for hip-hop producer Timbaland’s company. She essentially taught herself production and engineering on the job. “I was in a lot of big studios with big producers over those three years. It was really intense, I was almost always feeling out of my element, but I learned a lot. I would be writing the song, but also watching the others work, asking questions like, ‘Why are you using that mic?’ ‘How are you getting that sound?’ And trying to absorb everything they were doing.”

In Los Angeles, Reynolds tells me, she learned how to enter a room like a man: “I was with so many different, very big personalities that were at the top of their game and their egos were massive. They were just hyped … and if you want to be respected, you can’t go in tentative, you can’t code yourself as female. You have to act how they act, which is to say, you can’t care if other people like you. I would have this attitude like, ‘We don’t need to be friends, but we’re gonna write the best song ever.’”


Reynolds says that she will always love writing songs, but at least for now, production and engineering have taken a hold on her. “I will be forever learning,” she says, “But I do think that my experience with writing helps me approach the audio side from a very musical and song-based perspective.”

Engineer and producer Diana Walsh echoed Reynold’s sentiment about the typical energy in a recording studio. “With women being so critically underrepresented in these technical roles, it can sometimes take a minute for the gender biases in the room to dissipate,” she told me. “My focus is always on doing great work, and treating everyone in the room with the same respect I expect in return.”

Growing up in Houston, Texas, Walsh played guitar, but was always more interested in how she could record her guitar than how she could perform with it. Her mom bought her very first Shure SM57 microphone, which still gets used today in her sessions.

Walsh recorded her own music at home before heading to Belmont University to study music business, with an emphasis on production. While in school she started freelance recording for friends and classmates and after graduating, she began working at the historic RCA Studio B, where she is now the Studio Manager, as well as maintaining a busy freelance engineering schedule.

 

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Her engineering and production credits include Matchbox 20, Amanda Shires, JD McPherson, and Sister Sadie. Walsh believes that representation is key for getting more women into the studio: “Working at RCA B, I have the opportunity to talk to a lot of school groups. After our sessions, I often speak with the students and ask about their goals for their future in music. Through these conversations, I’ve been thrilled to hear that more and more young women are taking an interest in engineering/producing.”

Throughout my conversations with each of these women, one point they all emphasized was the importance of staying focused on making great work in the face of difficult environments. “Nobody can argue with good work,” they each told me in their own way. And as we continue to see beautiful records being made by women, I have to agree.

Photo Credit: Alison Brown by Russ Harrington; Shani Gandhi by Joshua Black Wilkins.

Buddy & Julie Miller, ‘In the Throes’ of a Joyful Creative and Life Partnership

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Deep in the throes of their multi-decade romantic and creative partnership, Buddy & Julie Miller continue to open their world to listeners with their fourth studio album, In the Throes. Entirely cooked within the walls of their home from song ideation to production, we get to hear their joyful admiration for each other alongside the frustrations of living, loving, and making music as a pair. There is still a youthful exuberance in the simplicity of the rhymes and meter that manages to capture subtle and profound aspects of life.

BGS caught up with the couple via phone at their home in Nashville to hear about the new album and their storied lives as co-creators.

What is the process of working together leading into production? How do you know when you have a Buddy & Julie Miller record?

Buddy Miller: Well, There have been records where we went into it thinking, let’s make a record. This one, we didn’t. We backed into it accidentally. We were wanting to do a gospel record with our friend Victoria Williams and our two friends Larry Campbell and Teresa Williams. Julie had written all these songs and then COVID hit. Victoria has M.S., and she lives in Joshua Tree. We realized, this isn’t worth killing Victoria for this record. We kind of put a hold on that and we had that song on the record called “We’re Leaving,” and it just kept going over and over in my head, and I loved it. Julie was just writing a ton of songs. I wanted to pilfer that song and use it as a cornerstone for this record. That’s the genesis of it.

Julie, I hear that these songs came from a profoundly creative writing time for you. What does your life look like when you are in the midst of a prolific creative output time?

Julie Miller: I don’t focus on it. It is more like, I’ll be going to the bathroom or walking to the kitchen or something, and I’m just humming something and it just kind of rumbles up in me. It comes out and my brain just says, “Oh, we are doing a record now, let’s think!” It turns on and starts thinking of subject matter. It is a real accidental sort of situation. I’m sure it is more purposeful than I realize. I am kind of closed off once it is hitting. I don’t talk to a lot of people for a while once I’m writing except for Buddy. I’ll get some musical thing in my mind and I can tell him how it goes, and he can play all the notes. He’s like my right-hand man.

Do you have a language that is only your own?

JM: Not exactly, not like that, but we understand each other. I understand him anyway. [Laughs]

Has that evolved a lot over time, how you communicate musically?

JM: Yeah, I’m more intuitive overall than he is. He is just really incredible. And I kind of prompt him on something I’m thinking, and he carries it away. I couldn’t imagine trying to work with anybody else. I just wouldn’t want to do it. He’s my team. We are really locked together on it.

In terms of the songs about relationships on this record, how autobiographical are they? You can feel the reverence and the frustration of being in a creative relationship.

BM: I was kind of a jerk to be in a band with, I think. I probably took things for granted. I would be insensitive enough on stage. I messed up our thing. She stopped playing. And then I took every gig that would come along, which was a lot. I didn’t expect it. At the time, I was playing with Emmylou, but then I got a lot of other production and tour offers. I left Julie at home for years. And that made her relationship with music and me something that needed to be repaired. So we started repairing it with the record before this.

And we spent a lot of time hanging out together and enjoying making the music together. By the time we were working on this, she was on a roll writing songs, and I just loved capturing them.

That’s really inspiring. Let’s be honest, when people hit walls in relationships or creatively, sometimes they quit. But pushing through it and finding healing through music, it’s awesome.

BM: Yes, and it happened through the music and spending time together. And me not taking any more outside work.

You can feel that. How autobiographical is this record?

JM: Well I guess every record is somewhat biographical. But there are certain songs that are pretty autobiographical, just emotions that I’ve been through that I turn into a song. I mean, “You’re My Thrill,” I was feeling it. I was feeling it about Buddy. And “In the Throes,” too. But “Don’t Make Her Cry,” now that was Bob Dylan. I can’t take credit for that line.

That’s a fun co-write!

JM: Oh yeah! I didn’t think I’d live that long. He and Regina [McCrary] are friends and they had this half a song sitting and he said, “Give it to Buddy.” And Buddy didn’t know what to do with it. But I knew what to do with it! I knew just what to do. I’m amazed now, when I look back, that I had the gall to do it. I had no fear or hesitation at all, just like it was anybody else. When I think about it now, I think, “What was I thinking!?”

This album feels like it was cut live, like I’m in the room with you when I’m listening. It seems rare these days that producers let the whole room into the record. I was wondering if you could talk about where you cut it and what the process was like for this one?

BM: The process was a little different, but we’ve made all our records at home. Back in our teeny weeny apartment in LA, Julie had a deal early on where they didn’t quite get the music and it wasn’t a good fit, but the person who signed her took her in the studio and quickly realized that they liked our home demos better. But we just had a little porta-studio. He gave what was left in the budget to buy a tape machine and a couple of mic pre-[amps] so we could do it ourselves. It was very kind of him, and it started us on our way of working together. We started on a four-track cassette, and then we graduated to a little reel-to-reel that had eight-tracks. But we have always made our records at home. Julie has always been super involved in every aspect, just the two of us.

Julie, what is recording like for you? Do you like the process?

JM: I do with Buddy. I don’t without Buddy. With Buddy I can yell. We have a studio downstairs, and we have one directly upstairs. There are pocket doors that open into the studio upstairs and so I sit on the bed and he sits in the actual producer’s chair with all the instruments around and we just play. I’ll have an idea to have him play and then he’ll play something and I’ll go, “Wait! Listen to that! Play that again!” We just play off of each other a lot. He lets me have as much leeway on the songs as I want, but then where I leave off, he is more than there to take it up. He blows my mind. I just can’t believe how fortunate I am to have someone like that to work with. But it is a joy. I don’t really like recording singing that much. It is tedious. It used to be easier. It is harder singing now.

Can I ask you what is harder about it?

JM: Well, I just don’t do it as much. I have this condition called fibromyalgia. It is a pain condition that affects your muscles. It goes into my jaw and under my tongue, and if I use it very much, it gets stiff and paralyzed. It is a good thing we do it at home. I have this concoction made out of tomato soup and hot sauce. Emmylou would have lemon and Altoids, and I have hot sauce and tomatoes.

Well, for what it is worth, one of the notes I made about this record was how exuberant and youthful your voice sounds.

JM: Thank you! I’ll chalk it up to immaturity.

Photo Credit: Jeff Fasano

Rachel Baiman On the Importance of Women in Studio Control Rooms

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

(Editor’s Note: BGS contributor, picker, and singer-songwriter Rachel Baiman brings us into the production process for her new album, Common Nation of Sorrow — her first recording on which she’s credited as sole producer — for this op-ed feature.)

Take a look at the credits for your favorite records by artists of any gender, and you may notice that there are very few women listed. Maybe there’s a female singer, photographer, or graphic designer – possibly a violinist in a string section, but it probably stops there.  

While great strides have been made in the last decade with more women on festival bills, in radio programming, and even as instrumentalists in live bands, when you look behind the scenes, you rarely see women involved in making records, unless they are the featured artist or part of the featured band. That’s because the studio is invisible to the audience. 

Societal pressure is driving folks to do better when they are working in public lineups, but in recording studios, there’s nobody watching, and no face on the sounds that come out of the box. The audience sees a diverse band playing a live show, yet none of those musicians are featured on the record.

For example, I was thrilled to see Sarah Jones absolutely slaying the drums for Harry Styles live, but when I looked at the record credits, they had a male drummer listed. Why? It’s as if the industry is saying “We love to have you on stage, but when it comes to the real work, let the men get down to business.”

To Harry’s credit, there are a couple of female instrumentalists (violin and keys, and a conga player) and assistant engineers (“Move that microphone for me please!”) featured on his albums (which is huge progress, believe it or not), but I would have loved to see Jones included as a true backbone of the sound, especially when she’s such a fundamental part of the live show, and clearly more than capable. That kind of record credit is a career maker – not that Jones needs it, she’s doing great anyway – but why couldn’t she have that?

I’ve had a dream for a few years now of being a producer. Over the last decade of working in the studio in various roles, I’ve fallen in love with the production process: Starting with the songs, honing and editing until you’re left with only the meat, selecting the perfect musical voices to bring the song to life, and working with amazing engineers to get the sonic pallet perfect. I can’t get enough of it, and I want to do more.

According to a 2018 study by the University of Southern California, and reported on by GRAMMY.com, only 2% of music producers and 3% of engineers/mixers in popular music are women. These are roles that require real trust, as they are roles of power. There’s no turning down, editing, tuning, or washing out a producer or lead engineer. The project is in their hands.

Typically, male artists (as opposed to engineers, another role that leads to producing jobs) are asked to be producers when other musicians like the records that they’ve made or been a part of. It’s a role of mentorship and guidance, as well as artistic influence.  I started to realize, though, that because I am a woman, nobody was going to naturally think of me for that role, even if they liked my music. People fit people into the molds that we’ve been shown, and people trust people who others trust. Everyone wants to make the right decisions, and it’s hard to be the first one to believe in somebody – I know this trap because I’m guilty of it myself! If I wanted to be thought of as a potential producer, I was going to have to build my own platform and show people that I could do it. 

When it came time to make Common Nation of Sorrow, I saw it as an opportunity to take a bet on myself. Although it’s terrifying to produce one’s own music (you have to be both the speaker and the listener at the same time), I knew that if I could produce something great under my own name, perhaps others would start to see me in that role outside of my own music. After all, if you can’t trust yourself with your own work, how can you ask others to trust you with theirs? 

With the support of my awesome label, Signature Sounds, I was able to record this project exactly the way I wanted to. I had a variety of musicians in mind for the rhythm section, both male and female. I hypothesized that when considering the sessions, I needed to make sure that there was a feeling of social balance in the room, for my own sake as well as for my fellow musicians’ sake. Something that was interesting to me about this theory is the stark difference between “including” women on a project because you feel that you should, and believing that empowering women and asking for their contributions will actually result in the best art.  

When I get called for sessions to play fiddle or banjo, I am usually the only woman in the room. I walk in feeling like I have to be better than good in order to counteract the assumption that I will be sub-par, that I don’t know what I’m doing, that I won’t know how to read a chart, that I can’t solo, that I won’t know anything about sound or gear. Working from a position of insecurity, or “trying to prove something,” is a terrible way to make music. I might overplay, or underplay, or try to play the way I think men want me to play, not in my own voice. I might be trying to tamp down rage at a comment that somebody has just made about their wife being retired from music because, “She’s a mom now.”  

Contrastingly, when you’re suddenly the producer, the only one you have to impress is yourself. Everyone in the room has been hired by you, and therefore, it’s in their best interest to support your vision. Nobody has incentive to diminish your work. Suddenly, I’m able to work from a place of confidence and artistic integrity. In a position of power, it’s not as likely that I’ll overplay, or change my sound based on others, or second guess my abilities. I’ve taken the bet, and now I have to come through for myself. That’s the difference between token inclusion and empowerment. You’re going to be able to hear it in the album made this way, too. 

Recently, I was asked by a male musician who I love and admire to produce his next record. It was completely unexpected, and it took a minute for me to realize that my bet on myself was actually paying off. I’m starting to believe now that this could be a real career path for me. I think most people want to believe in, and support each other, but we, as women, have to have the courage to take those first steps and put ourselves out there for consideration. From my standpoint, it can work. 

I’m thrilled to see so many incredible women working as producers and engineers these days in Nashville. Mary Bragg, Rachael Moore, Clare Reynolds, Shani Ghandi, and of course Alison Brown at Compass Records, who has been leading the charge for years. I look forward to one day having the opportunity to work in a studio environment inhabited by only women, completely by chance. The more we can show each other what’s possible, the more likely that will become. 

(Editor’s Note: Rachel Baiman’s latest album, Common Nation of Sorrow, is available now wherever you stream or purchase music.)

Photo Credit: Natia Cinco

Carolina Calling, Asheville: A Retreat for the Creative Spirit

Posted on by Shelby Williamson

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Asheville, North Carolina’s history as a music center goes back to the 1920s and string-band troubadours like Lesley Riddle and Bascom Lamar Lunsford, and country-music pioneer Jimmie Rodgers. But there’s always been a lot more to this town than acoustic music and scenic mountain views. From the experimental Black Mountain College that drew a range of minds as diverse as German artist Josef Albers, composer John Cage, and Albert Einstein, Asheville was also the spiritual home for electronic-music pioneer Bob Moog, who invented the Moog synthesizer first popularized by experimental bands like Kraftwerk to giant disco hits like Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love.”

It’s also a town where busking culture ensures that music flows from every street corner, and it’s the adopted hometown of many modern musicians in a multitude of genres, including Pokey LaFarge, who spent his early career busking in Asheville, and Moses Sumney, a musician who’s sonic palette is so broad, it’s all but unclassifiable.

In this premiere episode of Carolina Calling, we wonder and explore what elements of this place of creative retreat have drawn individualist artists for over a century? Perhaps it’s the fact that whatever your style, Asheville is a place that allows creativity to grow and thrive.

Subscribe to Carolina Calling on any and all podcast platforms to follow along as we journey across the Old North State, visiting towns like Shelby, Greensboro, Durham, Wilmington, and more.

Music featured in this episode:

Bascom Lamar Lunsford – “Dry Bones”

Jimmie Rodgers – “My Carolina Sunshine Girl”

Kraftwerk – “Autobahn”

Donna Summer – “I Feel Love”

Pokey LaFarge – “End Of My Rope”

Moses Sumney – “Virile”

Andrew Marlin – “Erie Fiddler (Carolina Calling Theme)”

Moses Sumney – “Me In 20 Years”

Steep Canyon Rangers – “Honey on My Tongue”

Béla Bartók – “Romanian Folk Dances”

New Order – “Blue Monday”

Quindar – “Twin-Pole Sunshade for Rusty Schweickart”

Pokey LaFarge – “Fine To Me”

Bobby Hicks Feat. Del McCoury – “We’re Steppin’ Out”

Squirrel Nut Zippers – “Put A Lid On It”

Jimmie Rodgers – “Daddy and Home”

Lesley Riddle – “John Henry”

Steep Canyon Rangers – “Graveyard Fields”

BGS is proud to produce Carolina Calling in partnership with Come Hear NC, a campaign from the North Carolina Department of Natural & Cultural Resources designed to celebrate North Carolinians’ contribution to the canon of American music.