Steve Forbert is not a dramatic person. His stories are fairly straightforward even though he’s lived a pretty incredible life, which began in Meridian, MS as a young musician.
In the hometown of Jimmie Rodgers, Steve found a great guitar teacher in Virginia Shine Harvey, who claimed she was a relation to the famous singing brakeman. Ms. Harvey taught Steve music through performance and connected him to other young musicians in the area, who then went on to form a couple of bands. He left his town for New York City in his early 20’s where he pounded the pavement as a singer-songwriter for a couple years before catching a break. During his climb upwards, Forbert found acceptance in New York’s punk scene, especially at the historic CBGB’s where club owner Hilly Kristal gave him a chance and introduced him to his manager. From there, Steve went on to start making records. His second album, Jackrabbit Slim, gave him his hit song, “Romeo’s Tune,” which he credits giving him his career and “a ticket into the show.” He’s releasing his latest, Moving Through America, with more character studies and focuses on life’s oddities.
It’s not easy to get Steve to talk about himself and his reflections, but he’s up for giving it a shot. He wrote a memoir in 2018, Big City Cat: My Life in Folk-Rock, which sounds like it was a challenge for him to revisit and write about his past – not because it seems like it was filled with mistakes and scandal, but because it was sooo much about himself. He seems grateful for the opportunity to still have a career and does not take it for granted. He also makes some very hip and hot music references in our conversation: like bringing up rappers Megan Thee Stallion and Jack Harlow. Color me impressed, Steve Forbert is watching the Billboard Hot 100.
Of all the things we’ve felt in the last year, anger isn’t an emotion that gets recognized as often as others. “Bullocks,” says British singer-songwriter Frank Turner. In his new single “The Gathering,” Turner lets the rage out while singing an upbeat rock number all about the optimism of coming together again. The song is energetic, exciting the audience with a glimmer of how “sensational” and “biblical” it will be when we are finally able to gather again. The stomping rhythm of the riffs in the verses is broken up by his roaring voice, rallying the troops around a strong sense of optimism about the return to “normal life.” His call was heard by heavy-hitting drummer Dom Howard (Muse) and electrifying guitarist Jason Isbell, who contributed the strong backbeat and a monstrous guitar solo, respectively.
The new single also comes attached to the announcement of a string of outdoor live shows aptly called The Gathering that will help kickstart the return of live performance for artists in the UK. The shows, imagined and designed by Turner and record label Xtra Mile, will be fitted with all measurements necessary to be flexible; socially distanced if required by mandate or filled to capacity if allowed. As Turner says, “At a time when the pandemic has wreaked havoc all across the live music industry, I feel like it’s important to get back to the basics — playing live music to entertain a crowd. This summer, with Xtra Mile and friends, I’m taking the punk approach — do it yourself, find a way. I can’t wait.”
Watch the official lyric video for Frank Turner’s “The Gathering” below.
Over the last few years, William Elliott Whitmore has been thinking a lot about how we – as individuals and as a society – have a tendency to repeat our mistakes, and how we’re always trying not to. Yet the tone of his new album, I’m With You, is still infused with optimism, which often stems from the wisdom he’s learned from his family.
I’m With You is Whitmore’s first album of new material in five years, though its material wouldn’t sound out of place alongside his early songs like “Old Devils” or “Don’t Need It.” As always, his banjo and guitar are central to the album’s sound, while his raspy singing voice remains an effective tool at getting his point across.
Though the album does have some heavy themes, Whitmore often points out the silver lining in a situation, and moreover, he’s comfortable chatting up a stranger — a trait not uncommon to the Midwest. He spoke with BGS by phone from his farm in Lee County, Iowa, where he’s quarantining with his wife and their six-month-old baby.
BGS: There are several family relationships that you reference in the album’s first song, “Put It to Use,” and you’ve had family members as characters in your songs for a long time. Why is that bond with your family so inspiring?
Whitmore: Yeah, the bond with my family has always been inspiring. I’m pretty lucky in that I’ve got a big family that’s close by. Aunts and uncles and cousins. My folks were great people, full of wisdom and just caring, beautiful people, but through different circumstances they passed away when I was in my teens. So, that’s when I started writing songs, and in fact, that’s what made me start doing that — to codify what they had always been teaching me. And as a way to deal with it and not just go off the deep end. They pop up in songs a lot, and have since the beginning.
I don’t have them here, so I just think about their words of wisdom and lessons. I think we all get those lessons from someone, whether it’s your folks and a grandparent or a neighbor or a cool uncle or aunt. That cool person down the block that introduced you to The Ramones when you were a kid. [Laughs] It’s like, “Hey, check out Black Sabbath!” So you go, “I should listen up.” Not just music, but lessons, and we can gather that from anywhere. “Put It to Use” is about, OK, you’ve gathered all this good information. Now, put it to use. And more than just music — let’s try to love each other.
Was it someone in your family that introduced you to banjo?
Yeah, both of my grandpas played the banjo. One of them passed away when I was one year old, so I never knew him, but I actually have his old banjo. And one died when I was in my teens, and he was a banjo picker from the Ozark Mountains down in Missouri. My folks loved country music. My mom loved Willie Nelson and Charley Pride – those were her favorites. And in fact, my parents’ first date was a Charley Pride show at a county fair.
But [my interest in] the old-time stuff, Appalachia music and Ozark mountain music, came from my grandpa, and he played the banjo. When he passed away, I got his banjo because I was into playing guitar. I was like, “Oh, the banjo… it’s not THAT different than a guitar.” And I inherited all of his old records. He loved Roy Acuff and the Stanley Brothers. Again, it’s getting that influence from wherever you can.
Were those records your gateway to bluegrass? How did you become aware of bluegrass?
Yeah, those records. … He had a lot of compilations with 15 different artists on one record. You’d find out about a bunch of different stuff, like how Bill Monroe pretty much invented bluegrass by playing old-time music faster than everybody else. [Laughs] And the subtle differences between that and the old-time, slower stuff. A lot of it does have to do with tempo. The feeling is there for all of it, but Bill Monroe kicked it into that next gear.
It’s this whole rich history that’s really cool, and there’s still a lot to learn about, too. So I took that bluegrass influence, but I also liked Minor Threat and Bad Religion and Public Enemy, growing up in the ‘80s and ‘90s. There’s a theme running through all of this — punk and country and bluegrass and blues. Using simple tools to convey a message. No matter where you come from or what color you are, there’s a way to do this.
One thing you do well on this record, in my opinion, is setting the scene. While a lot of songwriters write primarily about themselves, or about love, you are writing about what’s around you. When did you become interested in environmentalism, for example?
That’s a great compliment, first of all. I’m right here on the farm I grew up on, and I’m very lucky to have that. So, the woods and nature and planting gardens — my folks were both naturalists. They wouldn’t have had the word for that, but they loved the land and they appreciated nature. That was passed on to us kids, the appreciation for the trees and the plants and the deer out in the field, and how we live among them and we’re part of it. We’re not above them. The grass in the meadow, the flora and the fauna that we see all around us, we’re just a part of that.
So it just doesn’t make sense to me, as an adult, why anyone would want to pour oil in the water, or level a whole forest, and cut every old-growth oak tree in the forest, just for the money! You want to live in harmony with nature, and sometimes you do have to cut a tree, but you want to be selective and do it in a smart way. … There are so many ways to do it mindfully. That’s my slant on it, and it all comes from living in the woods and living on a farm, and being instilled with those things at an early age.
Listening to your older records, I was struck by how much your singing voice has become more commanding. Did that come from you having to sing on stage, and use it as an instrument? At what point did you sense that your voice was becoming stronger?
That’s another great compliment. I didn’t even know if it was, but you know, it’s funny how things change over 20 years. I first started touring — gosh, it’s been over 20 years ago now. I used to smoke a lot of cigarettes and a lot of weed. … Well, maybe don’t write down “weed.” Oh, whatever, I don’t care. I just had a fucked up voice, but it was all I had. I was like, I wish I could croon like Dean Martin and Morrissey or Ralph Stanley, and have a beautiful voice, and I could never quite get there. So you just work with what you got, right?
So, I quit the cigarettes – and only the cigarettes. [Laughs] My voice changed after that, maybe, but it did come with playing a couple hundred shows a year, for years, and just being on stage, at least in the beginning, where they didn’t know who you are. It’s hard to be a presence when you’re by yourself. I was doing a lot of punk clubs and DIY spaces and bars, where they might not even care that you’re there. So you do have to make your presence known. I had to be more commanding. I am a loudmouth anyway, so it was natural. Put a microphone in front of me and I’ll make you listen! [Laughs] “I’m gonna start singing and you’re gonna wanna listen!” was my attitude, which is funny now.
But that did help me use it as almost a cudgel. Over the years, I’ve tried to sharpen that and make it more of a surgical thing and not a blunt instrument. [Laughs] I mean, I’m only dealing with guitar, banjo, and voice, and a beat — a kick drum now. Each one of them has to count. Any would singer would tell you, you take the time to write these lyrics, and in a live setting they just get lost. You’re just hollering. You have to learn to cut through. … Now it’s a bad habit to break because I’ll be singing in a quiet place, where everyone’s sitting down and listening and no one’s talking, and I’m just yelling like someone needs to hear me ten miles away. It’s those years of screaming over a bar room. I can’t shut it off.
Guitarist and singer/songwriter Sunny War doesn’t necessarily miss performing live, in-person shows — she’s not even sure she ever really liked playing shows that much in the “before COVID-19” times at all. But, as she connects with BGS over the phone in preparation for another pandemic-tailored event, her Shout & Shine livestream show on Wednesday, September 16 (live on BGS, Facebook, and YouTube at 7pm ET / 4pm PT) her general feelings regarding the pandemic and its far-reaching impact on the music industry are very clear: It’s all just really weird.
She, like many creators in the March-and-April maelstrom that swallowed up any/all meaningful work for an interminable period of time, became depressed, distant, and took some time to work her way back into a creative mode that feels respondent to our harsh everyday without being bogged down in it. A punk-influenced and inflected lyricist, she’s once again turning to her songwriting pen as an outlet.
While her peers turn to that same outlet to process many of the myriad daily tragedies and injustices we’re all so attuned to in this global moment, War instead pauses. “I kinda don’t like protest songs from people who didn’t do it before,” she explains, calling to task the frantic and frenzied rush to pivot records, releases, and pressers into more “appropriate,” digestible bits for a newly awakened, activist reality — and consumer.
But War’s identity, her selfhood, as evidenced through every note of her idiosyncratically finger-plucked songs and through her carefully chosen words in her lyrical poetry and our conversation, calls upon her to challenge that propriety. “[Democracy] actually is working” she explains, noting hypocrisy and/or tone deafness in our roots music communities. “It’s working, it’s always been working. It just hasn’t ever been in our favor.”
BGS: I’m a banjo player, I came up through bluegrass, and there’s something about your right hand in your guitar playing that’s really entrancing and relatable to me. It conjures bluegrass and fingerstyle, but it is so unique to you, it’s idiosyncratic. Where did your style come from? What influenced your right hand technique, how did it develop?
SW: I think it came from mimicking banjo, actually. My stepdad’s friend played banjo, so I was around a banjo player sometimes growing up. The first fingerpicking thing I learned was “Blackbird” by the Beatles and that was the first time I thought I sounded kinda good. When I was a kid, I thought, “Wow! This [fingerpicking] sounds way better than just strumming a chord.” I never really learned a lot of chords, I still just play a lot of chords in first position. I was just playing C and G and D open and I thought, “Well now I sound like I’m really playing something.”
I didn’t listen to blues until I was in high school and then I was kind of imitating country, blues, and my stepdad’s friend on banjo. Later, I was trying to be like Mississippi John Hurt; and I kinda wanted to be like Chet Atkins. But I couldn’t ever figure that out.
I see plenty of folks in the scene who idolize Derek Trucks or Joe Bonamassa or even Molly Tuttle and Billy Strings who are coming up. There are these guitar fans that just idolize and adore them. Have you seen guitar fans trying to capture what you’re doing with your playing?
Not really? I don’t know. There are some people on Facebook and Instagram who message [me] and want to talk about my guitar style, but they’re usually just into old-timey blues stuff. Then we just talk about that. Sometimes they ask who I listen to. But I think [the implication is], “You’re really close to maybe being like this person I know of.”
I can think of a lot of shredders out there, but I do the same kind of riffs in every key that I play in. I feel like I can say I really do fingerpick well, but I know people that really do it and can play as well with their left hand as their right. I’m not quite there. [Laughs]
It’s hard to talk about music and performing right now without acknowledging the giant, COVID-19 elephant in the room. It’s interesting to me that this moment of pausing, of stopping everything, especially in the music industry, has given artists a chance to refocus or realign their priorities – have you been thinking about the future? Thinking about the present? How has the pandemic felt to you?
The first three months I was just depressed and drinking a lot and not doing anything. Then recently, I’ve been trying to write. I’ve been jamming with my friend Milo, who plays a lot of lead guitar on two of my albums, and we’re going to make some demos together. I’ve also been thinking about going to school, trying to get into some kind of two-year program. Since music might not [come back], there might not be live music for two more years. I’m thinking about getting a job. [Laughs]
It’s daunting to wake up every day like, “I’m going to keep doing this now, because I believe — I think — it’s going to happen in the future.” It’s a lot!
Yeah, it’s like, “Maybe music is just not essential…” You know? [Sad chuckle]
Then, with the whole Zoom thing and the livestream thing, I’m just not really into it. I’m not enjoying it at all, it feels weird. It’s just like, sitting in a room by yourself, trying to make a video, and then you think, “Should I look into the camera? Should there be talking in between?” You’re trying to imitate a set at a venue, but you’re just sitting by yourself. It just feels weird! I would rather just play by myself, without a camera.
I liked playing shows [before] kind of, but I almost didn’t even like that. At least it felt like there was a reason for doing it. I was talking to my mom and we both realized we used to watch concerts before, too. Just then it was an actual concert on film. Even that would be better! If there were somehow an audience in the livestream… I guess that can’t be, but it’s just awkward [without them.] Seeing a band play off of the energy of the room is more what it’s about.
Well, for your Shout & Shine livestream performance we’ll have to ask our audience to be “loud” in the comments! Use that clapping hands emoji! [Laughs] Who would you like to see as a guest on Shout & Shine? Whose music is inspiring you right now and getting you through the day-to-day?
Have you heard of Yes Ma’am? They’re from New Orleans – the singer sometimes plays solo, but also has a band. They used to busk on the street in New Orleans. It’s just really good, a great kinda folky string band.
I like the new Run The Jewels album. I listen to Elliott Smith still, and a lot of ‘90s music. I like Black Pumas a lot.
What would you like to see from the music community, as far as a response to this moment in our culture’s history — not only the racial injustice and righteous rebellions against police brutality, but also how divided and polarized our musical community is now. It’s like half people who want music to “remain apolitical” and half folks who are like, “Music has always been political, where the fuck have you been all along?” What do you see as the urgent need of our community to reconcile all of this? I know that’s a huge question.
I think it just needs to become about honesty again. That’s something I would like to see. I’m not really that into “Americana” music, but even so I feel like [Americana] musicians are going to be faced with not being able to let these issues go unaddressed anymore. I think that’s interesting. At this point, you can’t just put out your weird corny love song that’s not even about anything that happened in your life, but is actually just something that makes sense pop-wise and hit-wise. You should have to really be honest. People don’t necessarily have to be “political,” they can just write about all the emotions they’re going through. We’re all dealing with the pandemic and with Trump and with police brutality — it’s a lot. Even if people don’t want to write a song about why we should get rid of the police, they could at least write about how scared they are. I don’t know, there’s a different, new kind of folk that could happen about just being freaked out and unsure of your future. I love shit like that.
I kinda don’t like protest songs from people who didn’t do it before. It’s just not hitting right. I don’t want your protest music if you weren’t writing it before. Whatever issue is being highlighted, it’s always like, “Yeah, we’ve BEEN talking about that.” [Expectant pause] This has been the conversation. I’m into punk, I’ve always liked protest music. As far as folk, I do like its protest music, but I mostly like punk or really politically-charged hip-hop. It’s kind of annoying when say, a really poppy country person who’s never said anything about anything is writing a protest song. It’s just cashing in. It’s corny. It’s weird.
And another thing, a lot of people who are going out to these Black Lives Matter protests and stuff, I still don’t feel like they would treat me any differently than they normally would. I saw people posing and taking pictures. This is a weird thing to just be a trend.
Like Breonna Taylor now being a meme.
Yeah. It’s offensive, it’s too much.
And how many times they show those videos [of Black people being murdered by police]. There’s a lot of murder porn going around! People are saying one thing, but showing someone die every day. I was kind of like, “You know, I don’t think they would show a video of a white person being killed, over and over again.” A lot of things happening right now are really dehumanizing and I don’t think people can see it unless they really, really think about it. Or maybe put themselves in that position. It’s murder porn.
I know what happened. I don’t want to see this over and over again. I don’t need to physically see it to be angry about it. Think of all the bad this is doing to our psyches on top of everything else, seeing people murdered every day.
But, a lot of musicians are “activists” now, I guess. I just… don’t really know what that means. They were going to put out a song anyway. That’s what they do for a living. Obviously they can’t just put out the typical love song — that’s what people always write about, love. That would be “offensive.” Or, it wouldn’t be “appropriate.” So they all have to change and pretend to be “activists.” It’s just a reflection of what’s trending right now.
I just want to know: Are they actually going to change in a year? I’m curious to know how long the Black Lives Matter profile pictures are going to stay up.
Artist:Arlo McKinley Hometown: Norwood, Ohio Latest Album:Die Midwestern (Oh Boy Records) Rejected Band Names: Hatchet Wounds, Black Locust Inn, Thousand Dollar Car
Which artist has influenced you the most … and how?
With so many influences I could name, I always go back to Blaze Foley. His ability to put so much feeling and emotion into a simple song without ever taking himself so seriously. He always influenced me in my writing, and has been a reminder to always be myself.
What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?
I would have to say that performing and knowing that one of my heroes, John Prine, had taken the time out of his day in the middle of the week to come see me play would probably top the list. He came to watch the band play at the High Watt in Nashville. That was a night I’ll never forget.
What other art forms — literature, film, dance, painting, etc. — inform your music?
I read a lot when not listening to or writing music. Charles Bukowski, Hunter S. Thompson, Greil Marcus, Ted Chiang and many others. Ted Chiang writes very smart, socially-conscious science fiction that really stands out to me. I highly recommend checking him out if you haven’t already.
What was the first moment that you knew you wanted to be a musician?
That would have to be growing up in the Baptist church. Seeing that music could be so much more to people than just a sound and evoke real emotions in people appealed to me in a way that is hard to put into words. Along with that I grew up constantly surrounded by so many kinds of music that my family would be listening to. Country, punk, bluegrass, folk, metal, hip-hop, etc. It’s the only thing that I ever thought that I should be doing so I’d say the simple answer is, from the moment I discovered music I knew that’s what I wanted to do with my life.
If you had to write a mission statement for your career, what would it be?
It would be to keep pushing myself to grow as a musician, always pushing myself to never create the same album twice. It would be to also keep creating music that people can correlate to their own lives in one way or another.
S.G. Goodman has a lot on her mind. That much is immediately clear in the Kentucky musician’s voice, her songwriting, and throughout her new Verve Forecast debut, Old Time Feeling. Produced by Jim James of My Morning Jacket, the confessional album encapsulates her experiences on a personal level as well as the environment that’s influenced her.
Growing up a farmer’s daughter in rural Western Kentucky may not be the most common background for a musician who finds their community in a college town post-punk scene. Yet, Goodman is proof that where you come from has not much to do with fitting in. In a time where so much of our world seems polarized, Goodman — despite the way she talks — found her place in a post-punk “Mecca for weirdos.”BGS sat down with Goodman to talk about her hometown, how she encountered her tribe, and her defense of Southern people and culture.
BGS: For someone who’s never been to your Kentucky hometown, how would you describe it?
Goodman: My hometown is Hickman, Kentucky, and it’s a river town. Mark Twain described it as “a pretty town, perched on a handsome hill.” I’d say he’s right on the money. But, at the time Mark Twain was passing through, Hickman was a lot different. Now it’s a bit of a ghost town with a lot of soul. There’s no stop lights, one convenience store… it’s a beautiful place. Less than 3,000 people, but no place like home.
How did you find your community in music?
Well, I don’t live in my hometown anymore. I live in Murray, Kentucky, which is a college town, so there’s an influence of people from all over. I kinda got plugged in hanging out at a local record store in college and met some of my best friends that way. Murray is an interesting place, because a lot of people don’t think of Western Kentucky as having a thriving post-punk scene. Probably around 2010, 2011, there were a lot more shows, a lot more bands passing through. We have a really conveniently-located record store called Terrapin Station. We pass around an offering plate — bands get taken care of really well for such a small community — it’s like a true listening environment. It’s just kind of a Mecca for weirdos, where everybody is welcome. It’s not pretentious at all, perfect place to cut your teeth.
Were you already playing music at that point?
Yeah, I was. By the time I was just about to turn 19 years old I made a record, it was pop. I dropped off a bunch of copies to the record store and said, “Put one in every bag that leaves here.” That’s how I met my good friend Tim Peyton, who’s managed that store and worked at that store since he was 14 years old. Probably two years from that point, we’d be best friends, going to house shows together.
When I was 15 — I was a big athlete in school — I convinced my mother to let me not play basketball anymore so I could take music lessons. And I did for over a year, but I had to drive an hour away to take them, plus I found out I was teaching myself more than what I was learning in the classes. You know, I’d say my biggest musical influence was probably just being raised in church. I’m not a churchgoer anymore, but I could never deny the fact that going to three concerts a week was highly influential to how I view melodies and lyrics.
The opening song, “Space and Time,” seems to be saying something that’s important to you. What was on your mind as you wrote it?
That’s a special song. Being very point blank in my lyrics — when I first wrote those lyrics, I was a little unsettled by that. A friend asked me once, “Did you say everything you needed to say?” So I look at songs like that a lot now. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with letting people know how you feel about them and what they mean to you, just really contemplating what makes a life.
While a song like “Space & Time” is so personal, the very next track, “Old Time Feeling” is a call to action. How do those two sides of your songwriting work together and compliment each other?
A lot of people ask if I conceptualized this album before I wrote it, but I just write songs as they come to me, and try to respect them enough to see them through. If people look at this album as a moment in time over the course of my life, then they shouldn’t be shocked for me to have some political thoughts. I’m bound to walk around with my eyes open. There’s a lot of people who paved the way for artists to not just write songs about getting their heart broken. Artists are supposed to comment. How could you not? If I want to write a song about a red Corvette or something, I’ll do my best to make it a good one. But at the end of the day, I do wonder why so many artists these days aren’t commenting through their art on what’s going on in the world.
What do you remember about the recording sessions?
We did this in April 2019. The studio — it’s in Louisville, Kentucky — is called La La Land. It had been owned for years and started by a Kentucky guy named Kevin Ratterman, who’s on a lot of people’s records. He’s an amazing person, a total beam of light when he walks through the door. It was really important for me to make sure that this music was made in Kentucky, because so much of my music is about this place.
What do you want people to understand about the way it really is in the South?
I can’t speak for the South — as a writer I’m speaking from my POV — but I would say, don’t write off the South for its regressive policies. That does nothing for those who are working daily to change that. There are progressive pockets all through the South and through Kentucky who are devoting their time and their lives to make sure that their neighbors are safe and taken care of. In my opinion, America, for a very long time, has used the South as a scapegoat for a lot of its backwards problems.
Now that the album is out in the wild, what goes through your mind when you hear it?
I’m proud of it. There’s little moments — at the end of my last track (“Big Girl Now”) you can hear my drummer and friend for nearly 10 years talk at the end of the track. I’m so glad that we were all represented, and our friends were all represented, in that music. I’m not sick of listening to it. It’s not like I go out and listen to it every day, but you have to keep in mind I’m gonna be playing these songs for years. So, I better love ‘em!
When Maya de Vitry quit her most recent full-time touring gig, she did it for self-preservation. Before her solo debut Adaptations was released in 2019, the multi-instrumentalist and singer/songwriter prioritized her life by centering community, home, and a sense of place in what had often been a frantic, taxing, and nomadic daily life.
Her second, just-released album, How to Break a Fall, was tracked almost immediately after Adaptations hit shelves, and with a harder, more grizzled, rockier aesthetic it demonstrated the growth and transformation that had occurred in the meantime. A sense of movement, of excited, unapologetic momentum permeates the Dan Knobler-produced project. Where Adaptations had seen de Vitry through a transition to stillness, How to Break a Fall was poised to carry her into still another new period for the budding solo artist.
Enter a global pandemic. With nearly all of that momentum and her entire release cycle squandered on a music industry that had to shutter itself in the face of COVID-19, de Vitry found herself once again prioritizing, enjoying each individual moment at home, focusing on community in whatever shape it can take at this point, and baking banana bread, too. It turns out practice does make perfect.
BGS spoke to de Vitry over the phone, immediately diving into how serendipitous this collection of songs is for a moment of global pausing.
BGS: The last record, Adaptations, was written in isolation and now you’ve landed with this new record, How to Break a Fall, and on the back end of it you’ve ended up in isolation again. I wondered if you’ve thought about that? Or considered the strange symmetry, the way that these records are bookended by the idea of intentional solitude?
de Vitry: [Laughs] Wow, I absolutely did not connect those dots and that is so wild. It’s so ironic, because I was feeling very frustrated and angry about losing all of these shows this spring and I was finally feeling like [I was ready to get on the road] — because with Adaptations I didn’t tour really at all. I wasn’t emotionally or mentally healthy enough to be touring my music, I wasn’t ready to be on stage. Then this time, I felt emotionally healthy to go out there and play shows and it was like, “Oh, but the world has another health situation going on.”
In some ways, How to Break a Fall was also written in isolation. I had kind of cut myself off a bit from the East Nashville scene, because I needed some space from the patterns and circles of people. I needed space from touring and leaving [the Stray Birds]. I was working at Starbucks while I was writing the album and I was essentially in isolation. You go to work for eight hours, come home, and you’re just in your house again. It was still voluntary, and I definitely still had some community. I could still pop out and play a show.
I’m kind of an introverted person, so I’m always in isolation when I’m writing — in some way. I’ve been writing so much in the last couple of weeks. I was ready to kind of emerge, I was ready to go and be out there, and in interaction, instead of isolation. Now it’s like mandatory isolation and I’m going to write.
What does that feel like to you? Does it feel like a grinding of the gears? Like, “Oh, hold on, we’ve gotta turn this ship around and it’s going to take some effort and energy for me to go back into the writing frame of mind when I was ready to be in the outward-facing, extroverted frame of mind.”
It feels like muscle memory. It’s like a pivot. That part of it has not been difficult. I think accessing the writing part, the inward part of being an artist, is [always] within reach. I get as much satisfaction from creating the stuff as I do performing the stuff, if not more. I would say the process of writing an album, recording an album, and being in the studio with people is so fulfilling to me. Just creating it. There’s almost a grieving process when that’s over. Then there’s the next thing, when the songs come alive… I was looking forward to that, seeing how the songs would live and evolve and change. How they would land, out there in the world in real time with people. What other choice do I have? Let’s just pivot. Let’s write another record. [Laughs]
“Better and Better” is about the idea of building something and the song feels pertinent in this moment of… pausing, let’s say, because I think we could all eventually agree that life isn’t about being the best, it’s about being better. It’s about being better than the moment before, the day before, the year before. How do you see that song’s potential for connecting with listeners right now?
That song was like the doorway for writing the rest of that album and it was the doorway because, through writing it, I was realizing that I was actually unwell. Some of the things I was singing about, those lyrics were all things that I wanted to believe, and I realized that I had to make changes. I had to stop doing something that felt normal. I had to leave the band that I was in, I had to stop touring for a while, and yeah, that in some ways does remind me of this moment, too. The only thing we really can control right now is how we take care of ourselves — and that’s also sort of the only thing we ever can control. But it’s easier to feel that when it feels like other things are so outside of our control.
I felt myself stop, stock still in the moment that I heard the line, “Forgiving myself is the most I can do” go by, because I don’t think a lot of people realize that’s what we’re doing every day right now, to get through. Letting ourselves just be enough. Where does that line come from for you?
That line is specifically about staying. About staying in the situation I was in. Before I was in [the Stray Birds], I was a musician. I was playing fiddle tunes, I was really into old-time music, I was writing songs, and I started to draft up what would be a solo record — in like 2009 and 2010. Then the band became like an invisible fence. There was no room for anyone to be doing anything outside of the band. There was no physical room, for all of the time we were on the road, and there was no emotional room with the interpersonal dynamic of the band. It was not possible to continue to be myself, to nurture my own voice as a writer and musician and also be a member of that band, because of the environment of the band.
Forgiving myself, in that line, is about forgiving my nineteen-year-old self for not knowing any better at the time. And forgiving myself for my fears, because it was easier [to avoid them instead]. It’s vulnerable to sing your lyrics at all, ever, and I’m forgiving myself for those fears I had. Instead of standing up with my name and my lyrics, it was easier to climb inside the identity of a band and feel protected and more secure.
Which is quite the contrast from How to Break a Fall, because, to me, this record feels like a statement, a declaration for women to be allowed to take up space. And to be allowed to access and enjoy as much of the oxygen in those spaces as they like. Songs like “Something In the Way She Moves,” “Gray,” definitely “Open the Door” all speak to this. And the rock ‘n’ roll aesthetic often feels angry and impassioned, but the music doesn’t feel hostile in the way that it channels those energies.
That’s one hundred percent right. That comes from that process of forgiveness. It comes from walking through that doorway, the doorway being “Better and Better,” and walking into this landscape of songs and being receptive to writing that story. I think the record doesn’t sound hostile because it’s not. These are the songs, these are the sounds that I felt like making, this is a story. These things are true for me.
There’s this video of Sister Rosetta Tharpe playing incredible guitar, walking up and down this train platform, it’s an iconic taking-up-of-space. An iconic expression of joy. That kind of spirit is what’s behind this music and this record. For as much as I can control what people can get from it, I would hope that some of what it unlocks or awakens is, “Huh… there are a lot of female characters on this record taking up space and doing what they want.”
It’s not hostile because it’s taking the responsibility of going inward by going to my own interior and inviting listeners to go into their interiors and see what’s going on in there. In the song “Revolution” it’s like, What are these walls? What’s inside of me? If this is the way that my eyes have been trained to see, what new world am I going to see? If I can’t shift the lens or something on the inside, how am I going to see a world that’s [different?] It’s happened so many times in history, whether it’s women’s rights or gay rights or the civil rights movement. We have to practice imagining the impossible. That’s connected to why it’s not hostile.
When that’s the reason behind the music and the intent behind the record, the volume of it or whether it’s an electric or an acoustic guitar or if it’s rock or folk — none of that matters to me. [Laughs] This is the story I’m telling!
It sounds like the start of a horror movie. A husband and father packs up the car with some clothes and a few guitars, bids farewell to his wife and kids, then drives deep into the Canadian countryside. He bunks at a friend’s country retreat, isolated from society, miles from the nearest human being. Or is he? Cue footsteps in the night, a dead bird on the doorstep, a shadowy figure barely glimpsed at the window. Perhaps there’s a death cult searching for the lost city of Ziox. Or some maniac with a pickaxe. Or some unnamed evil haunting the forest.
“It’s exactly like a horror movie!” laughs Michael Timmins, who is the man in that scenario and who write songs and plays guitar for the veteran Toronto band Cowboy Junkies. To pen tunes for their sixteenth studio album, All That Reckoning, he had to get out where nobody could hear him scream. “When I write, I have to be writing full time. As the years have gone by, it’s gotten harder and harder to do that, because I have more and more responsibilities at home. So I have to get away where it’s quiet, where I can sit around and think about nothing but songs. I have to get my head into it, so I have to isolate myself completely.”
He made it out alive, of course, but if All That Reckoning is any indication, the real horrors are the ones he encountered once he returned to society. An angry album whose outrage simmers coolly just beneath the surface, a thorny collection that ranks among the band’s best efforts, it chronicles a period of alienation, disappointment, fear, and paranoia. The guitars lurch and grind, the rhythm section lays out chunky, funky grooves, and singer Margo Timmins spits her brother’s lyrics with a strident combination of disgust and compassion. This is the Junkies in punk mode, decrying the hate and hostility that are scarier than any boogeyman.
“I’m not a protest writer,” says Michael, “but there are times in one’s life when the two collide. When I was all alone writing this album, I began to realize that the personal songs are little political analogies, and the ones that are a little bit political are really personal analogies. One feeds the other, and you really see how they cross. I felt like I was taking stock of what’s going on in my life and in the Western world, thinking about having to pay the price for a few things.”
Cowboy Junkies don’t usually traffic in dissent or social commentary; they’re better at documenting the personal than the political. Over the last thirty years they’ve crafted a sprawling body of work whose main subject is their own lives, their sons and daughters and wives and husbands and brothers and sisters. The band is rooted in their everyday lives, such that it feels more like an extension of family than a profession. “Margo and I are basically the same age,” says Michael. “We’re only about a year apart in age. We have our separate lives and things we go through, but when I write about something, she can relate that to something that’s happening in her world. And then she’s able to relate it to the listener by singing it, by giving it voice.”
It wasn’t always that way. After brief tenures in a punk group called the Hunger Project and an improvisational act known as Germinal, Michael Timmins and bass player Alan Anton returned home to Toronto, where they started a new band and eventually persuaded Margo to join as singer. Early shows were wildly spontaneous, with the band laying down a groove over which she would improvise lyrics or sing snatches of other songs. They covered old blues songs by Bukka White and Robert Johnson; they played “State Trooper” like Springsteen was an old bluesman himself. Released in 1986, their debut, Whites Off Earth Now!!, was a modest success, further entrenching them in the Canadian alternative scene but doing little to break them south of the border.
“Before anybody was listening,” says Margo, “we were just playing for ourselves—like all bands. You start in the garage or the basement or wherever, and playing music is fun. So you do a rock song. And then you do a country song, and then you do a blues songs. Nobody cares because nobody’s there.”
For their follow-up, they booked time in Church of the Holy Trinity in Toronto, claiming to be a Christian vocal band to allay any suspicions of sacrilege or heresy. The band recorded around a single microphone, capturing an ambience so strong, so distinctive, so immersive that the church becomes a member of the band. They reimagined “Blue Moon” as a eulogy for Elvis Presley, reinterpreted Patsy Cline’s “Walking After Midnight” as an anthem of urban paranoia, and most famously recorded what Lou Reed declared to be his favorite cover of the Velvet Underground’s “Sweet Jane.”The Trinity Session sounded unlike anything else at the time, and it pointed in new directions roots and folk music might travel: lo-fi, place-specific, history-steeped, atmospheric yet conceptual, beautiful and weird.
“What happens is you have any album like The Trinity Session and then suddenly everybody wants you to sound like that forever,” says Margo. “They want you to do that quiet album again and again. And we just couldn’t do that. We knew it would kill us. We’d get bored really fast, and it would be the end of the Junkies. We did it the way we wanted to do it, and we’re still here.”
After the misstep of 1990’s The Caution Horses—a little too clean, a little too slick—Cowboy Junkies proved themselves a deeply curious and extremely experimental band, one that had much greater range that previous releases had hinted. Black Eyed Man from 1992 is their country record, featuring songs rooted in Southern experience, some written by Townes Van Zandt (including a lovely version of “To Live Is to Fly”). They followed it up in 1993 with Pale Sun, Crescent Moon, a lowdown and occasionally abrasive album featuring guitarwork from J Mascis. There can’t be much overlap between John Prine and Dinosaur Jr, but the Junkies made it sound like a natural progression.
Since then they’ve largely forged their own path, never fully embracing or embraced by the roots community but also never feted as a major postpunk influence. Their most recent albums have been a linked quartet of experimental releases based on seasons of the year: One record was based on Michael’s experiences living in China, another gathered eleven Vic Chesnutt covers. Cowboy Junkies have reached a point where they can exist well outside the trends and slipstreams of contemporary pop, indie, and roots music, where they become a scene in and of themselves. Perhaps more crucially they’ve shown how a band might settle into a long career, enjoying a cult audience more than hit albums. They’ve shown how to make a life in music.
In that regard All That Reckoning is all the more surprising for how relevant it sounds, for how well it surveys our current climate, most crucially for how it suggests that the band’s defining traits—the quiet vocals, the erratic guitars, the menacing midtempo jams—are specifically calibrated to speak to this very moment. As Margo sings on “When We Arrive”: “Everything unsure, everything unstable.”
It’s not easy to write about these topics, but it can be even harder to sing about them. Before she even records her first notes, Margo road tests her brother’s songs, playing them in front of audiences, living with them so she can burrow into them, figure them out, and devise a plan of attack. For All That Reckoning she set up a makeshift studio in the ski chalet where Michael wrote the songs. “Often I don’t know what a song is about, and Mike won’t tell me. When he writes them, he just writes them. They’re mine to interpret and bring my life to and figure my way around.”
She has always been an imaginative singer, but these songs contain some of her best and most precise performances. The disgust in her voice on “Missing Children” is palpable, as is the disdain on “Shining Teeth,” but she sings “The Things We Do to Each Other” as matter-of-factly as possible, as though the lyrics were self-evident, as though a little compassion might help the lesson go down easier.
“Mountain Stream” plays like a record skipping, Michael’s guitar jangling like a pocketful of ill-gotten coins and Margo sounding hazy even though she’s relating a very grounded story about a king surveying his crumbling kingdom. “I wanted to sing it like… you know when you have a dream and you wake up the next morning and you tell somebody about it? You’re telling it in that kind of confused, almost stilted way of talking? You’re shaking your head going, I was here and I was there and then this dog came along. I wanted to sing it in that bewildered sort of way. But it eluded me. I don’t think I got it.”
Perhaps not getting it, perhaps hitting just off the mark, is what gives the song its haunted quality, as though nothing quite lines up, nothing quite makes sense. Everything unstable, everything unsure. “There’s something weird out there, something undefinable,” says Michael, pinpointing the album’s appeal. “We can’t really define it or figure it out, but it’s been out there forever, and for some reason it seems to be getting more common, more present.” The Junkies stare it down on All That Reckoning and they never flinch.
Tour Food: I'm not sure that I have ever seen anyone in our band eat sushi. Maybe Matt does. He tours with Drive-By Truckers all the time now, so we only have him for a percentage of the time, and he is a vegan … but apparently his doctor told him he was nutrient deficient and that he really needed to start eating fish … so maybe he eats sushi. Who knows? So we are probably more of a hamburger kind of band. We ate last week at Storms when we were passing through Lampasas, Texas. We heard that Elvis used to eat there when he was stationed at Fort Hood so, obviously, we anticipated a bacon, egg, peanut butter, banana lard burger. They didn't have that, but we all had the triple meat burger. It killed. Bo had a malt that was the size of his head. He couldn't finish it.
Backstage Hangs: Dexateens play dive bars, so this means that there is no such thing as a backstage hang for us. The bar is the backstage and we are sharing it with the people who come to see us play which, for us, is cool. We usually make friends that we can look forward to seeing the next time we are in town … and we like having drinks bought for us, so that's also a plus. Every now and then, we meet someone that wants to press buttons, but Brian knows how to defuse that pretty easily. He is a bartender at the Nick in Birmingham and he is in the business of defusing problem clients.
Radio Station: Favorite radio station is WFMU in New Jersey. We have been supported by them and get to play the studio when we are in town thanks to our friend Joe Belock. Kevin Nutt does a super cool show called Sinner's Crossroads. He wrote the liner notes for our new record, and they are hilarious. He wrote them from the perspective of an old-time radio minister: "Gospel friends, I wish I could say I was immediately blessed with their fine singing and unique approach. But I can’t. It sounded like a lot of racket. It sounded like the world’s largest bumblebee had got lose in there. I thought there was a mistake. I keyed the talkback button: 'Hey son, you can’t play no rock 'n' roll on a gospel station for Christ's sake! Lord.'” Kevin used to see us perform back in the day when we were a young band while he lived in Alabama … We put his liners on the back of an old-time church fan that comes free with the Teenage Hallelujah vinyl.
Driving Album: We don't spend a whole lot of time listening to music. I'm usually the driver and I get uptight in traffic when the music is blasting. What I really enjoy doing is scrolling through the channels on FM radio, and of course there is hardly ever anything of value worth hearing, but when I land on one of the three Eagles' songs that I like … man, what a moment! Seems like classic country radio is getting popular now which is cool. Sadly, some of the bad '80s stuff fits in that category. We took an acoustic guitar on tour one time, just for the van experience and that most definitely didn't work. Driving a van with a trailer while someone sits behind you, banging on a flat top, working out harmonies or arrangements might be the most excruciating thing ever. If someone wants to hear music while we are on the road, more than likely they are going to put in their ear buds and rock it out. I like talk radio, myself.
Car Games: We don't really have any road games. The game is, manage to not stink it up for your neighbor, even though you haven't had a bath in four days; throw away your trash; load your own gear; go to the merch table and try and help hustle some t-shirts; try to be nice to jaded, grumpy sound guys … you know ,that sort of stuff. When you are traveling like we do, there isn't time to see the city and absorb the culture. I mean, we might get a meal every now that then that is special, but for the most part, we eat stuff that is in walking distance of the club. We spend a lot of time at Love's truck stops. We probably would know a lot more about the coffee selection at Love's than we would at some artsy-fartsy coffee house.
House Shows: House shows are the way we came up as a band, and we still love to play them. I probably would have a problem standing in line with college students for a cup of beer, at this point in my life, but having said that, if someone wants to pay us and give us our own stash of drinks, then we really like the idea of getting down and dirty with a bunch of wild animals at a house party. We played a really fun marriage party in a basement in Louisville, Kentucky, a few years back and it was a total blast. We saw the groom at a show in Nashville, and he told us that, unfortunately, he and his wife split up, but the good news was that he had a hell of a "Hope It All Works Out" party.
Record Stores: We would probably be more of a thrift store and flea market kind of band as opposed to one who might visit the trendy bookstore. Same thing with record stores … really love the idea of shopping to buy records, but when you have hit or miss nights, the wives tend to get upset when you come home with a stack of records and no cash. So, unless we have been asked to play an in-store, it's not something we typically do. Love our friends at Grimey's in Nashville and the End of All Music in Oxford. We played a set of Rolling Stones covers a few years back at Grimey's and we were told that Bobby Keys was going to show up and play sax with us. Bobby didn't make it, but Grimey did sing "Rip This Joint" with us and that was a lot of fun. I never realized how wordy that song was til Mike showed up with three pages of lyrics.
Tour Hobby: We recently got an RV. The thing has 22,000 original miles and is from 1994. So it seems like, when we have time, we devote our attention to working out the electrical quirks and trying the make the refrigerator work. We have narrowed the nickname of this thing down to either the Millennium Falcon or the Eagle 5 from Spaceballs. Either way, it seems fitting because we are constantly tinkering with it to make it work. It's probably not the fastest ship in the galaxy, so Eagle 5 might be more fitting.
Dive Bar: It's hard for me to pick one dive bar that we would love the most. You know, there is just sort of a love/hate thing with those places. On one hand, they are truly disgusting, evil places, but on the other hand, when the audience is there and the band is on fire, it can be a super intimate and exhilarating thing. Especially the bars where there is no stage and you get right there with the audience and pour beer on each other … that's a lot of fun. The other thing about them that I find super interesting is the history that a lot of these places have, all the great acts that have come before you playing these old watering holes … the Nick, in particular.
Stretch of Road: Favorite stretch of road would be whatever road is taking us out of town, because that's normally the road that takes us back home. Playing music is great and it's clearly something that the Dexateens can't get away from, but first and foremost, we are family men and the music stuff falls in line elsewhere. That mentality hasn't been great for our careers, but it has allowed us to do our thing as a band without divorcing our wives, fathering mystery children, and ruining our lives. If you removed the wives and the children from the equation, this whole thing wouldn't work.
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