On the evening of Saturday, July 27, BGS returned to the fabled Newport Folk Festival for the first time in a decade to host a very special after show event, A Bluegrass Situation, hosted by our co-founder Ed Helms, Noam Pikelny, and friends. Held at the Jane Pickens Theater in Newport, Rhode Island, the evening – which benefitted the Newport Festivals Foundation – was produced by BGS executive director Amy Reitnouer Jacobs in partnership with the festival team. The star-studded concert sold out almost instantaneously.
“In today’s overcrowded music festival market, it can be rare to find that place that maintains both comforting familiarity and curatorial daring do,” said Reitnouer Jacobs. “One of the last bastions of this kind of audacious event production is Newport Folk Fest… Saturday marked exactly ten years to the day since the last time BGS curated a stage for Newport. Here’s hoping our next return to Fort Adams will be far sooner!”
Helm’s own band, the Lonesome Trio – with Jacob Tilove and Ian Riggs – served as the evening’s house band, including pal Noam Pikelny (Mighty Poplar, Punch Brothers) on banjo. They kicked off the evening with a pair of bluegrass classics and were on hand throughout the show to back up many BGS friends & neighbors, including Rett Madison, young mandolin phenom Wyatt Ellis, frequent BGS collaborator Langhorne Slim, bluegrass banjo trailblazer Tony Trischka, and more.
Festival mainstay Billy Bragg made an appearance (appropriately covering Bob Dylan), as did Alisa Amador, who also joined singer-songwriter Kaia Kater on a performance of Kater’s original song, “Nine Pin.” Kater was back on stage again later in the evening for a banjo throwdown with Helms, Pikelny, Trischka, and Rhiannon Giddens all picking “Cluck Old Hen,” which brought down the house. Andrew Bird and Madison Cunningham, who performed Buckingham Nicks at the festival during the weekend, stopped by for two songs, while elsewhere in the set Giddens called on her musical collaborator Dirk Powell – and Powell called on Giddens – for a pair of selections as well.
“Ed and Noam gathered a gaggle of old friends and buzzy new talent for one of our best bluegrass jams yet,” Reitnouer Jacobs continued. “Rhiannon Giddens and Langhorne Slim warmed up backstage alongside artists making their Newport debut, such as Wyatt Ellis and recent BGS Artist of the Month Kaia Kater (whose supergroup New Dangerfield would take the main stage the next day). Rett Madison dazzled us with sartorial style and voice, and surprise guests dropped by – like Tony Trischka and John C. Reilly. Like any good bluegrass jam, you never quite knew who was going to take the next break, but you knew it was going to be damn good.”
Reilly – arguably best known as an actor/comedian – is also an accomplished Americana songster, and joined his old friend Helms on a rendition of the Stanley Brothers’ “It’s Never Too Late,” to the delight of the Jane Pickens Theater crowd. To close the evening, the full cast of stellar artists, musicians, and creators came together to jam on a few rousing group numbers, including a touching a capella encore of “Amazing Grace.”
Newport Folk Festival is a sacred space in our roots music community; we were so proud and honored to return to the event to host A Bluegrass Situation and offer a stage to so many of our dearest friends in bluegrass, folk, and Americana. Relive our special after show with these photos from the evening:
Our A Bluegrass Situation co-hosts and house band, Ed Helms and Noam Pikelny with Jacob Tilove and Ian Riggs of the Lonesome Trio. By Nina Westervelt.
Rhiannon Giddens and Dirk Powell warm up backstage at the Jane Pickens Theater for A Bluegrass Situation. By Josh Wool.
Billy Bragg takes the stage during A Bluegrass Situation. By Nina Westervelt.
Old friends John C Reilly and Ed Helms backstage during A Bluegrass Situation at Newport Folk Festival. By Josh Wool.
Young mandolin phenom Wyatt Ellis joins the house band on stage during his first time appearing at Newport Folk. By Nina Westervelt.
A longtime friend of BGS, Langhorne Slim was on hand for our A Bluegrass Situation after show. By Nina Westervelt.
Madison Cunningham and Andrew Bird share a quiet moment backstage. By Josh Wool.
Rett Madison joins the house band to sing "Silver Springs." By Nina Westervelt.
John C Reilly takes the stage with the evening's house band and Ed Helms. By Josh Wool.
Andrew Bird and Madison Cunningham in duet during A Bluegrass Situation at Newport Folk Festival. By Nina Westervelt.
John C Reilly waves to the crowd at the sold-out Jane Pickens Theater in Newport, RI. By Nina Westervelt.
Dirk Powell and Rhiannon Giddens in a dressing room backstage during A Bluegrass Situation. By Josh Wool.
Langhorn Slim with the Lonesome Trio on the stage at A Bluegrass Situation, our Newport Folk Festival after show. By Nina Westervelt.
All photos by Nina Westervelt and Josh Wool, as noted. Lead Image: Nina Westervelt.
The year’s most discussed, and in some respects, most controversial LP to date has been Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter. Its admirers have painted Beyoncé as a trailblazer for Black country artists. They cite her inclusion on the album of both past – like Linda Martell – and contemporary Black country artists, including Rhiannon Giddens, plus the foursome of Brittney Spencer, Reyna Roberts, Tanner Adell, and Tiera Kennedy, all featured on the update of The Beatles classic, “Blackbird” (stylized “Blackbiird”). They also cite Beyoncé’s Texas background as ample proof of her country roots and sincerity.
Others, notably contributors to The Washington Post and The Guardian, have attacked the 27-song project for a variety of sins ranging from overproduction to such emphasis on idiomatic variety that the result to their ears is faceless, forgettable music. Beyoncé herself has repeatedly said “It’s not a country album, it’s a Beyoncé album,” a line that can and has been viewed many different ways.
Still, there’s been a genuine explosion of interest in Black country music the past couple of years prior to the release of Cowboy Carter. It has resulted in a host of attention for artists ranging from Charley Crockett, Mickey Guyton, Miko Marks, Rissi Palmer and Brei Carter to established hitmakers like Darius Rucker and Kane Brown. But there’s one name that stands above all others as a key figure who’s been in the country music trenches over five decades. That’s author and songwriter Alice Randall, a superb novelist and academic. Randall, a Detroit native, made the move to Nashville from Washington, D.C. back in 1983, because she wanted to showcase her skills as a country songwriter and simultaneously wanted to demolish the widely held myth that the music had no links or connection to Black music and zero audience among African Americans.
“Yes, I faced open hostility and overt racism when I began,” Randall told Good Country during a recent interview. “There were plenty of people who looked at me and figured what’s this small Black woman doing here? But I wasn’t going to let that stop me.” Randall spent plenty of time attending songwriters rounds, plus examining and analyzing the songs that were becoming hits. In her book she pays credit to Bob Doyle, who was then a songwriter liaison at ASCAP. Doyle’s Bob Doyle & Associates is the longtime management firm for Garth Brooks. Another of her early Nashville mentors was singer-songwriter Steve Earle, whom she met through Doyle. She cites Earle’s willingness to address personal and social trauma and pain as an influence on her writing style.
Randall earned her first Top 10 country hit in 1987 with the Judy Rodman-recorded “Girls Ride Horses, Too,” which she wrote with Mark D. Sanders. She also launched the publishing company Midsummer Music (which she later sold), with the aim of aiding and developing a community of storytellers. She’d soon enjoy bigger success, becoming one of the first Black women to write a No. 1 country hit, when she and Matraca Berg co-wrote “XXXs and OOOs (An American Girl),” for Trisha Yearwood in 1994. (Donna Summer previously co-wrote Dolly Parton’s “Starting Over Again” in 1980).
Randall was also a writer on Moe Bandy’s top 40 hit, “Many Mansions.” Some other notable Randall milestones include writing the treatment for Reba McEntire’s “Is There Life Out There?” music video, which won an ACM Award and features a Randall cameo. In addition, she wrote and produced the pilot for a primetime drama “XXX’s and OOO’s,” which later aired as a made-for-TV movie on CBS.
But as Randall notes in her book, additional trials can come with success. Randall recounts how after the success of “XXXs and OOOs,” a music publishing executive pressured her into signing a contract before she had time to let her lawyers look at the paperwork. That move eventually led to Randall signing away much of her writer’s share of the song’s profits, an experience she called “part of my graduate school.”
Her new book, My Black Country (and its co-released, eponymous album), nicely combines personal reflection with historical commemoration and cultural examination. It highlights Black country’s finest performers and personalities, while noting that early country music was a far more interracial activity than many realized. “It’s amazing to me how many people don’t realize that Jimmie Rodgers recorded with Louis Armstrong, or that Lil’ Hardin was also involved in that historic recording,” she continues.
Randall cites Hardin as the mother of Black Country, the premier vocalist/harmonica soloist DeFord Bailey as the papa, multi-idiomatic master Ray Charles as the genius child, Charley Pride as Bailey’s side child, and the vocalist and TV/film star Herb Jefferies, also known as the Bronze Buckaroo, as Hardin’s stepchild.
She’s equally passionate about the frequent omission from country music histories and commentary of the contributions of Black cowboys. “I fight for all the Black cowboys who have been erased, all the country and western songs through the years that did not tell those stories,” Randall told Billboard magazine in an earlier interview. “When I wrote songs like ‘Went For a Ride,’ a lot of people did not realize they were Black cowboys I was writing about… but 20 or 30% of all cowboys were Black and brown in the 19th and 20th centuries, so it’s one of the ways that African Americans have contributed so much to the legacy of country music, is through cowboy songs.”
The book also chronicles a further lineage of Black country artists, including the Pointer Sisters and Linda Martell, as well as other artists like Sunny War, Miko Marks, Valerie June, and Rissi Palmer.
With 2024 being a big year for Black country, it’s only fitting that Nashville and the music world at large recognize and celebrate Alice Randall’s achievements. Last month she published the memoir, My Black Country (Simon & Schuster), while an accompanying LP, My Black Country: The Songs Of Alice Randall (Oh Boy Records), was also released.
A pair of sold out events in Music City – a book signing at Parnassus bookstore and a combination celebration/Black Opry concert at the City Winery where contemporary Black country vocalists performed Randall tunes – were just the first events to honor the current Vanderbilt Professor of African American and Diaspora Studies as well as writer-in residence. Randall’s other notable literary feats include The Wind Done Gone, a blistering examination and parody of the book and film, Gone With The Wind.
During Black Music Month in June, Randall will appear at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture on June 7, and she’ll return to Nashville on June 15 for another in-person conversation about Blacks and country music.
Randall’s book traces her love for country to a family relocation. While growing up in Detroit, she was also a fan of Motown and even spent some time with Stevie Wonder. But upon moving with her mother to Washington, D.C., country became the dominant music she regularly heard. As a student at Harvard studying both English and American Literature & Language Randall says it was after closely surveying Bobby Bare’s 1976 song, “Dropkick Me Through Jesus (Through the Goalposts of Life),” she really began to understand the depth and breadth of country music storytelling.
That knowledge, along with her excellence as a lyricist and storyteller, resonates throughout the many memorable and unforgettable numbers on the album My Black Country: The Songs Of Alice Randall. The roster of 12 women selected to perform the various tunes features many of today’s finest country stylists. The honor roll includes Ada Victoria’s soaring “Went For a Ride,” Allison Russell’s glorious “Many Mansions,” Rhiannon Giddens’ routinely spectacular rendition of “The Ballad of Sally Anne,” and Rissi Palmer’s poignant performance on “Who’s Minding the Garden.” Randall’s daughter, poet and commentator Caroline Randall Williams, delivers a strong performance on “XXXs and OOOs.”
Randall credits Russell for introducing her to Ebonie Smith, better known for her work as a producer on Sturgill Simpson’s Grammy-winning album, A Sailor’s Guide to Earth.
And it’s no surprise Randall would conclude our interview by weighing in on the Beyoncé LP, herself.
“She’s the only Black woman to achieve those feats [No. 1 country single and album], but I don’t think she’ll be the last,” Randall concludes. “I’m more proud of the fact that there are so many great Black country artists out there, that the Black Opry is getting national attention, and that we’re finally putting to rest that garbage about country only being for white people.”
“In fact, to me, Nashville’s becoming a town for wild women, and for Black women to freely express themselves any way they choose.”
On March 29, Beyoncé rode sidesaddle onto the world stage and took us all by storm with the release of her eighth studio album, Cowboy Carter.
Cowboy Carter arrived as the second installment of a three-act project that commenced with Renaissance in 2022. Renaissance incorporated house, disco, hyperpop, R&B, and funk while reclaiming the Black queer roots of dance music. On Cowboy Carter, she similarly reclaims the Black roots of country, blending it with folk, rock, R&B, hip-hop, classical, house, and gospel throughout.
Prior to the release of Cowboy Carter, country has been a longstanding muse for Beyoncé. While her affiliation with the genre was popularized by Lemonade’s “Daddy Lessons,” her first country-leaning performance dates back to nearly a decade earlier when she performed “Irreplaceable” with Sugarland at the American Music Awards in 2007.
Potent and impeccably saturated, Cowboy Carter makes clear that country is inarguably a huge part of Beyoncé’s creative and cultural identity. However, her presence in the genre has not always been well-received; in an Instagram caption 10 days before the album’s release, Beyoncé revealed that CC was largely inspired by an experience where she “did not feel welcomed” into the country fold. Many speculate that this refers to her appearance at the 2016 CMA Awards. The network received racist backlash after she performed “Daddy Lessons” with the Chicks, prompting the erasure of the song’s video from the show’s website (though a representative from CMA later denied the correlation between those two events).
Of Cowboy Carter Beyoncé writes, “The criticisms I faced when I first entered this genre forced me to propel past the limitations that were put on me.”
Beyoncé alchemizes a multitude of influences and collaborators across the gargantuan album in order to achieve the monumental musical feats of CC. With a credits list that sprawls for seemingly miles, Beyoncé enlists a number of guest artists, co-writers, producers, and musicians. Between them, they represent the Black roots of country, pay tribute to Black Americans’ impact on the genre, include legendary country artists and well-known side musicians and collaborators that assert the project’s roots in country, and represent the bright and diverse present and future of country by featuring several lesser-known Black country artists, many of which are also genre-bending in their own work.
In a list that is by no means comprehensive, here are just a few of the contributors that brought their musical magic to Cowboy Carter.
Rhiannon Giddens
“Texas Hold ‘Em” made history as the first hit single by a solo Black woman to top the Billboard’s Hot Country Songs Chart and 10 weeks later, as of this writing, it maintains its gilded perch. Fittingly, the song opens with the warmth and drive of the legendary Rhiannon Giddens strumming a standalone fretless, clawhammer gourd banjo. The talented multi-instrumentalist, singer, composer of many mediums, and roots scholar also sprinkles notes of viola throughout the track.
It is no coincidence that Giddens’ banjo playing, like much of her work, pays homage to the lineage of Black influence throughout roots music. Referred to by many as a “performing historian,” Giddens has spent her career shedding light upon the cross-cultural interweavings of the genre. Here, in an interview, she details the West African origins of the banjo, an instrument essential to American country music that was initially brought to the Americas by enslaved Black folks who used gourds and other accessible materials to recreate instruments of their homelands. By showcasing Giddens on the track, Beyoncé introduces a sonic representative of overlooked histories while uplifting one of the most celebrated Black musicians in modern day roots music.
Robert Randolph
Raised in a secluded religious community, Robert Randolph grew up without secular music. The renowned pedal steel guitarist heard only the music played within the House of God Church of Orange, New Jersey, for decades. He learned the instrument through Sacred Steel, a Black gospel tradition developed in the ’30s that highlighted the steel guitar during religious services.
During his early adulthood, Randolph became exposed to the world of music beyond; as he absorbed jazz, blues, funk, rock, and soul, he soon set out layering his gorgeous pedal steel tones upon a fusion of genres, particularly alongside his band, Robert Randolph and the Family Band. Across his musical arc, he epitomizes Beyoncé’s philosophy that music is transcendent; “All music is related,” he says. “Gospel is the same as blues. The only thing that changes is hardcore gospel people are singing about God and Jesus and in the blues people are singing about ‘my baby left me’ and whiskey.”
Justin Schipper
Like Robert Randolph, Justin Schipper is also credited for steel guitar on the track “16 Carriages.” A Nashville-based composer, multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, and producer, Schipper is a prominent figure in the current country landscape. His talents have landed him on tour with Josh Turner and Shania Twain (playing pedal steel and dobro), and he has gigged with the likes of Carrie Underwood, Chris Stapleton, Kris Kristofferson, Florida Georgia Line, and more.
Cam
Cam (given name Camaron Ochs) co-produced and co-wrote five songs on CC. An American country singer and songwriter, Cam began her career songwriting for musical giants in the industry such as Sam Smith and Miley Cyrus. Since then, she’s released three of her own studio albums with songs inspired by the songwriting styles of Patsy Cline, Ray Charles, Bonnie Raitt, Willie Nelson, and Joni Mitchell, amongst others. A prominent figure in the current country landscape, Cam lends crucial insights and layers with each of her contributions.
Sean & Sara Watkins
Renowned in the current bluegrass/newgrass scene, this sibling duo lends guitar (Sean) and fiddle (Sara) to the track “II Most Wanted.” Sean and Sara epitomize the familial quality so integral to bluegrass; their first band, Nickel Creek, was formed in 1989 alongside virtuoso Chris Thile when Sara and Chris were only 8 years old and Sean was 12. The siblings have been playing together ever since; Nickel Creek would go on to release seven albums, the latest of which, Celebrants, was released last year.
In 2002, the pair began The Watkins Family Hour as a monthly musical showcase featuring their friends and other collaborators in Los Angeles. Spanning over 20 years, the WFH has blossomed expansively. In fact, the pair released their third studio album, Vol. II, in 2022, a celebration of the project and the community surrounding it. Similarly to CC, the list of features for Vol. II is extensive, featuring the likes of Madison Cunningham, Willie Watson, Jackson Browne, and Fiona Apple, amongst others.
Stevie Wonder
A child prodigy who became blind shortly after birth, Stevie Wonder is widely regarded as one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. He makes his contribution to CC by layering tasteful harmonica atop the sonically rich layers of “Jolene,” a reimaginative cover in the shape of Dolly Parton’s 1973 classic. Much like Beyoncé herself, Wonder is a trailblazer who, as Beyoncé stated in her Innovator Award speech at the iHeartRadio Awards, “defied any label placed upon [him].” From jazz to soul to funk to R&B to gospel to pop and beyond, Stevie Wonder has influenced and inspired creators across infinite genres and blendings with his vibrant propensity for experimentation. In the same speech, Beyoncé poured out a fountain of gratitude towards the legend, who presented her award —“Thank you so much Stevie, I love you,” she said. “I love you and I honor you. I want to thank you for making a way for all of us. […] Whenever anyone asks me if there’s anyone I can listen to for the rest of my life, it’s always you. So thank you, God bless you.”
Brittney Spencer, Tanner Adell, Tiera Kennedy, and Reyna Roberts
These four women are responsible for the ethereal background and third verse vocals for “Blackbiird.” Additionally, Spencer, Roberts, and Kennedy also lend background vocals to “Tyrant,” while Adell’s voice is woven into the sweeping harmonies of “Ameriican Requiem.”
Initially released in 1968 on The Beatles’ self-titled album, (colloquially known as “The White Album”), Paul McCartney wrote “Blackbird” in response to witnessing on television the harassment and violence that Black students endured upon attending newly-integrated schools. In 2018, he told GQ that he was particularly influenced by the young women who constituted, in part, the Little Rock Nine in Alabama — a nickname for the first nine Black students to desegregate the formerly all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas.
As McCartney explained to TODAY, “In England, a ‘bird’ is a girl, so I was thinking of a Black girl going through this; now is your time to arise; set yourself free; take these broken wings.”
Within her illustrious arrangement of the classic, Beyoncé pairs the initial guitar track recorded by McCartney with the vocals of herself and these four Black women whose careers are actively altering the historically whitewashed landscape of country. By including them, Beyoncé nods towards McCartney’s intended meaning of the song while actively uplifting these young women so that they may prosper in a genre that undervalues and mistreats the Black artists who continue to give it wings. Brittney Spencer, Tanner Adell, Tiera Kennedy, and Reyna Roberts each have burgeoning careers in the genre that are largely influenced by traditional country sounds and themes.
Willie Nelson & Dolly Parton
In addition to inviting in many Black artists and roots musicians, Beyoncé strategically inserts more commercially successful country greats whose values align with her own. As Willie Nelson tells his faux-radio station listeners in the track “Smoke Hour II,” “Sometimes you don’t know what you like until someone you trust turns you onto some real good shit. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why I’m here.” This line candidly demonstrates an awareness of the unfortunate truth that a vast array of today’s country fans are white listeners unlikely to take this music seriously without ample accreditation from respected white artists.
Merely four days after the release of CC, likely due in part to the inclusion of Willie and Dolly, the number of first-time listeners of Beyoncé’s music had increased by 85% on Spotify.
Willie Nelson, who celebrates his 91st birthday this year, is renowned for his left-leaning activism (especially advocating for the legalization of marijuana — hence the nomenclature of his feature tracks “Smoke Hour” and “Smoke Hour II”) and his role in pioneering the Outlaw Country movement. Outlaw Country began in the ’60s as a subgenre to rebel against the conservative suppressions, sonic and otherwise, of the country industry at the time. Willie and his like-minded contemporaries strove to achieve creative freedom beyond the political and sonic standards that dominated Nashville.
Similarly, Dolly Parton has used her platform, influence, and capital to enact social change. In addition to being an advocate for LGBTQ+ rights, she donated $1 million to Vanderbilt University in 2020 to go towards vaccine research amidst the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic.
As of 2024, Willie Nelson and Dolly Parton are widely regarded as two of the most successful American country artists of all time. Nelson holds 12 Grammys from 57 nominations, and continues to tour (in fact, he is actively on the road again right now). Dolly has accrued a total of 11 Grammys from 50 nominations over the course of her career and recently gave a dazzling performance at the 2023 NFL Thanksgiving Halftime Show. The amount of esteem and respect each has garnered throughout their careers grants Cowboy Carter a certain amount of credibility within the wider country circuit.
However, it is clear that Beyoncé doesn’t just merely use these two for their name recognition. She is, indubitably, a seasoned scholar in the history of American country music and respects the discography of both artists immensely. While both give narrative voice-overs, Dolly also lends background vocals to “Tyrant” and, of course, shares songwriting credits for the innovative cover of her song “Jolene” that appears on the album.
Willie Jones & Shaboozey
Willie Jones joins Beyoncé on CC to lend his resonant, smoky vocals on the duet track, “Just for Fun,” and to “Jolene.” Having gotten his start as a contestant on the X Factor in 2012, Jones is currently making a name for himself as contemporary Black country artist that Grammy.com refers to as a “country-rap iconoclast.” As proves to be a crucial theme throughout Cowboy Carter, Jones galvanizes cross-genre musings to make a sound that is entirely his own.
Similarly, Shaboozey is a rapping Black country artist who represents the future of the genre. Combining hip-hop, rock, country, and Americana, Shaboozey further embodies the blending spirit behind CC. His contributions to the album include rapping verses on both “Spaghettii” and “Sweet Honey Buckiin.”
Linda Martell
Beyoncé ingeniously laced together Cowboy Carter to demonstrate the past, present, and future of Black musicians who have influenced the American roots music; and Linda Martell stands as a crowned example of the past. Martell, now 82, was the first commercially successful Black woman in country. In 1969, she made history as the first Black woman to play the Grand Ole Opry, and she held the status of highest peaking single by a Black woman on Billboard’s Hot Country Singles Chart for her song “Color Him Father” until Beyoncé’s very own “Texas Hold ‘Em” took its place.
However, Martell’s success was short-lived; she left Nashville and country music altogether in 1974 after receiving racist backlash following the release of her first album. Nearly every live show was corroded by racial slurs from belligerent audiences, and her label eventually shelved her music when her single, “Bad Case of the Blues,” failed to do the numbers they were expecting. As Martell postulates on the CC track “Spaghettii,” “Genres are a funny little concept, aren’t they? In theory, they have a simple definition that’s easy to understand. But in practice, well, some may feel confined.”
While Martell’s career arc fell victim to the confines of hegemonic racism within Nashville (and the country at large), her appearance on Cowboy Carter pays tribute to her historical strides for Black artists nevertheless. The track “The Linda Martell Show” (wherein Martell poses as the host of her own radio show) acts as a foil to Willie Nelson’s “Smoke Hour” — Beyoncé here reimagines the career of Martell, granting her the accreditation to host her own show, something history previously never afforded her.
Miley Cyrus & Post Malone
Beyoncé’s respect for innovation rings loud and clear in her inclusion of Miley Cyrus and Post Malone on CC. Each share a vocal duet with Beyoncé on the album — Miley sings “II Most Wanted” and Post Malone contributes to the track “Levii’s Jeans.”
Though both are primarily known as pop artists, each has a career largely informed by their capacity to genrebend. Miley, daughter of country icon Billy Ray Cyrus and God-daugher of Dolly Parton, adds additional credibility to Beyoncé’s country venture. Throughout her career, Miley has traversed country, rock, pop, and R&B.
Similarly, Post Malone has woven together pop, alternative R&B, hip-hop, and indie throughout his career, and many speculate that he will soon release a country album.
It should be noted that both Miley Cyrus and Post Malone have been able to immerse themselves in genres that are historically Black throughout their respective careers. That both have moved between country and R&B without controversy is telling; their capacity to do so seamlessly and successfully demonstrates how white artists are able to express themselves fluidly without systemic repercussions. It is this very ease that Beyoncé wishes to cultivate for artists of every race; in her Instagram post about the release of the album, she writes, “My hope is that years from now, the mention of an artist’s race, as it relates to releasing genres of music, will be irrelevant.”
Raphael Saddiq
Referred to by music critic Robert Chrisgau as the “preeminent R&B artist of the ’90s,” Raphael Saddiq made mark as an American singer, songwriter, record producer, and multi-instrumentalist. He rose to fame in the ’90s with his R&B/soul group, Tony! Toni! Toné!, and went on to have a successful solo career. Additionally, he has produced songs for musical giants such as Erykah Badu, Stevie Wonder, TLC, D’Angelo, Solange Knowles (Beyoncé’s sister), John Legend, and more.
He is credited 18 times over the course of Cowboy Carter for his producing, writing, and instrumental contributions to the tracklist.
Since her solo debut in 2014, Vari-Colored Songs: a Tribute to Langston Hughes, multi-instrumentalist, composer, songwriter, and thought leader Leyla McCalla has routinely and consistently expanded her own sonic universe. But these have not been gratuitous or ambitious artistic reinventions. Instead, the cellist and multi-instrumentalist intentionally and organically brings in new and exciting textures, influences, stories, cultural touch points, and text paintings into her work. On April 12, she’ll continue in a similar vein, once again broadening her own endless musical horizons with a brand new record, Sun Without the Heat, available via ANTI-.
After Vari-Colored Songs, a collection of thoughtful, dense, and engaging adapted Hughes poems, Haitian folk, and originals, the critically acclaimed and “fan favorite” collection, A day for the hunter, a day for the prey (2016), brought in still more French, Haitian Creole, and bilingual material, underpinned by string band sounds that recalled her days performing and recording with the Carolina Chocolate Drops – but with many iconoclastic wrinkles and touches uniquely her own. At no point has there seemed to be any floundering or self doubt, musically and otherwise, in McCalla’s releases, but still their progression points to a growing confidence, an indelible sense of self, and an unwavering commitment to telling often untold stories. Time and again, she plumbs the depths of her own soul, her family, her lineage to discover and honor narratives regularly left in the shadows.
Sun Without the Heat certainly finds McCalla – who is based in New Orleans – covering exciting, tantalizing new ground that neither feels entirely new or, again, like any sort of attempt at frivolous reinvention. Instead, this album is a re-distillation of the personal journey – whether inward or outward – that McCalla has invited us to join her on since Vari-Colored Songs. Over 10 tracks, Sun Without the Heat is fiery while inviting, with limitless sparks and an intractable gravity. Building on her Haitian roots, which remained front-and-center in 2019’s incredible TheCapitalist Blues and also anchored her theatrical sort-of-concept album, Breaking the Thermometer (2022), on Sun Without the Heat McCalla again subverts antiquated ideas around “world music” and global folk by grounding Afrobeat, Ethiopian music theory, Brazilian Tropicalismo, and more in her American folk and string band expertise.
The result, like on TheCapitalist Blues and Breaking the Thermometer, is as charming as it is dense, crave-able and nutritious, entirely one-of-a-kind while obviously interconnected with so many constituent musical traditions. There are clearly lessons learned and perspectives gained from her time collaborating with supergroup Our Native Daughters – with Amythyst Kiah, Allison Russell, and Rhiannon Giddens – here, too. On the new album, with her arm-length resumé at her disposal, McCalla remains the industrial-strength adhesive holding together all of these seemingly disparate parts. Sun Without the Heat’s current singles, “Scaled to Survive” (listen above), “Tree,” and “Love We Had” are a perfect aural triptych to demonstrate McCalla’s deft combination of inputs to create a singular output.
It’s nearly impossible to overstate the impact the Carolina Chocolate Drops and its now legendary alumni have had on American roots music and global folk. Giddens, Dom Flemons, Rowan Corbett, Justin Robinson, and more each continue to increase their audiences’ scope of understanding well after their time in the Grammy Award-winning group. But the niche McCalla has carved out and built a home for herself within since branching out from the band is truly her own.
Sun Without the Heat is timeless while Afrofuturist, essential but never essentialist. This is folk music crafted in the spirit of folk musician activists the world over since time immemorial. When you listen to McCalla, whether Sun Without the Heat or Capitalist Blues, or any of her five studio albums, you can rest assured what you’re hearing is truly idiosyncratic, while she never lets her listeners mistakenly assume she and she alone is the sole arbiter of these sounds, genres, and traditions. It’s a deft balancing act that perhaps only she can execute with such ease and such entrancing music.
All month long, we’ll be celebrating Sun Without the Heat and Leyla McCalla as our Artist of the Month. Enjoy our Essential Leyla McCalla Playlist below and stay tuned for our AOTM interview to come later in April.
March is Women’s History Month, and BGS, Good Country, and Real Roots Radio have partnered to highlight a variety of our favorite women in country, bluegrass, and roots music with our Women’s History Spotlight.
Each weekday in March at 11AM Eastern (8AM Pacific) on Real Roots Radio, host Daniel Mullins will be celebrating a powerful woman in roots music during the Women’s History Spotlight segment of The Daniel Mullins Midday Music Spectacular. You can listen to Real Roots Radio online 24/7 or via their FREE app for smartphones or tablets.
Then, we will have a Friday recap here on BGS featuring the artists highlighted throughout the previous week. No list is comprehensive, but we hope to feature some familiar favorites as well as some trailblazers whose music and impact might not be as familiar to you.
This week’s edition of our Women’s History Spotlight features musicians and artists like IBMA Award winner Dale Ann Bradley, the legendary Dolly Parton, Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame inductees Hazel Dickens & Alice Gerrard, early country hitmaker Kitty Wells, and Kentuckian-West Virginian Molly O’Day. Tune in next week for the final installment of our Women’s History Spotlight!
Dolly Parton
You knew it was coming. You can’t tell the story of country music (or American pop culture) without Dolly Parton. Growing up in Sevier County, Tennessee, she is not just the Queen of the Smoky Mountains, but quite possible the Queen of the Universe (if there was such a ridiculous title). Her rags-to-riches story will continue to be told and re-told for generations. Aside from her beautiful voice and philanthropic work (the millions of books that she gives to children through Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library is her proudest achievement), there are numerous other aspects about Dolly Parton that are remarkable.
Her business acumen is frequently praised, but it still bears repeating. Aside from her numerous endeavors (including Dollywood), it’s often worth remembering that she fought to regain control of her own career and decision-making from Porter Wagoner after her star began shining brighter than his scope of influence. (Remember, it was the ending of this business relationship that was the impetus behind Dolly writing one of her most famous songs, “I Will Always Love You.”) Call it a business decision or just genius, but Dolly’s ability to juggle embracing her role as an undeniable sex symbol and avoiding being labeled as “unwholesome” by conservative crowds has to be one of the most difficult tightrope walks in American entertainment.
Vanity Fair’s 1991 article “Good Golly, Miss Dolly“ did a deep dive into the dichotomy of Dolly’s role as a sort of clean sex symbol: “Dolly, in her openness, demystifies sex. ‘One of the things that makes the image work is that people understand that I look one way, but am another, that there’s a very real person underneath this artificial look,’ she theorizes. ‘It’s not like I am a joke. People can laugh at me, but they don’t make fun.’ … Indeed, Dolly Parton has become the billboard for sex without being the product itself.”
It is the way that she ensures that the “very real person” that is Dolly Rebecca Parton doesn’t get lost in the glitz, glamor, and boob jokes that is part of the reason why she is so endearing and universally beloved by folks from all walks of life; in a world where polarization is en vogue, Dolly is one of the few topics on which everyone agrees! She epitomizes the best of us.
Hazel Dickens & Alice Gerrard
Members of the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame, Hazel Dickens & Alice Gerrard were an unlikely pair who blasted down doors for women in bluegrass. Hazel hailed from the mountains of West Virginia, while Alice was from across the country in Seattle, Washington. Alice attended Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, where she was exposed to folk and bluegrass music. While a student there, she helped coordinate bringing The Osborne Brothers to the Antioch campus, making history as the first major bluegrass concert held on a college campus! After college, she wound up in the D.C. area, becoming active in their flourishing bluegrass scene, where she became friends and musical partners with Hazel Dickens – who had moved to the region with her family to find factory work years earlier.
Hazel & Alice became some of the first female bluegrass bandleaders and recorded some classic albums for Smithsonian Folkways and Rounder Records before embarking on successful solo careers by the mid-’70s. With Hazel’s mountain sound and Alice’s more folk-oriented sensibilities, their music appealed to both traditional bluegrass fans and those who were being introduced to the genre via the Folk Revival. Their original material which highlighted a woman’s perspective were critical in bringing a voice to women in the bluegrass canon. Decades later, their music and legacy is still rippling across American roots music, with artists as diverse as Rhiannon Giddens and Dudley Connell still celebrating their influence and impact.
Molly O’Day
Born Lois LaVerne Williamson, country pioneer Molly O’Day was born in Pike County, Kentucky. She would become a popular radio star in West Virginia by the early 1940s, eventually leading Molly O’Day & The Cumberland Mountain Folks. Her band crossed paths with Hank Williams on the radio circuit and Molly even sang quite a few of his songs on radio and later in the recording studio. Molly learned “Tramp On The Street” from Hank Williams and it would land her a recording contract with Columbia Records. (Fun Fact: Her band at the time of her first Columbia recording session featured a young Mac Wiseman on bass!)
In an era when the term “hillbilly music” was still commonly used, Molly’s music, retroactively, could have country and bluegrass labels applied to it. Her powerful voice felt just as at home on an ancient balled like “Poor Ellen Smith” as it did on soul-stirring gospel songs like “Matthew 24.” By the early 1950s, Molly and her husband grew weary of life in the limelight and essentially retired from the music business, both dedicating their life to ministry. She would record a few gospel albums for some small record labels in the ensuing years, but her final album was released in 1960. She would pass away in the late 1980s, but she left a mark on country music and earned the respect of her peers at a time when the list of female country pioneers was relatively short.
Dale Ann Bradley
Revered as one of the most heartfelt bluegrass singers of her generation, this Kentucky songbird’s career started in earnest as a member of the Renfro Valley cast in her home state of Kentucky. The Renfro Valley Barn Dance was an extremely popular barn-dance style radio program in the 1930s and it spurred the creation of Renfro Valley as a country music entertainment destination in Kentucky. This helped kickstart the careers of folks like Steve Gulley, Jeff Parker, Dale Ann Bradley, and more by the 1990s.
While at Renfro Valley, Bradley would eventually join The New Coon Creek Girls, one of bluegrass’s only “all-girl” bands at the time, and aptly named after The Coon Creek Girls, a pioneering female string band of the 1930s who also started on The Renfro Valley Barn Dance.
Dale Ann’s soulful voice, largely influence by the Primitive Baptist tradition which she grew up around, quickly gripped the bluegrass world, leading to a successful solo career for the last three decades. In addition to recording songs that hearken to those familiar with mountain people and mountain ways, the appeal of Dale Ann’s voice has led her to adapt songs from outside of the genre to her style of bluegrass, tackling tunes from Tom Petty, Bobbie Gentry, The Grateful Dead, Jim Croce, and everyone in-between! Her diverse material has led me (and many others) to the conclusion that no matter the material, if Dale Ann is singing it, I already know I’m going to like it!
Kitty Wells
Hailed as the original Queen of Country Music, Kitty Wells hit a massive reset button on the role of women in country music after the massive success of her breakthrough hit, “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels.” Written by J.D. Miller, it was penned as the antithesis of Hank Thompson’s hit, “The Wild Side of Life.” After writing the song, the search began for a woman to sing it. Kitty Wells had pursued a country career, to little avail, and had essentially consented that maybe it wasn’t in the cards for her, when she was contacted to record the song. “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels” would become the first Number One hit by solo female in country music history, and its status as one of the most iconic country songs of all time only grows.
This explosion of success led to many other hit records by Kitty Wells, and opened the doors for those who would follow in her wake like Jean Shepard, Loretta Lynn, Dolly Parton and more! You can’t celebrate Women’s History Month without honoring the gal who famously sang the line, “It’s a shame that all the blame is on us women!” (Still kind of bummed that Margot Robbie didn’t sing that line in Barbie. Seems like a missed opportunity to me!)
As an added bonus, here’s another cool version from 1993, where Dolly Parton, Loretta Lynn, and Tammy Wynette recruited Kitty Wells to join them on a new version of this country classic on their collaborative album, appropriately entitled Honky Tonk Angels.
Welcome to BGS Bytes! Our shiny new column has one goal: to bust – or enable – your social media scrolling habit by rounding up all the most important bluegrass and roots music related posts in one place. Give your thumbs a break — we’ll post all the hot goss and goings-on every month.
In no particular order, let’s take a look back at everything that happened in bluegrass social circles in February!
Dolly Parton Responded Gracefully to Elle King’s Grand Ole Opry Debacle
In a positive conclusion to a social media fiasco that lit up news feeds, Dolly Parton responded to Elle King’s controversial January Grand Ole Opry performance. The “Ex’s & Oh’s” singer appeared on the Opry stage January 19 as part of birthday celebration for Parton, who was turning 78. King, however, was quite inebriated and made comments that left some ticket holders and several social media commenters upset at her behavior. In February, though, Parton did an interview with E! News and encouraged everyone to show King support instead of condescension.
“Elle King is a doll,” Parton told the news outlet. “I called her, and I said, ‘You know, there are many F-words. Why don’t we use the right one? Forgiveness, friends, forget it.’ She feels worse about it than anybody. She’s going through some hard times, and I think she just had a little too much to drink and then that just hit her. So, we need to get over that, because she’s a great artist and a great person.”
If only everybody online was as gracious!
Sheryl Crow Plays Her Songs on TikTok Following UMG’s Decision to Pull Their Catalog
It’s probably nobody’s favorite mistake — we’re talking about Universal Music Group choosing to remove many of their most popular tunes from TikTok, which is arguably one of the most important marketing tools for musicians currently. Understandably, many artists were upset. Some began to record live performances of their music to share on the app so fans can go on recording videos with their “sounds.”
Sheryl Crow joined the crowd making their songs available in other formats, and the “Soak Up the Sun” singer recorded acoustic versions of songs like “My Favorite Mistake” and “Strong Enough.” Many of the tunes she picked are requests, including “The First Cut is the Deepest.”
After the Tennessee Legislature Refused to Acknowledge Allison Russell, Celebs Voiced Support Online
In February, Tennessee State Rep. Justin Jones proposed resolutions to the Tennessee General Assembly designed to honor both Paramore — who won a Grammy for Best Rock Album and Best Alternative Music Performance — and Allison Russell, who took home her first Grammy for Best Americana Performance. Unfortunately, Tennessee House Republicans allowed the resolution honoring Paramore to pass, but blocked the similar measure honoring Russell, who is Black and won for her song, “Eve Was Black.”
Russell took to Twitter (now known as X) to respond:
That you & @VoteGloriaJ presented this resolution is a high honour. That the TN GOP blocked it, I take as a compliment. Their bigotry, sadly, is on relentless display. We have a chance this year to make a real change in TN #loverising#rainbowcoalition#register#vote#rise✊🏾🌈
Everyone and Their Mamas Are Line-Dancin’ on TikTok
Speaking of Beyoncé, her new single, “Texas Hold ‘Em,” is only one of many, many popular line dance tunes on TikTok right now. Whether it’s a duo gettin’ down on the pavement outside, or a group boot-stompin’ in a downtown Broadway bar, line dancing is officially cool again!
Willow Avalon, an up-and-coming country singer-songwriter, went viral for debuting her new single, “Getting Rich Going Broke,” on TikTok. This tune also comes with a line dance — we told y’all this trend is on fire!
This year’s Super Bowl halftime show might’ve been dominated by Usher, but our favorite bits of the biggest sports event of the year happened before the game even began. Rapper Post Malone donned a clearly Western-inspired outfit and sang a stunning, acoustic version of “America the Beautiful.”
Marcus King Celebrated Molly Tuttle’s Grammy Win With a Sharp Cover on TikTok
Last, but most certainly not least, alt-country singer-songwriter Marcus King gave an excellent cover performance of “Down Home Dispensary” online to celebrate Molly Tuttle‘s Grammy win. Tuttle even responded, commenting that he “crushed” the song — and we agree!
So, a lot happened in January, February, and the beginnings of March! We’ll continue rounding up the hottest social media conversations and goings-on for BGS readers every month — let us know on social media and tag us in a post if you think something deserves to make the list!
Guitarist Cary Morin’s (Crow/Assiniboine) new album, Innocent Allies, includes a striking painting on its cover created by renowned Western painter/sculptor Charles M. Russell (1864-1926), who spent his formative years as an artist in Morin’s home state, Montana. Innocent Allies, Russell’s work, depicts horses, cowboys, and settlers, routine subjects for the visual artist. The piece references how the iconic beasts of burden, who helped build the American West, were often innocent partakers in the violence, imperialism, and White Supremacy of American empire advancing across the rural, montane, wide expanses of the West.
For the new record, Morin leverages his expansive musical vocabulary – flatpicking, fingerstyle guitar, blues, folk, singer-songwriter, rock and roll and pop textures, and instrumental lyricism – to synthesize more than a dozen of Russell’s paintings and works into songs and tunes. The result is pastoral, evocative, and certainly cinematic. But these songs, as Russell’s body of work, are not sanitizations of the past or representations of American mythmaking and revisionism.
Morin views these paintings with a hefty dose of nostalgia, mentioning throughout our telephone conversation how this art was ubiquitous throughout his youth, his life in Montana, and its influence reaches well into his present, while he tours the country playing guitar from his new home base in Colorado. But that nostalgia isn’t predicated upon turning blind eyes to the atrocities endemic to Americana imaginations of “cowboys and indians,” Manifest Destiny, and the genocide and displacement of Native peoples.
The cover art for Cary Morin’s ‘Innocent Allies,’ including Charles M. Russell’s visual work by the same title.
Like Russell before him, Morin offers a grounded, realistic, and eyes-wide-open perspective not only on Russell’s body of work and those iconic images, but on the entire American societal construction of the West, as well. He does so with a formless and gorgeous genre fluidity and with playing styles entirely his own. Each track is stunning and expansive, even in their moments of intimacy and coziness.
Innocent Allies is a delicious record, made ever more fascinating by its unique concept, its nuanced inspirations and influences, and Morin’s one-of-a-kind voice on guitar. We began our interview chatting about the album’s conception before discussing Montana bluegrass, the constructive uses of genre, Beyoncé’s impeccable choice in Rhiannon Giddens’ banjo playing, and so much more.
I wanted to begin by asking you about the art of Charles M. Russell and how it inspired the new album, Innocent Allies – not only is his work on the cover, but it’s also very clear that these are cinematic and very artful songs. They’re very evocative. How did you take a different medium than your own and translate it into your own art?
Cary Morin: The album and the artwork all comes from my upbringing in Montana in the ‘70s. People from Montana all know that Charlie Russell is our most famous artist that ever came out of Montana. There have been a bunch of [artists] actually, but he’s kind of the top of the pile. When I was a kid – probably even today, too – anywhere in the state, you’re gonna be surrounded by his paintings or his sculptures.
He moved from St. Louis, Missouri when he was, I think 16? His parents gave him a train ticket to go out [West] and they wanted him to work on a sheep ranch owned by a friend of theirs for a while to get this fascination that he had with Montana out of his system. But it kind of backfired. He ended up living out his days there, for the most part. He gradually became a really advanced sculptor and painter, eventually getting to the point where he could really [demonstrate] action in the things that he created. He could [depict] minute muscles and forces and accurate movement – same in his paintings.
He ended up doing thousands of paintings and sculptures. They’re in collections all over the world now. Not only in Montana, but there are some museums around the U.S. that have huge bodies of work from him. When I was a kid, the coffee table books that were soon to follow his work, my dad and my mom ended up having all of them. My dad was a huge fan of his books, his writing, his stories, the letters that he wrote to everybody, the paintings, the sculptures.
With that stuff just always laying around when I was a kid, I became pretty familiar with it. I’m by no means an expert at that, but I just grew up around it all and know it pretty well. With this album, originally I was going to do a tribute album. It was going to be as country as I could make it. I’m not really a country player, I grew up in Montana. I can understand how it’s put together, and I could play some pedal steel. I’m pretty much a novice, but I know enough to get by, at least in the studio. So, [originally], it was all going to be all written by another artist.
After a while, I just couldn’t get my head around putting out an album where I didn’t write a single song on it. I think we were at home listening to Red Headed Stranger and I thought, “Man, I really love the production on this.” That was another favorite of my dad’s. He loved Willie Nelson.
I thought the production feel of [that record] would go along with the paintings in the coffee table book that was sitting right in front of us. It was kind of like a moment and a suggestion. The more I thought about it, the more I was like, “This takes care of everything.” I know a fair bit about Charlie Russell and his paintings are so accurate, they all tell stories. So I just started writing stories about the paintings. Looking at them and trying to imagine that scene and that moment of time that he captured. I wondered what happened before that moment and maybe what happened after that moment. Pretty soon we had a good pile of songs. It was a really fun process. At the time, we didn’t know what we were going to do with it. I mean, maybe I felt like it was a good idea, but after if it ever got done, then what?
Well, it definitely sounds like your own kind of sculptural process to get to this album. Carving something and then seeing where it leads you; starting with an idea, but then following the art wherever it goes.
I want to ask you about genre, because we’re having this conversation in “the zeitgeist” right now with Beyoncé and with Lana Del Rey and other people “going country.” On one hand, genre feels so important in this moment and on the other hand, it feels like we are accelerating ever faster toward being in a post-genre world. When I listen to this album, like you’re saying, it does remind me of Red Headed Stranger. It is straight up and down country to me.
But I wonder how you view genre, yourself? Is identifying with genre useful to you? Do you think it’s kind of a vestige of the past? How do you identify with genre at this point and with this record?
Well, with me in particular, that’s a pretty interesting question, because in the early ‘70s, when I was starting to play music and get interested in music, I lived in Montana. With my dad being a military guy, I didn’t really have access to a lot of albums of a wide, eclectic variety of genres and of sounds. But I did end up listening to classical music and my folks were big country fans. My oldest brother was a rock fan. I would stumble across things. I became a bluegrass fan from the influence of my best friends.
I didn’t really understand genres. I just heard music and I liked it. I didn’t really know how to put labels on it. I wasn’t aware of publications that would outline where the boundaries are on music. I didn’t think of things as a specific genre – although, you know, I sure liked the way that Doug Kershaw played fiddle, however I came across that! Or, I really appreciated the way Chubby Checkers played piano. That was all from Louisiana, but I had no idea what Louisiana was, or what Canadian music was, or any of that. It was all just music that I liked.
Having grown up without all that knowledge, I think it did have an effect on how I play music, because I would kind of bounce from genre to genre. I played with a band for 20 years, and we would play like the way Stevie Ray Vaughan played blues guitar. I didn’t really understand that much about blues music, but I thought what he did on David Bowie’s album was amazing. And so that had an influence on the way I play guitar. I really love Pat Metheny, and that had an influence on how I play guitar. I really love Mark Knopfler. It’s like all these genres couldn’t be any farther apart, but they all had a place in my mind. I maybe didn’t realize it at the time, but all those little influences would end up having an effect on how I make albums.
Genres now, that I hear on the radio – which is really only when I drive around – that’s [usually] like a public station, a community radio station, so I don’t really hear pop music. But, everything’s kind of starting to sound the same. I don’t know why that is. I think that maybe money has something to do with it. You know, “What sells?” What the buying public listens to, in order for advertising to be sold. I guess I don’t really pay attention to it too much. But I think that a lot of it’s driven by money.
You know, I can’t understand why Beyoncé would shout out to the world, “I’m gonna face country music!” and have that feel [like a] benefit. I think that she would only do that if she was motivated by something other than her love of Hank Williams. [Laughs] You know what I mean?
[Laughs] it’s hard to imagine! And then, at the same time, in the 100-ish years country music has been around, this seems to be a routine move. There’s always this moment where the people on the inside aren’t making that much money, or feel like they aren’t making much money, and you see someone like Lana or Beyoncé coming and you think, “Wait… There’s money to be made here? What? Tell me more about this!!”
Exactly!
From listening to your music, I think I would describe you as “genre agnostic.”
But I was curious what your feeling was on the Beyoncé announcement and the press coming out on that.
I found it really interesting, because I’ve known Rhiannon [Giddens] for years. She played with Pura Fé an artist/group that I played with in Europe for like five years. To hear her pick up a fretless banjo and just beat it into submission, I was like, “Holy God!” I had never heard anybody play a fretless banjo before, let alone like that. What a perfect choice for Beyoncé. She picked one of the best banjo players that I’ve ever met. I was surprised and impressed.
Yeah, me too. And also to have Robert Randolph playing steel on the tracks. Beyoncé and her team very clearly knew that she couldn’t appear like a “carpetbagger.” It’s not the most perfect term in this context, you know what I mean. She didn’t want to be viewed as somebody who was interloping – she did a good job at that “authenticity signaling” for sure.
It’s a wild thing to watch happen and to watch the discourse, in the wake of the two tracks, half of the people being like, “That’s not country” and half of the people being like, “Black folks invented country music, Indigenous folks invented country music, this is nothing new.” To watch those factions bump up against each other again, it’s kind of endlessly fascinating to me.
Like John Travolta having a hand in the revival of Texas music! Some idea that somebody somewhere along the line has and it catches on and takes off. I like it, too. I think culturally, I love it when things evolve. I do remember when I was a kid that I would hear on the radio what people call “country music” and go, “Boy, isn’t this happening in what is called Southern rock already?” There’s always players borrowing from other players.
And then it’s the studio musicians that played in that stuff. They may have showed up on a Bob Marley album somewhere along the line, too, because they played in a studio. Hell, man, when I was a kid I didn’t even know who Bob Marley was. I think it’s great that people learn from each other.
I wanted to ask you about bluegrass. You talked a little bit about what bluegrass means to you earlier in our conversation, but also when we premiered your track, “Whiskey Before Breakfast,” but I wanted to give you a chance to talk about your bluegrass influence again – we are the Bluegrass Situation, after all. What does bluegrass mean to you as a genre, as a picker?
That also goes back to the ‘70s. When I was talking about all the music that I either got from my family or from older brothers and my best buddies – bluegrass was a pretty big deal in Montana back in those days. I remember early on listening to these albums that didn’t exist in my friends’ houses. Hearing about Flatt & Scruggs and maybe I heard it on TV. I’d see things on Hee Haw And it definitely piqued my interest.
But the stuff that was going on in Montana, there was a band called Live Wire String Choir, which was a Montana bluegrass band. There was another one called Lost Highway Band that was a little bit electrified, but still bluegrass. And then there was the Mission Mountain Wood Band, which was kind of the king of all of them. They were straight ahead bluegrass, but from around Missoula. They actually appeared on Hee Haw one time, although I never saw that episode. They had an album called In Without Knocking back in the day and I was maybe around 12 years old, something like that. Everybody was buying that album. We had a copy of it, so I was learning those songs.
I think there was a plane accident and a lot of the band didn’t survive, but there’s one guy, his name is Rob Quist, who was one of the founders of the band. He still plays shows in Montana. His music and that band’s music turned me on to bluegrass. Through investigation and through the help of friends, I learned more and more about it. I got way into flatpicking. I never had an American-made guitar when I was a kid. I didn’t really realize the importance of that.
I was still fascinated with Tony Rice, and still fascinated with the crazy melodies that David Bromberg pumped out. I love John Hartford – so it was, I guess, a personal quest of mine. I have some friends that are pretty good bluegrass players. But I left Montana when I was 18 and I kind of pursued bluegrass for a while, but then I kind of got back into fingerpicking and fingerstyle guitar and eventually electric guitar.
And all that Clarence White stuff that I had heard and the Will the Circle Be Unbroken album, a lot of those artists that were kind of starting to press the boundaries of bluegrass music caught my attention. Eventually, I just abandoned that piece of guitar [playing] altogether and got really into playing electric guitar for many years. It wasn’t until maybe 20 years ago that I started really getting back into playing acoustic guitar. I never really abandoned electric, but I started playing fingerstyle guitar and pursuing it. I’d play for five, ten hours a day, daily. I just couldn’t get it out of my mind, largely thanks to Kelly Joe Phelps.
The early acoustic experiences that I had never really went away and I was really interested in creating music based on all of those influences throughout my life.That’s where the fingerstyle thing came back in.
I think the tune that I like the best on the album is “Bullhead Lodge.” And I love the Charles Russell painting that inspired it. I wondered if you could take us into your composition process for “Bowhead Lodge” and specifically, how you were synthesizing those related paintings while you were improvising, composing the tune – because I think that’s really fascinating.
Well, thank you. I’m glad that that song resonates with you. First of all, Charlie’s painting of his cabin on Lake McDonald – Charlie painted from memory, he’s not a guy that you would see sitting out in the middle of the fields with an easel, as romantic as that looks, he wasn’t that guy. He ended up painting a lot of depictions of his view of the lake from Bullhead Lodge. There are so many of them and they’re all just serene.
I was playing a show with Phil Cook in North Carolina and at sound check, he said, “Cary, we could just play this thing…” and he played this short, open-tuning melody. “We could play this thing for 10 minutes and people would love it,” he said.
We just kind of sat there and tweaked it for a little while. I don’t remember the melody he played. We didn’t do that during the show. But, I always remember him saying, “Play the simple thing and people will love it.” When I was looking at those paintings of Lake McDonald, I just started playing this melody. It wasn’t really written on the spot, I suppose. I goofed around with it for a couple of hours, but then I came up with sort of four variations of a similar melody. I started with a simple one and then changed it and changed it and changed it until the chords finally changed into what tags the song.
Because of that process, I like that song too, because it’s a great memory. I was glad that it made it onto the album. People have been talking about that recording, it seems like it’s resonated with folks.
During a series of high profile Verizon ads during yesterday’s Super Bowl, Beyoncé announced that her upcoming Act II following 2022’s incredibly popular dance album, Renaissance, will find the globe-crossing singer/creative powerhouse returning to country. As music journalist Marissa Moss points out in a brand new post for the country newsletter she co-founded, Don’t Rock the Inbox, Beyoncé Knowles-Carter’s relationship to the genre is nothing new – as far back as 2007 the Texas born-and-raised artist rode a horse as she entered the iconic Houston Rodeo, an internationally known, marquis event in her hometown. Across the decades, Knowles-Carter has constantly utilized her music to remind her audience of her Americana roots, with songs, tracks, and production values that regularly reference country and roots music idioms. At the Grammy Awards on February 4, she wore a modernist couture cowgirl get up – a motif that has been peppered throughout the visuals for Renaissance and its world tour. As Lana Del Rey had just announced her next album, Lasso, would be country, the world wondered – why is Beyoncé wearing a cowboy hat?
But Beyoncé’s relationship to country goes deeper, still. In 2016, as Moss and many other journalists and industry insiders pointed out in reaction to last night’s announcement, Knowles-Carter appeared with The Chicks (at that time still referred to as The Dixie Chicks) in a fiery medley performance during the CMA Awards. The trio joined Beyoncé on her countryfied Lemonade track, “Daddy Lessons,” before morphing into a barn burning all-skate on the Chicks’ Darrell Scott-written hit, “Long Time Gone.”
These new songs, which were initially unveiled exclusively on the streaming service Tidal, are built on the “Texas Bama” terroir that all of Knowles-Carter’s music is intentionally rooted within. “Texas Hold ‘Em” begins with a full, warm, fretless old-time banjo, playing a looped, intricate melodic hook. If your ears perked up during Act II‘s teaser video upon hearing the five-string, you are correct – the banjo and viola on the track were performed by the one and only Rhiannon Giddens and were tracked with Demeanor, Giddens’ nephew, another roots music innovator and genre blender, acting as engineer.
It is beyond apropos for Beyoncé and her team to tap Giddens here, someone who has also built a career and prolific musical output on holding together seemingly disparate influences, textures, tones, and styles. It speaks to Knowles-Carter’s aptitude for not only trying on and exploring new or relatively unfamiliar idioms, but also inhabiting them wholly, intricately, and intuitively. It seems obvious to state, but Beyoncé is no roots music carpet-bagger or opportunist putting on “poverty tour” cosplay just to bolster her bottom line.
Though the production style and arrangements here are decidedly interconnected with Renaissance, the beats and underscoring beneath and around the clawhammer banjo and finger-picked acoustic guitar don’t feel entirely like Avicii’s “Hey Brother” or similar, more heavy-handed attempts to intermingle string band music with house, disco, and dance. Ultimately, these two tracks feel less like a “stomp & holler” money-grab/chart-grab and more like post-modernist line dancing music, carrying forward the placemaking and space-holding of her 2022 album. This is music about gathering, moving, and polishing the floorboards with a pair of cowboy boots.
As MacArthur “Genius” and New York Times columnist Tressie McMillan Cottom points out in a NYT blog entry on the new tracks, the most country-sounding aspects here don’t originally stem from “country” at all: “‘Texas Hold ’Em’ sounds like a Maren Morris-style bop, with many of country-pop’s current themes,” says Cottom. “There is a good reason for that. Those themes are very R&B and hip-hop coded: harmonies, danceable hooks, trap percussion and call-and-response.”
In the mind of this writer, though, “16 Carriages,” the proverbial B-side to the more glitzy and grabby “Texas Hold ‘Em,” is the most remarkable of the two singles currently available from Act II. It’s a Beyoncé train song, one that straddles the divide between urban and rural, city folk and country folk, hillbilly music and rhythm and blues. This is a deft balancing act, one that collectives like the Black Opry and artists like Mickey Guyton, Brittney Spencer, Black Pumas, Buffalo Nichols, Julie Williams, and yes, Giddens, have been demonstrating to the roots music industry and its fans for years and years, now. Such a balance can easily go awry, but as we know, Beyoncé so rarely goes awry – even in a would-be treacherous foray into this well-guarded and gatekept genre.
These two songs, but “16 Carriages” especially, illustrate how important it is to view music such as this not as aberrations from a country music norm, but as distillations and representations of what has always been possible in country. Especially if we let arbitrary, moralistic, and bigoted “rules” and expectations fall away and we let artists – whether the most famous in the world or the busker on the street corner – be who they are, unencumbered and empowered by their identities, in all of their idiosyncrasies and complications. Beyoncé’s Act II will showcase that we really do all belong in country, whether your hat and boots are literal shit kickers or are overlaid in hundreds of disco ball mirrors.
It’s remarkable that a prolific artist such as Rhiannon Giddens could reach this juncture in her career and still be accomplishing notable firsts. This time, she’s putting out her first album of all original material – called You’re the One – since she began her post-Carolina Chocolate Drops solo career in the 2010s. On a recent airing of CBS Saturday Morning, Giddens and her band performed two tracks from the album: “Too Little, Too Late, Too Bad” and the project’s title track, “You’re the One.”
From a genre perspective, You’re the One is one of Giddens’ most expansive works to date, drawing on her endless knowledge of folk and vernacular musics to craft a sound that’s rootsy, yes, but ultimately demonstrates the down home, everyday, and Black origins of all popular American musics. “Too Little, Too Late, Too Bad,” for instance, was co-written with Giddens’ longtime friend and collaborator, fiddler Dirk Powell, to channel the late, legendary Aretha Franklin. The album includes accordions, horns, globally-inspired percussion (by Giddens’ partner Francesco Turrisi), countrypolitan strings, and so much more. Produced by Jack Splash, You’re the One seems to draw on Giddens’ penchant for the theatrical more prominently than previous outings. She did, after all, just win a Pulitzer Prize for her opera, Omar, so the performative elements of this record seem to draw equally from folk and stage traditions.
Among a discography chocked full of essential works, You’re the One is still a landmark release by Giddens, further establishing – and complicating – her unique and indelible voice and once again highlighting the diverse and representative lineages that gave rise to all American roots music forms, with joy and love centered in every note.
Photo Credit: Ebru Yildiz
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