Tag: Rob Baird

You Gotta Hear This: New Music From John Cowan, Jason Carter & Michael Cleveland, & More

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

To close the month of May, we have an absolutely stacked round up of premieres this week!

It’s lovely any time natural and organic themes twist their way through our batches of premiere. This week, it certainly seems like cutting-edge bluegrass is front and center, with new tracks and videos from John Cowan, Jason Carter & Michael Cleveland, and husband-and-wife duo, Benson.

Plus, we have a trio of songs about touring, coming and going, leaving and returning – Rob Baird asking his listeners to “Hold Tight” ’til his return, Evan Boyer longs for home and hearth in a song for his wife, “Home to You,” and Rose Gerber pays tribute to a vagabond period in her own life with “Off to See America.”

Finally, don’t miss a danceable rockabilly number, “If I Didn’t Have You,” from Matt Hillyer and roots duo Native Harrow bring us a new music video for “Borrowing Time.” It’s a packed premiere round up this week and You Gotta Hear This!

John Cowan, “Fiction”

Artist: John Cowan
Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee
Song: “Fiction”
Album: Fiction
Release Date: June 7, 2024 (single); Fall 2024 (album)
Label: True Lonesome Records

In Their Words: “The genesis of the song is that Eddie [Sanders] and I had sat down to write a song for this new recording that eventually was titled ‘Fiction.’ I have been a voracious reader my whole adult life. I was discussing with Eddie the problem of living in a world at this time, which is confounding, scary, and frustrating. My expansive bookcase is loaded with non-fiction books. I had just said to him that I can hardly stand to pick up these two new books I’d bought, ’cause I didn’t feel like I needed any more affirmation about the state of our country and the world. What I needed was an escape to a place of commonality with the people I’ve encountered and my loved ones. I think we did a good job on it and that’s all I know for now except, I always believe in hope and grace.” – John Cowan

Jason Carter & Michael Cleveland, “Give It Away”

Artist: Jason Carter & Michael Cleveland
Hometown: Floyd, Kentucky, now living in Hendersonville, Tennessee (Jason); Charlestown, Indiana (Michael)
Song: “Give It Away”
Release Date: May 8, 2024
Label: Fiddle Man Records

In Their Words: “I feel that the world we live in is a beautiful place, but it takes all of us to make that world. Every time I hear this song it brings a smile to my face, thinking of the day we recorded it. The room was filled with friends making music and the joy that was shared between us really comes through in the recording. This song was written by two of my favorite fiddlers, Tim O’Brien and Matt Combs, and that was another thing that made me feel like it was right for Michael and I to record it.

“Every time I’ve been around Sam Bush, I feel the love he puts out into the world and I thought he’d be the perfect person to sing this song with. I feel the same way about Michael, it’s always such a joyful experience to get to play or even hang out with him. With that said, ‘Give It Away’ sets the tone for the entire record, I hope you enjoy it.” – Jason Carter

“‘Give It Away’ is a hard driving bluegrass song in the key of B, except this time nobody leaves or dies. Instead, it reinforces the valuable lesson that if you want to ever find love, you have to learn to give it away. I would like to thank Bryan Sutton, Cory Walker, Alan Bartram, and Sam Bush for creating one of the most grooving tracks I’ve ever been a part of, they really made this song come to life. This song was a natural for twin fiddles, and Jason and Sam’s vocals are absolutely incredible.” – Michael Cleveland

Rob Baird, “Hold Tight”

Artist: Rob Baird
Hometown: Austin, Texas
Song: “Hold Tight”
Album: Burning In the Stars
Release Date: June 21, 2024
Label: Hard Luck Recording Company

In Their Words: “Early on in my career, I spent a lot of time in a van, touring all over God’s green earth. This song, ‘Hold Tight,’ is a reflection of those times. It’s about the chaotic feeling of driving through the night to get back home to one who’s been waiting for you. I wanted that feeling of desperation and determination to build every second of this song. Hold tight and hold on for just a few more hours.” – Rob Baird

Track Credits:
Produced by Brian Douglass Phillips.
Jacob Hildebrand – Electric guitar, slide guitar
Z Lynch – Bass guitar
Brian Douglas Phillips – Pedal steel, background vocals
Fred Mandujano – Drums, percussion
Sean Giddings – Organ

Benson, “Donner Pass”

Artist: Benson
Hometown: Boiling Springs, South Carolina
Song: “Donner Pass”
Release Date: May 31, 2024
Label: Mountain Home Music Company

In Their Words:“‘Donner Pass’ is a tune I wrote while traveling with IIIrd Tyme Out. We were heading back east after a west coast string of gigs and, with a little time to kill, decided to stop in Reno, Nevada. We parked in the same general area where the Donner Party had been trapped over the winter, so this felt like a great song title for a minor-key melody. I had been working on the tune itself for a few days as we played out our gigs in California, but the original cell phone demo was recorded at Donner Pass where we parked overnight before driving into town.” – Wayne Benson

“This is one of my favorite tunes that Wayne has written. It feels dark, which is appropriate considering the title and location that it’s written about. The track moves a lot dynamically and I always enjoy that — I love taking a fairly simple melody and working with it to create different moods.” – Kristin Scott Benson

Track Credits:
Wayne Benson – Mandolin
Kristin Scott Benson – Banjo
Cody Kilby – Acoustic Guitar
Tony Creasman – Drums
Kevin McKinnon – Bass

Evan Boyer, “Home to You”

Artist: Evan Boyer
Hometown: Somers, Connecticut originally; Dallas, Texas since 2010
Song: “Home to You”
Album: The Devil in Me
Release Date: June 7, 2024 (album)
Label: Medicine for Mary Records

In Their Words: “‘Home to You’ is a special song to me for a few reasons. First, the writing – it was the first song I really wrote for my wife. I’ve had others kind of about us or about our relationship, but I had never written one that focused on the fact that she’s my rock. Another is the production and the players I have on this track. Jenee on fiddle absolutely blew me away. Tim wrote that solo on the floor and then was able to perfectly replicate it two other times so that we could layer it three times. It’s stuff like that that’ll keep me making records for as long as I can.” – Evan Boyer

Track Credits:
Lyrics and music by Evan Boyer.
Produced by Bradley Prakope.
Recorded at The Panhandle House, Denton, Texas.
Evan Boyer – Vocals, acoustic guitar
Timothy Allen – Electric Guitar
Nate Coon – Drums
Bob Parr – Bass
Jenee Fleenor – Fiddle
Drew Harakal – B3 organ

Native Harrow, “Borrowing Time”

Artist: Native Harrow
Hometown: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Song: “Borrowing Time”
Album: Divided Kind
Release Date: September 13, 2024
Label: Different Time Records

In Their Words: “This is one of those songs that was written in a few minutes, recorded in an afternoon, and came together like it was always a song. The rhythm signifies a lazy, hazy walk through the fields, lost in thoughts and daydreams. It is loose and meanders its way with pedal steel swirls (Joe Harvey-Whyte) and a single snare drum played with brushes while the bass thumps its way along the dusty trail. I go on daily walks to clear my head and to be in nature. I never want them to end and am always a little melancholy when they do and I have to return to my to-do list. I feel things very deeply and in trying times it often feels like life is a giant wheel rolling down a road and I am either being plowed over by it or chasing to keep up and it doesn’t pay any mind to my own struggles. In writing this song I realized that maybe being lost is better than having it all figured out and we’re all just borrowing time.” – Devin Tuel

“We recorded ‘Borrowing Time’ on a hot, dry day last summer (2023), setting up in the living room, with the windows wide open to take in the little bit of breeze that snuck in over the hills that afternoon. We started with Devin’s vocal and guitar and my Hofner Beatles bass (no click track, of course), sitting a foot away from each other. So close in fact, that you can hear the faint clack of my pick on the flat-wound bass strings bleeding into the vocal track. Next, we added a simple snare drum with brushes (myself) and shaker (Devin), again around the same mic. Finally, we added the electric guitar overdub, my black Gretsch hollowbody guitar through our old Fender amp, with its drippy reverb and dense tremolo, before sending the track up to our buddy Joe Harvey-Whyte in London where he added his cosmic outer space pedal steel. Sometimes we like to spend weeks working on a track, adding as many layers as it needs, and sometimes a finished song (as in the case of ‘Borrowing Time’) comes together in a single afternoon. Either way, we’ll take them as they come.” – Stephen Harms

Video Credits: Photography by Rosie Lord.
Edited by Devin Tuel & Stephen Harms.

Matt Hillyer, “If I Didn’t Have You”

Artist: Matt Hillyer
Hometown: Dallas, Texas
Song: “If I Didn’t Have You”
Album: Bright Skyline
Release Date: June 7, 2024 (single); June 21, 2024 (album)
Label: State Fair Records

In Their Words: “I got my start playing rockabilly music. I’ve enjoyed playing many different styles of roots music over the years, but I always seem to gravitate back to that rockabilly swing. It just feels good and puts a smile on my face. It’s even better being able to have some great players and even better friends on it: Heather Stalling on fiddle, Kevin Smith on bass, Lloyd Maines on steel guitar, and Arjuna Contreras on drums. The song itself is a love song, and in my opinion, you can’t have enough of those. I was thinking about my wife when I wrote it. I was imagining a way to tell her how lost I’d be if I didn’t have her in my life.” – Matt Hillyer

Rose Gerber, “Off to See America”

Artist: Rose Gerber
Hometown: Portland
Song: “Off to See America”
Album: Untraveled Highway EP
Release Date: July 5, 2024

In Their Words: “When I was 17, I set out on a road trip that had no planned end. I was a high school drop-out running from a broken home and thought the romance of the road would save me. You can’t run from life though and the road wears you down. After thumbing around, riding freight trains and some lean times, I finally threw in the towel; but can’t say I regret a minute of it. This song is a tribute to that time of my life.” – Rose Gerber

Video Credits: Starring Mary Krantz and Just Clark.
Directed By Benjamin Olsen.

Photo Credit: John Cowan by Madison Thorne; Jason Carter & Michael Cleveland by Sam Wiseman.

Rob Baird Begins ‘After All’ With a Slow Burn

Posted on by Editor

As a touring musician, Rob Baird has spent countless nights in roadside rooms, yet it was a boutique hotel in Austin, Texas, that inspired the songs on his newest album, After All. While getting his house redone in 2016, Baird hunkered down for a month in the Hotel San Jose, a stylish spot on South Congress that draws locals and tourists alike to its subdued courtyard and enticing cocktail list. That change of scenery happened to coincide with a whirlwind romance that didn’t last much beyond check-out time — though it did lead to a batch of new music.

During an interview in Nashville, Baird admits that his former flame asked for a copy of the album on vinyl, which Baird sent to her home in Los Angeles.

“She’s in the movie business and I wrote her a note that was like, ‘Like a movie, this is based on true events, but it’s not all factual, so don’t just like backhand me right now and try to kill me,’” he says with a grin. “You know, [this album] is about the feelings of like knowing something isn’t going to work out — or not necessarily. I mean, kind of doing something even though you know it’s going to fail, but then learning from it and hopefully finding perspective at the end of it.”

BGS: I’m guessing from this album title that all these songs are written after that relationship came to a close. How long did it take you to translate that experience into songs?

Baird: I had started writing it fairly quickly after that. It took about a year and a half to round this whole thing out, with pretty intense writing. This was the first time that I’d really spent so much time. I wrote everything like at the kitchen table at my house for the most part, a couple of trips here and there. But I really edited, like significantly went through everything. I mean, every word. It got to the point as a songwriter, I didn’t want to have anything to throw away.

It seems to me that the song “After All” sets the stage for the songs that follow it. Would you agree with that?

I think I wouldn’t advise starting a record out in every context with a more mellow statement piece, but in this case, it’s so different from anything I’ve done in the past. I think it sets the tone for the listener to be like, “Oh, okay, this is the world we’re diving into.”

My guitar player [Woodrow Morgan] and I drove down to Atlanta in the middle of all of this and played a gig at Eddie’s Attic. And ol’ Woodrow is very persistent in a good way. He’s great doing his job — a great Batman and Robin situation. We sequenced that thing on the way home that night, like at 3 a.m. from Atlanta, and had it written down. I write a lot of notes on blank envelopes for some reason. I’ve accidentally bought like ten thousand of them. It’s a great way to keep a note. I still have it somewhere on my desk.

How did you come to acquire ten thousand envelopes?

(laughs) I think I hit the wrong button on Amazon or something. I don’t even know. Too many envelopes.

Obviously these songs are so personal, but you teamed up with co-writers. So, do those guys tap into your experience when you’re writing? Or do you get some perspective from what they’ve gone through in order to tell the story?

Totally, man. It’s interesting. There’s really three co-writers here. One is my old producer, Brian Douglas Phillips, and we had something going that made sense. He’s just a great writer. There’s Dave Beck, who is from Sons of Fathers. I had randomly been running into him and he had this techno, like MGMT kind of band, called Blue Healer that I was kind of obsessed with for a while. He’s got an interesting personality. One day I went up to him and I was like, “Dude, we need to write some songs together.”

Mainly I think I wrote seven songs with this guy, Burleson Smith, who was living in a little back house that I now am renting out to people, but it all started with him. He was living back there in between houses. I don’t even know what he was doing. He’s in grad school at the University of Texas, went to school at Vanderbilt, worked for Politico, but has always kind of dabbled in songwriting.

He walked into my house one day and I was playing “I Tried.” He was like, “What the hell is that?” I was like, “I don’t know, you think it’s good?” Then it turned into, he would just come in and we started writing together. … He’s not necessarily in the music business or doesn’t even care to be. He helped me create my voice and he really is good at organization. I can sit there with the guitar all afternoon like, “Oh, we could do this, do it this way, or we can do this.” He’s like, “No, no, go do this, let’s organize.” That’s been a huge help.

I was going to ask you about the first line of “I Tried” where you say, “Making my way out of …

DLA.

What is that?

It’s an airport in Cameroon, apparently. (laughs) But it has nothing to do with it. … That’s been a big question. I went to downtown LA one time with her to see Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings at the Ace Theater. There was something that happened that night that Downtown LA was kind of the thing. There was this French guy we hung out with, and became like the thing of conversation. So I guess the only person that would really pick up on that is her, which I love. And I love the mystery of it, too.

When did songwriting start to appeal to you? When did you get interested in trying that?

Man, I was at my parents’ house the other day, digging through my childhood or whatever. I started finding my old CD collection. Then all these old songbooks of songs I was learning, and there were like little scribbles from notes. I was always walking around as a kid singing songs in my head.

Then we started playing live, and my first band, as everyone’s is, is cover songs. My first year, I played with a bass player at this place called The Aardvark in Fort Worth. A bunch of people showed up. This was all college stuff. Then two weeks later, they’re like, “You want to come back?” Two weeks later I put together this band of ragtag brothers, the Christensen Brothers. One was on bass guitar and the other was on drums. But by then, two gigs in, I was like, this is cool to play other people’s songs, but I’ve got to write my own.

I would never want to start over at that. For the first 50 songs you’re like, “What am I saying?” But I got lucky and found some people around Fort Worth at the time that were grizzled songwriters that beat me up enough to know how to figure out. Like, “Dude, don’t do that! What are you doing?” You get help along the way. So, I was really lucky.

What did you study in college?

First I worked on ranches out in Wyoming and Mississippi and some parts of Tennessee. I wanted to make a dollar when I was like 14, so I had to start like doing something. What presented itself was I was pretty good at building fences for some reason. I don’t think I could do it now. Then I was decent at riding horses. I got kicked in the head by a horse three times when my cinch broke in Wyoming. Kind of dramatically altered my life plan. My aunt thinks that’s how I started playing music. It’s like, “Ever since he got kicked in the head….” (laughs)

That was probably 2005, right before I went to college. I went to school for ranch management. TCU [Texas Christian University] has the John D. Rockefeller School of Ranch Management. It’s really intense. It’s like a four-year program of these cowboys running around, but I started playing music and making a little bit of money.  And they were like, “You’ve got to do this artificial insemination class.” I’m like, “What does that involve?” They said, “You fit the whole glove…” and I’m like, “Okay, this music thing is really great.”

So, I ended up getting a degree in entrepreneurial management, doing business, which has really helped. It still took 10 years to figure out who I was and what to do with it. I think we’re getting better at that.

Photo credit: Eric Ryan Anderson

WATCH: Rob Baird, ‘Horses’

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Rob Baird
Hometown: Memphis, TN
Song: "Horses"
Album: Wrong Side of the River
Label: Hard Luck Recording Company

In Their Words: "'Horses' is such a delicate song, and I think that this story line presents the fact that life is more than black and white. That grey area is such a special and timely thing. Sometimes you just need to get away, run, and be free to figure out what's next." — Rob Baird

Photo credit: Greg Giannukos