Early in my recent interview with Swamp Dogg, the iconoclastic singer-songwriter and producer makes a self-aware confession: “I have read columns about Swamp Dogg and so forth, and I try to find out what they classify me as,” referring to the veritable grab-bag of hyphenated micro genres that music writers use to classify him. We connected a few days out from the release of his latest album, Blackgrass: From West Virginia to 125th St, and the artist, born Jerry Williams Jr., seems unbothered. Later he adds, “When I do the Swamp Dogg albums, I really don’t try to please anybody but myself.”
He has known from the jump that the music industry doesn’t know what to do with him. Working as a singer and songwriter under the name Little Jerry Williams, Swamp enjoyed some success with his 1964 soul 7 inch, “I’m The Lover Man,” and was subsequently invited to perform at clubs in the Midwest. As Swamp remembers, “When I showed up they found out I was Black and the audience was lily white. They were good about it, they paid me and said I didn’t have to do a second show.” The small-mindedness of industry gatekeepers would follow him into his first musical steps as Swamp Dogg.
In 1971, Swamp released his second album, Rat On!, on Elektra Records. He was dropped from the label immediately after the release. At issue was the provocatively titled, “God Bless America For What,” track six on the album, which Elektra had pressured Swamp to leave on the cutting room floor. He kept the song, and his brief stint with Elektra was over. (The album cover, featuring Swamp in a victory pose astride an enormous white rat, might also have earned him some detractors in the office.) Asked if he considered caving to the label’s demands, he quickly sets me straight. “No! No. Nuh-uh. I’m dealing in truth!”
The controversy surrounding Rat On! did nothing to slow Swamp’s momentum as a creative force and in the years since its release, has proven itself a classic of left-of-center soul. He produced artists like Patti LaBelle, Z.Z. Hill, and Irma Thomas. Swamp also continued working in A&R. He signed a still-mostly-unknown John Prine to Atlantic Records in 1968, later reuniting with Prine for what would turn out to be the final recording made by the legendary storyteller. Swamp built a cult following among indie music fans in the know, collaborating with artist-tastemakers Justin Vernon and Jenny Lewis – the latter of whom returns as a guest on Blackgrass, as well. He dunked on the snobbier side of the mainstream with albums like Love, Loss, and Auto-Tune, and I Need A Job… So I Can Buy More Autotune.
A list of Swamp’s credits tells the story of one of the most fascinating music careers of the last century, but he himself tells an even deeper one. He speaks about painful failures, like when he became a millionaire in the 1970s and the sudden reality of wealth gutted his mental health. “The right word is obnoxious, I really became obnoxious, my wife pointed out to me. I was running so much that I would run in my sleep and run out of the bed.”
When the nine cars in the family garage proved insufficiently curative, she got him to see a therapist, a “who’s who psychiatrist” in Swamp’s words. He tells me so many sweet things about the great love of his life, Yvonne Williams. “My wife, she was a Leo. She was a strong Leo, she was a leader. Everybody loved her. Everybody feared her when it came to brain-to-brain. She could knock your shit right out the box. She was the reason I made a little money. Her name was Yvonne and I still think about her.” Subsequent girlfriends have told him he is still in mourning, and a second marriage was short-lived.
Discussing his musical roots, Swamp lists “blues, soul, R&B, pop, just about everything except classical and polka, and gotta add country there, cause country is what I was listening to growing up as a kid.”
His brand new record, Blackgrass, released May 31 on Oh Boy Records, is an inventive, often moving exploration of the genre. Sensitive instrumentation by Jerry Douglas, Sierra Hull, Chris Scruggs, and Noam Pikelny, among others, pairs beautifully with Swamp’s varied vocal performances across all 12 tracks. “The Other Woman,” featuring Margo Price, is an elegant update of the classic written by Swamp and first performed by Doris Duke. And Swamp himself is at home as a country vocalist, playing characters like the neighborhood ne’er-do-well on “Mess Under That Dress,” the lovelorn crooner on “Gotta Have My Baby Back,” and delivering a breathtaking country gospel performance on “This Is My Dream.”
Even as Blackgrass offers country music moments that should please even the most determined traditionalists, Swamp Dogg remains committed to surprising his listeners. “Rise Up,” for example, a Swamp original first recorded by the Commodores – “Atlantic didn’t know what to do with them!”– is reincarnated as a country-meets-alternative rock and roll foot stomper, with a guitar solo by Living Colour’s Vernon Reid, which readers should listen to in a safe and seated position.
One of the great rebellions of Blackgrass is the singer’s assumption, on an album that is being marketed to country and roots media, of a Black audience. He explains, “I’m calling it Blackgrass … mainly because of the banjo. When I was coming up the minute somebody said ‘country music’ or ‘banjo’ … we turned our nose up at it, way up until Charley Pride came along.”
As Black listeners, we are being made to understand that this record is for us, decades of deliberate exclusion from the genre be damned. Its creator is equanimous about how the art will be received. “If this one sells enough, there will be a next record. If it doesn’t, there will still be a next record. I’ll put it out myself.”
Fifty years since “I’m The Lover Man,” Swamp Dogg remains curious about, and frequently explodes, the boxes into which small-minded gatekeepers of popular music have attempted to place him. As he recalls some of the more colorful antagonists along his musical journey, Swamp is gracious in the knowledge that he has had the last laugh. He speaks with refreshing pettiness about his early critics, reasoning, “The people that I dealt with back in the day are either dead or don’t know who they are. And I know I’m in line for that, but I keep jumping out of line. When I see myself getting near the front of the line I jump out and go to the end of the line.”
As usual, Swamp Dogg plays in his own time. He has finally outlived the haters.
Boasting an Instrumentalist of the Year nomination at the 2024 Americana Music Association Honors & Awards (held September 18), Grace Bowers may be one of the most exciting new guitar players on the planet – with extra emphasis on “new.”
Still in her teens, the Bay Area native has made a splash with soulful-beyond-her-years playing and the enthusiasm of youth, but she’s proving to be more than just a six-string specialist. Now leading a funky blues-rock outfit called The Hodge Podge, Bowers dropped a strutting, co-written debut single – “Tell Me Why U Do That” – and has a cosmic follow up to come. Plus, she’s not afraid to speak her mind.
Already using her platform for positive impact, Bowers will host the 2nd annual An Evening Supporting Love, Life & Music benefit concert at Nashville’s Brooklyn Bowl June 10. Founded to support victims of the Covenant School Shooting and now benefiting Voices for a Safer Tennessee and MusiCares, the show will feature Bowers and The Cadillac Three, Devon Gilfillian, Caroline Jones, Meg McRee, Jared James Nichols, John Osborne, Lucie Silvas, SistaStrings, Brittney Spencer, and Butch Walker, as the rising star looks to leverage her “prodigy” label attention.
BGS caught up with Bowers just as the summer festival season kicked into gear, getting to know an exceptional breakout talent who seems primed for a long career to come.
After blowing up on social media during the pandemic, you’ve done a lot in the last few years – but, you still have a few months before you turn 18, right? How have you managed to balance this music career with growing up and just being a teenager?
Grace Bowers: It’s definitely a weird balance, and especially since I don’t go to school anymore. I started doing [school] online a year-and-a-half ago … and I don’t miss homework, but I definitely miss being around people my own age and just a normal experience. But at the same time, I’m getting to do this stuff that I love almost every night, and I would take that over anything. Some people look at it like I’m doing it too fast, or someone’s pulling strings for me, and it’s not true. This is what I love and I can’t imagine doing anything else.
What drew you to guitar in the first place? I know people like to compare you to the female guitar greats, like Bonnie Raitt or H.E.R., but I feel like it doesn’t have to be just women. I hear a lot of Prince’s style in you, or even Derek Trucks.
Yeah, I love all those players that you just mentioned! The first time I was drawn to a guitar or just to music in general was when I was 9 years old, and I saw Slash on YouTube. Which is kind of a basic answer, but that’s how it happened. I was watching the “Welcome to The Jungle” music video.
Really? So did you just rush right out and say, “Hey, mom and dad, I need a guitar”?
That’s pretty much how it went. I think I tried almost every other hobby there was. I got kicked out of soccer, hated Girl Scouts. I’m pretty sure I got kicked out of softball, too. I was not good at gymnastics. I tried everything and my parents tried everything. So when I came to them and said I wanted a guitar, they were like, “We’ll get you a guitar.”
Were you ripping leads within months, or how long did this take?
Oh, no, no. People call me a prodigy a lot and it’s entirely not true, because for the first three years I was so bad. I was awful, and I wasn’t even really passionate about it. It was just kind of something that I did. I never really practiced or dug into other music styles.
But when I was 13 and COVID had just started, I heard B.B. King for the first time – “Sweet Little Angel” – and that song starts off with three notes. I was so hooked on that, and it was a sound I had never heard before, because I didn’t grow up around music. I don’t have any players in my family, so it was a completely new thing to me, and that’s what really made me passionate about it. I started actually learning things on guitar, but it was not an immediate light bulb moment for me.
I think that’s actually a good message for people, because it’s easy to get burned out trying to learn an instrument.
Yeah, it takes time.
Was it a shock to get this Americana Music Association nomination? You’re up for Instrumentalist of the Year, right?
Yeah, I forgot. I didn’t even know I was nominated, to be honest with you. I had no idea. I opened Instagram one day and I was tagged in the post. I’m like, “Holy shit, this is insane.” Because the year before that, I was in the audience at the Ryman watching the Americana Awards. So now that I get to be there, that’s insane.
Tell me about getting the band going and working on songwriting. You’re known for your guitar playing, but it seems like you’ve been trying to diversify. Does that come natural?
Songwriting was a bit of a learning curve for me, but it is something I’m very, very much into these days. I feel like people just look at me as a guitar player, but I don’t really feel like I’m just a guitar player. And even at that, I’m not some bright virtuoso guitar player. I wouldn’t consider myself that at all. I lead this band, I wrote all the songs or co-wrote them. So I think that that’s something that a lot of people don’t realize when they’re leaving hate comments online.
Your band sounds amazing – I love how much funk and soul is in the mix. It’s also cool you present yourselves as an ensemble. It’s not just Grace Bowers and then some people behind her.
That was my goal, because like I said, I don’t want to be known as just a guitar player. If you think of Derek Trucks, you think of Susan [Tedeschi], too. Tedeschi Trucks Band would not be what it is without one another, and I love that. And since I don’t sing right now, I want to be known for this amazing band.
The first single, “Tell Me Why U Do That,” came out a little while back. It’s super funky and light – what did you write that about?
It wasn’t written about a single person. It sounds like it is, but I wrote it with John Osborne and his wife Lucie [Silvas], and honestly, we wrote it in an hour and we were kind of just bullshitting lines. … Normally I’m like, “Well, the lyrics have to mean something.” But I kind of let that go for this one. It’s just a fun song.
Does that speak to the other stuff you’re doing?
For the most part, the lyrics were very intentional. My second single that’s coming out is called “Wine on Venus,” and this one has a cool story behind it. It was written about my Nana who passed away a bit ago. I’m from California, so we went home for Christmas this year and it was the first year not having her at Christmas. Everyone was talking about her, and my uncle said she always told him that when she died, she’d be drinking wine on Venus. It’s the brightest star.
Oh, wow.
Yeah, and I thought that was such a cool thing to think about. So I brought it back here and I was writing with Ben Chapman and Meg McRee, and I told them this story, and this song just flowed right out of us.
Your grandma sounds like she was awesome.
Yeah, she was kind of crazy, but there were some good nuggets in there from time to time.
John Osborne is producing your work, and he’s an amazing guitarist in his own right. Does that have an impact on what you’re doing?
Absolutely. I don’t think enough people are talking about how good a guitar player John Osborne is. He’s on a whole ‘nother level, and I don’t hear his name mentioned when people are talking about great guitar players, but I can’t imagine doing it with anyone else. I think he just completely understood my vision and the sound I was going for, and I’ve worked with producers before who have a sound and they’ll try to mold you into their sound, and John wasn’t like that at all. I mean, he gave us direction and some really great ideas, but really let me and the band lead the ship on where it was going. So I really appreciated that.
Tell me about the benefit you put together for June 10 – An Evening Supporting Love, Life & Music. Why did you want to do this so early in your career?
This is my second year doing it, and the first year I put together after the Covenant School shooting. I have two little brothers in school, and I remember the day it happened, they were texting me like, “There’s a school shooting.” And at first they didn’t tell me what school, so my heart dropped thinking it was at their school. They eventually told me, but that brief moment of panic I had – I can’t imagine if you were a parent with a kid at Covenant on that day. Just to even think about that is awful. And it really upset me seeing how much of a divide there was, because coming from the Bay Area in California, we have different viewpoints.
I don’t know, it just upset me that it seemed to be such a divided issue, and really I think there’s a lot of common ground to be found. The first year I did it, the money went directly to the school and MusicCares, and it went amazing. So much so that the school is no longer accepting donations. They received so much support. So this year we’re donating [proceeds] to an organization called Voices for Safer Tennessee, and they’re non-partisan so it’s not political in any way, and they’re advocating for safer gun laws – which Tennessee needs some of that. I’m just doing all I can to support something that I’m passionate about, and I want to see some change.
Whether or not you realize it, the majority of people reading this have been listening to Mike Post’s music for a very long time. Like, a lot of it.
Post is the guy behind the theme songs to Magnum P.I., Hill Street Blues, Quantum Leap, The Greatest American Hero, and countless others. He even invented the famous Law & Order “DUN-DUN.”
But that’s only part of the story. Post began his 60+ year career as a member of the mythologized Wrecking Crew, becoming a Grammy-winning record producer who has worked with the likes of Kenny Rogers, Dolly Parton, and Van Halen whilst finding his niche in the television world with frequent collaborators Dick Wolf and Steven Bochco.
Now, Mike Post adds another chapter to his biographical tome, having released Message from the Mountains / Echoes of the Delta – an ambitious double album that blends his love of bluegrass and blues with his orchestral pedigree.
BGS co-founder Amy Reitnouer Jacobs sat down with Mike for an in-depth conversation, covering everything from Aaron Copeland to Earl Scruggs to Eddie Van Halen.
Amy Reitnouer Jacobs: Mike, what was your introduction to roots music? Because there is a long history, I think, of bluegrass and folk in Los Angeles that a lot of people don’t expect or understand. How did you get into bluegrass and Delta blues specifically?
Mike Post: I think I was first attracted to the harmonies and the melodies that are common to Irish music, to bluegrass, to the blues. There’s this modal sort of a thing that all those genres share, right?
Maybe even as far back as lullabies… My mom used to sing me this Irish lullaby, “Too Ra Loo Ra Loo Ral,” and I still remember it. And then I recall the first time I heard The New World Symphony and Grand Canyon Suite, things my parents were playing when I was 4 years old.
But, like every other white middle class kid from the Valley, when [Flatt & Scruggs’] Foggy Mountain Banjo album came out, it was like somebody handing you the Bible or the encyclopedia or something. I had to understand everything about it.
It wasn’t like [just] one thing that happened. It was a mishmash of The Kings: B.B., Albert, and Freddie. Flatt & Scruggs led me back to Monroe, which led me to Jim & Jesse and the Osbornes, and then I just drowned in this stuff.
This is not just a roots music album though, and I think you’ve kind of just touched on this in saying about how many different things you were pulling from. This is a record that has a really epic scale, often only saved for symphonic pieces and movie scores. It evoked Aaron Copeland the second I heard it. But it also has some of the most legit roots music players in Los Angeles on there, like Gabe Witcher, Herb Petersen, and Patrick Sauber. How did you get connected to those folks for the project? Did you already know them?
I met Herb when I was 18. You know, he just moved down from Berkeley. He’s about six months older than me, but we actually met at Hootenanny Night at the Troubadour. He was in a band called the Pine Valley Boys from Northern California, I had this five piece folk group; we were sort of like an expanded Peter, Paul and Mary. I had a Gibson 12-string and I’m a finger picker.
I heard [Herb] before I met him and I went, “Who was that?” And through Herb, I’ve known Gabe since he was a little boy.
Actually, I hadn’t worked with [Gabe Witcher’s brother], Mike Witcher before. And I’ve heard and worked with the best guys. So when I heard Mike, it was shattering to me because he is so soulful. You know, he’s not the flashiest, overplayer in the world. There’s a lot of them out there that have brought it to a place of technicality and speed that phenomenal. But Mike’s got the thing that Josh [Graves] had, which is the way he vibrates.
You can’t find much more authentic, better bluegrass players than the guys that are on this record. And the reason both the blues piece and the bluegrass piece are weird is because I’m weird.
You know, I’m a rock and roller folky that learned how to read, write, and orchestrate. So the idea for this was an odd idea. It only happened because my TV shows were on the beach, because of COVID. So I’m sitting there with nothing to do and I’m driving down to the desert to play golf. And I go down this Spotify bluegrass rabbit hole. I heard a couple of things I hadn’t heard before. And it just struck me.
I said, “You haven’t done anything scared you in a long time.” Not that I’ve been coasting – I’ve been writing music for television shows and producing some records all this time. But as a composer, you know, I’m the guy that at 23 years of age did this record, Classical Gas, which was supposed to be kind of off-the-beaten-path. I thought, well, why can’t you combine the orchestra and a bluegrass rhythm section? Not just a single fiddle player or a dobro player or a banjo player or a guitar player. Why don’t you put the five guys in front and have a conversation?
To have those things feed off of each other is really the formality of an orchestra and the improvisation that comes with bluegrass. It works really beautifully.
Thank you. I didn’t even know whether this was going to work. But I did it the old way… I got my drafting board out and my papers and pencils and score paper and did it by hand.
The we went into the Sony scoring stage in Culver City and had 80 players, genius orchestral players come in and it was thrilling.
Because orchestral recording, at least for television scoring, is more rare these days, has this inspired you to want to do more? To not just compose for picture?
It certainly was a different kind of rewarding. You know, working with pictures is fun because it’s so collaborative. They bring me their art and I put my art with it. Hopefully the whole thing’s more artful, right? But the truth is, I’m so satiated. I’ve been a member of the union since I was 16. I’ll be 80 in a few months. I’m still working. I was in here this morning working on the last episode of the season of SVU and still enjoying it!
One thing that I have noticed throughout your career is you consistently surround yourself with great collaborators that also seem like friends. First there’s your time starting with the Wrecking Crew and producing Kenny Rogers & the First Edition. Then there’s your ongoing projects with Steven Bochco, Stephen Cannell, Dick Wolf. Can you talk about those friendships and returning to work with people that you love and trust over and over again?
You’re never going to find anybody more fortunate than me. I am – it’s a corny word cause everybody overuses it – but I am blessed. It’s supposed to be a treacherous business, right? Supposed to be a business of people elbowing each other out of the way and climbing over bodies and litigation and getting screwed by the man and by the club owner and the record company. That never happened to me, none of it. I’ve been treated great. So why not give that back in double?
You know, I’ve been so fortunate to meet Steve Cannell before he’d ever sold a script. To be musical partners with a guy like Pete Carpenter… we worked together for 17 years. We wrote 1700 hours of music together for TV and never had an unkind word. So, you know, that’s the way my life has gone. Cannell led me to Bochco, Bochco led me to Dick Wolf. Cannell, Bellisario, Bochco, Dick Wolf. We did all kinds of stuff together, musically and film-wise and fun-wise and business-wise.
I just have never embraced the competitiveness. I’ve either made dear friends with the people I work with, or hired my friends, or the guys that hired me were already my friends. Wow, who gets to do that?
I moved out here to LA to work in film and then kind of stumbled into my musical life. But the whole time, I only wanted to surround myself with good people. It’s not about the competition. And it always surprised me, I guess, how revolutionary that seems to some people.
Speaking of working with your friends, I would be remiss if I didn’t talk about your work with Eddie Van Halen. Eddie is such a consistently referenced and venerated artist by some of the biggest bluegrassers today, like Billy Strings and Bryan Sutton. I read that you and Ed were friends before you produced Van Halen III. What was it about your musical sensibilities that attracted you to work together?
Let’s be honest. Eddie Van Halen is not the first martian that landed on the face of the planet, okay? Look at Mozart! Fast forward… how did Earl Scruggs sit there and go… [imitates the banjo]. Every once in a while, a genius shows up and changes everything.
After becoming friends, Eddie turned to me and he said, “Hey, will you help me with something?” I said, “Sure. What?” And he said, “I’d like to do one sober.”
I’ve never done any drugs. And Eddie knew that. So he said, you know, you can help me do this without any substance. And I went, am I producing an album or am I the sergeant at arms at the door? Am I your sponsor? And he goes, man, I don’t know, both? And I went, all right, fuck it. Let’s go.
Basically all I did was get out of the way. It’s not a very good album. It’s nobody’s fault. It was an experiment. Unfortunately, [Alex Van Halen] was going through a terrible time in his life. So Al didn’t play on that. Eddie played everything. It just didn’t have magic. That’s all.
Ed was right on that trail of genius martians that look at music a different way. And no one else is ever going to do it like that. That’s just once. When you study Mozart, you look at it on paper and you go, “How in the world did that happen? Look at that.”
It doesn’t make sense, actually. That’s the beauty of it.
Exactly. It doesn’t make sense.
The last thing I wanted to say is what a fan I am and to let you know how grateful I am for taking the time today. I was going through your catalog last night and realizing how many of the songs you have written have been true soundtracks of my life. I kid you not when I tell you that “Hill Street Blues” is still my ringtone on my phone. So, uh, I just need you to know that I still love that song.
That really makes me feel really happy! Sometimes [I look back at my career and] I don’t know that I actually believe that emotionally; I believe it intellectually. I go, “Oh yeah, that’s me up on the TV.” Like, did this really happen to me?
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.
(Editor’s Note: 50 years ago this month, Rufus released what would become a seminal album in American roots music, soul, and funk, Rags To Rufus, which featured Chaka Khan. To mark the 50th anniversary of this iconic recording, singer-songwriter Kyshona ponders the personal meanings of the project and how it relates to her own brand new album, Legacy.)
My mother is battling dementia, so car rides with her are the perfect time to play music from her younger years, when she was carefree, childless, and she and my Dad hosted an abundance of house parties for their friends and family. I have a playlist of songs from the late ‘60s and ‘70s I’ll put on when we’re shuttling her between doctors’ appointments.
On one of these car rides, I turned on Rags To Rufus. My mom was in the passenger seat, playing “brain games” on her phone to, in her words, “Exercise her mind and hold on to what she’s got.” I noticed she was singing, under her breath, the melodies and choruses of the first three tracks on the album. She turned to me and said, “I’ve never heard this before, who is this? I like it!” This got me thinking beyond personal family legacy and more about musical legacy.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of Rags To Rufus, the album that transformed the trajectory of funk band Rufus and propelled Chaka Khan into the spotlight. Chaka Khan’s music is a soundtrack that has woven itself into the fabric of not only my work as an artist, but also into my personal life.
There is an expectation to conform, to try to categorize and compartmentalize music; I can’t imagine enduring the pressure from the industry, and even society as a whole, as it was nearly a half a century ago, artists and bands trying to squeeze themselves into arbitrary molds. To my ears, Rags To Rufus is the sound of a group of friends hanging out and having a good time – there is a sense of celebration, camaraderie, a sonic journey of Black joy. It feels like an album made for the thrill of being creative, for the sake of unbridled artistic freedom. I have always wanted my music to feel like this, telling stories, playing around with sounds and ideas. When I’m creating, that’s my goal. I write in the style that serves the story that I’m telling, without regard to genre constraints or others’ expectations.
The record begins with empowered swagger and affirmation – “You Got The Love,” which I interpret as, “You belong here.” The sentiment is carried through in “Walkin’ In The Sun,” a song that brings a comforting sense of nostalgia. I can hear my “aunties” in the hook: “Even a blind man can tell when he’s walking in the sun.”
The title track is a funked-out jam session, and then the band brings out old-time fervor in “Swing Down Chariot.”
Think about it – Rufus takes an old gospel song, adds Chaka Khan’s powerhouse vocals, blends it with blues, jazz, funk, soul, and takes it to an entirely new dimension! Forget genre, industry rules, or album cycles. Back in the day, it was just music that made you feel good, it was about that vibe.
As a music therapist, I recognize the profound impact music has on those grappling with conditions like Alzheimer’s and dementia – it encourages lucidity and presence of self. As a daughter, I see how music bonds me to my mother.
In the past, when I’ve done music therapy in nursing home settings, I’ve used songs from the early 20th century – like “Let Me Call You Sweetheart,” “Heart And Soul,” and “Sentimental Journey.” But now, the memory care songs I reach for are songs I grew up listening to in our house, at family reunions, on road trips. How fantastic is it that Chaka Khan’s work throughout her 50-year career can provide a generation-spanning conduit for a mother and a daughter to connect? We can experience that freedom in her sound as we listen together, regardless of the chaos happening around us.
I can’t begin to put into words how much I admire Chaka Khan; with my new album, Legacy, I tell the stories of my ancestors and my family. Chaka Khan’s legacy is intertwined with generations of music-makers.
Over the last 50 years, Khan has been a major influence on pop artists like Whitney Houston, R&B artists like Erykah Badu and Mary J. Blige, and on myself – and so many of my peers in the roots and folk scenes. I learned of her musical magic as a child, listening to my parents’ favorite radio stations, so being able to sing backing vocals for her at Newport Folk Festival a few years ago was absolutely surreal. I can’t imagine the journey she’s been on, but I hope she knows that her existence alone encourages artists like me to keep on being true to ourselves and our art.
Rags To Rufus is a part of my journey. For me, it’s the sound of “blackness.” I hope that 50 years from now, someone will listen to the music of myself and my peers and hear that same resonance of joy, love, and celebration of culture.
We all dream to leave a lasting musical legacy as deep and profound as Chaka Khan and Rufus.
Artist:Charlie Overbey Hometown: Cerrillos, New Mexico Latest Album:In Good Company (out July 26, 2024) Personal Nicknames (or rejected band names): “Punk Rock Spy In The House Of Honky Tonk” (courtesy of Lemmy of Motorhead)
What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?
In 2016 I was touring with Blackberry Smoke and we were playing The Fillmore SF. As I walked up to the microphone, the magic of the Fillmore ghosts overtook me and I just stood there caught in the moment. I could hear the crowd getting louder and louder, but I was deep in the history of it all and then all of a sudden – I popped out of it and said, “Sorry, folks! I was having a Fillmore moment!” That crowd got louder at that moment than I had ever experienced! I think I’ll remember that moment even when I can’t remember my name anymore.
What’s the toughest time you ever had writing a song?
The night my Father died I sat down and wrote “This Old House.” The emotion one feels in such deep despair and loss is hard to put to song or on paper. The fact that I have never played it live and have a hard time even hearing it solidifies for me the depth of “This Old House.”
Genre is dead (long live genre!), but how would you describe the genres and styles your music inhabits?
Genre is a tricky thing – as artists, we all want to avoid that word and focus on writing from feeling and heart, delivering whatever comes from there. I have a long history and background in music from rock to punk to country and I tend to write with all of that mixed in, which in the music “business” is not favorable. They say, “You have to fit into a genre” or “People need to know how to classify you to have any success.” This could explain why I’m still a struggling musician, because I don’t steal from other writers and I don’t commit myself to a “genre.” I just do what I do. When I was a kid, my favorite local punk band, The Tazers, had a song called “Don’t Classify Me” and I guess at heart I’m still a young punker, semi-growed up, with an acoustic guitar and a killer band behind me.
What is a genre, album, artist, musician, or song that you adore that would surprise people?
I have always loved the depth, emotion, and songwriting of Barry Manilow. I have seen him 5 times in the first 4 rows. I am a pretty solid Fanilow and have never been shy or closet about it.
Since food and music go so well together, what is your dream pairing of a meal and a musician?
I would love to sit at an all you can eat taco bar for hours listening to Raul Malo play guitar and sing.
It’s another full week of new releases and exciting premieres! Leading off our round up this time is young fiddlin’ phenom Carson Peters singing a Bob Seger classic, “Long Twin Silver Line.” Plus, don’t miss bluegrass tracks from our friends Unspoken Tradition and Meadow Mountain – the latter of whom debuted the first installment of their SkyTheory Sessions on BGS yesterday.
There’s also plenty of Good Country to find herein! Kyle McKearney is joined by bluegrass flatpicker Trey Hensley on “Lonesome,” Jessie Wilson brings us a new one, “Outlaw,” and Will Stewart & the Gold Band share a tune from their Live in Norway project. Plus, Jordie Lane brings us a new single, too.
Yesterday, Donovan Woods exclusively premiered a new Lori McKenna and Matt Nathanson co-write on BGS,. as well so don’t miss that! It’s all below and really, You Gotta Hear This!
Carson Peters, “Long Twin Silver Line”
Artist:Carson Peters Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee Song: “Long Twin Silver Line” (Bob Seger cover) Album:Silver Bullet Bluegrass Release Date: July 12, 2024 Label: Lonesome Day Records
In Their Words: “Randall Deaton approached me with this tribute project a while back, and I loved the idea and jumped at the chance to be included with the great artists that were already on board. I grew up listening to classic rock and roll music riding in my parents’ car. It definitely helped me appreciate all styles of music and I always enjoyed hearing Seger songs. Randall had most of the track ready for me when I came in to put vocals and fiddle on it, and his ideas and choices made this song even better than I imagined. We played around with arrangements for a fiddle break in the middle, but he was the brain behind the arrangement for sure. I think (and hope) that the youthfulness in my voice and aggressive style of fiddle playing suits this song well, and gives it a nice spin. I am working up a live version with my band so we can put into our shows.” – Carson Peters
Track Credits: Written and published by Bob Seger, Gear Publishing Company Producer – Randall Deaton Engineers – Randall Deaton, Jimmy Nutt Tracked at Lonesome Day Recording Studio, Booneville, KY / The NuttHouse Recording Studio, Muscle Shoals, AL. Mixed at The NuttHouse Recording Studio, Muscle Shoals, AL.
Guitar – Stephen Mougin, Gary Nichols Mandolin – Darrell Webb Banjo – Ned Luberecki Bass – Mike Bub Dobro – Jake Joines Fiddle – Carson Peters Harmony vocals – Sarah Borges
Artist:Kyle McKearney Hometown: Calgary, Alberta, Canada Song: “Lonesome” (featuring Trey Hensley) Release Date: April 26, 2024 Label: Kyle McKearney Music
In Their Words: “I’ve been following Trey Hensley for years and have always been a huge fan of his playing, singing, and Southern charm. I got to meet Trey at a gig in Colorado and I was blown away to learn that had been a fan of mine as well. My keyboard player James and I wrote ‘Lonesome’ with Trey in mind, hoping that he’d jump on for a shred on his flattop. I love how this song turned out and am grateful to Trey and team for their contributions. I can’t wait for folks to hear this burning two stepper!” — Kyle McKearney
“I became a huge fan of Kyle McKearney the moment I heard his music several years ago. I became an even bigger fan when I got to meet him and hear him live out in Colorado last year. I knew then that I would love a chance to work on some music with him in the future. I was thrilled when the opportunity arose for me to go up to Alberta and record with Kyle for his new song ‘Lonesome.’ As soon as I heard the song, I immediately knew this was going to be a blast… and sure enough, it was an absolutely incredible experience. Kyle is such a phenomenally talented artist, and I’m beyond honored to be included on ‘Lonesome.’ I can’t wait for y’all to hear it!” — Trey Hensley
Jessie Wilson, “Outlaw”
Artist:Jessie Wilson Hometown: Phenix City, Alabama Song: “Outlaw” Release Date: May 3, 2024 (single)
In Their Words: “‘Outlaw’ depicts a universal feeling – no matter what field you are in or where you’re at in life, almost everyone has felt like they weren’t good enough and wanted to fit into a certain group at some point or another. I wrote this song about Nashville; I’ve often wondered what I need to do to be wanted in this town and the music industry. Is it about dating the right person, or changing my morals – what’s the answer? This song was written from that state of mind. It took a lot of vulnerability for me to admit that there was a time when I would do anything to fit in and gain the love of others, because deep down I was so lonely and lost. It’s typical to want to compare yourself, but you have to steer your mind away from that idea. I’ve since learned that I don’t have to change who I am and that the right people and opportunities will come to me and love me for the person I am.” – Jessie Wilson
Track Credits:
Producer – David Dorn Acoustic & electric guitar – Tim Galloway Bass – Tim Denbo Drums – Matt King B3/Synthesizer – David Dorn BGVs – Kristen Rogers and Caleb Lee Hutchinson Recorded at Farmland Studios. Mixing – Mark Lonsway Mastering – Mayfield Mastering
Will Stewart & The Gold Band, “Real Drag” (Live)
Artist:Will Stewart & The Gold Band Hometown: Birmingham, Alabama Song: “Real Drag” (Live) Album:Will Stewart & The Gold Band Live in Norway Release Date: June 7, 2024 Label: Cornelius Chapel Records
In Their Words: “Ross Parker, my longtime friend and bassist, sent me a rough demo of ‘Real Drag’ last year. I slightly tweaked the arrangement and melody and added a verse and it immediately became a staple in our live set. I get to throw in some jangle on this one, and Janet’s guitar playing compliments that in a nice way. The lyrics sort of speak for themselves, but it’s about a series of unfortunate events after a long night of being out, which seems to be a common theme in a lot of my songs, now that I’m thinking about it. It’s a combination of people and places that we’ve encountered over the years.” – Will Stewart
Track Credits:
Will Stewart – Guitar, vocals Janet Simpson – Guitar, vocals Tyler McGuire – Drums Ross Parker – Bass Recording Engineer – Harvard Soknes Mixed by Brad Timko. Mastered by Alex McCollough.
Jordie Lane, “The Changing Weather”
Artist:Jordie Lane Hometown: Melbourne, Australia (Based in Nashville, Tennessee) Song: “The Changing Weather” Album:Tropical Depression Release Date: May 2, 2024 (single); August 23, 2024 (album) Label: Blood Thinner Records, under exclusive licence to ABC Music/The Orchard
In Their Words: “I had just got back to America after the terrible 2019-20 Australian bushfires when this massive EF-3 Tornado devastated our East Nashville neighborhood. Everything in my mind and body was kind of in shock about this severe weather, being so close to being hit. It scared the sh*t outta me. The song came after thinking about how people often complain about the very things that could and should be seen as a gift. Like the simple act of getting caught in the rain.
“Humans are remarkably good at denying the truth sometimes and covering it up with a bunch of other crap that we pretend is more important. We tend to just wanna get on with our lives, and not think about the scary things inside us, or with this planet we live on. This song is my take of an easy-breezy ’60s song to keep cruising along to, until the moment it’s all too late.” – Jordie Lane
Track Credits: Written by Jordie Lane. Produced by Jordie Lane & Jon Estes.
Video Credits: Director, director of photography, editor – Korby Lenker Aerial photography – Travis Nicholson Producers, production designers – Jordie Lane & Clare Reynolds
Unspoken Tradition, “Georgia In Her Eyes”
Artist:Unspoken Tradition Hometown: Cherryville, North Carolina Song: “Georgia In Her Eyes” Release Date: May 3, 2024 Label: Mountain Home Music Company
In Their Words: “‘Georgia In Her Eyes’ is a deeply personal song that I wrote in a fit of inspiration not long after meeting the woman who is now my wife. Looking through the perspective gained from 12 years together, the lyrics are even more meaningful. I’m excited that the guys in the band chose to help bring this song to life.” – Sav Sankaran, bass and songwriter
Track Credits:
Audie McGinnis – Acoustic, vocals Sav Sankaran – Vocals, bass Tim Gardner – Fiddle, vocals Zane McGinnis – Banjo Ty Gilpin – Mandolin
Donovan Woods, “Back For the Funeral”
Artist:Donovan Woods Hometown: Sarnia, Ontario, Canada Song: “Back For The Funeral” Album:Things Were Never Good If They’re Not Good Now Release Date: July 12, 2024 Label: End Times Music
In Their Words: “‘Back For The Funeral’ is a story that a lot of us end up experiencing. Big life events – deaths, births, divorces – seem to pull us out of the flow of time somehow. The days around these events can feel like a dream wherein the regular rules of our lives don’t apply. People fall back onto old habits or maybe construct a new temporary-self to shield them from grief or shock. What I like best about this song is that it reflects that dream-like feeling without sacrificing clarity. It feels the way those life-dividing days feel. I wrote it with Lori McKenna and Matt Nathanson. I’m about as proud of it as anything I’ve written. I hope it’s useful to people.” – Donovan Woods
In Their Words: “It sometimes feels like my life is split up into eras – periods of a year or two that, upon looking back, have a distinct, overarching feeling. As I get older I’ve started to recognize when I’m on the edge of one era, moving into the next one, and I begin to get a sense of the overall color of my recent life. I had that feeling as spring moved into summer last year and wanted to document it in a song. It recounts moments in the Colorado wilderness, misadventures in love, and my abiding wish to be Sam Bush in the 1980’s.” – Jack Dunlevie, mandolin and songwriter
Artist:Louisa Stancioff Hometown: I live in Warren, Maine and I am originally from Chesterville, Maine Latest Album:When We Were Looking
Which artist has influenced you the most and how?
Regina Spektor keeps coming to mind. I listened to her albums Begin to Hope and Far incessantly when I was young, and I loved her voice, her intricate, thoughtful, creative melodies, her silliness paired with intensity, and her unpredictable song structures. Those albums were two of 10 or so CDs that I had, so I knew every word even when I couldn’t understand or quite grasp the things she was singing about. It’s hard to pinpoint who or what has influenced me, but she definitely opened up a new sonic landscape for me that I’m always still so entertained by whenever one of her songs comes on.
What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?
I was once playing a house show in Paonia, Colorado in someone’s backyard with my old band, Dyado. It was a warm, beautiful night and we were singing this song we had written together that mentioned the wind whipping at the trees and right then there was a very strong gust that whipped the leaves of this huge willow tree and made such a loud whooshing sound. It all felt pretty magical with the perfect timing and everyone was laughing and cheering.
What was the first moment that you knew you wanted to be a musician?
It wasn’t until COVID lockdown times. I’d been playing music my whole life and touring around the country here and there for a few years, but never felt any sort of commitment to it career-wise. Once it was no longer an option to perform and collaborate with people, that’s when I realized how bad I wanted it. I decided I had to truly attempt to build a solid music career or I might regret it for the rest of my life.
What has been the best advice you’ve received in your career so far?
The folks from the band Darlingside gave us some really nice advice a couple years ago when we were on tour with them. It’s so easy to get caught up in comparing yourself to other peoples’ music careers, but if you take a step back and compare yourself to where you were a year before, it can help you realize how far you’ve come. Now whenever I am feeling down about my career or feel like it’s not moving fast enough, I think about where I was a year before, and it always reminds me how much I have grown.
Which elements of nature do you spend the most time with and how do those impact your work?
I am a water person – I love swimming in lakes and rivers and oceans, canoeing and being on the water in general. A lot of my songs mention water in some way or other, in fact I have an entire song about a canoe race. I was actually in a river canoe race last week and I almost died. I got rescued by a kind firefighter after our boat was completely swamped and swept away. Perhaps I’ll write a song about that, too.
I met Ed Jurdi at a taping of The Travis Book Happy Hour in March of 2021. Our mutual friend Nicki Bluhm was on the show and she’d invited Ed, who’d recently moved to Asheville, to attend. I was not yet acquainted with Band of Heathens or Ed Jurdi, but when we met after the show I was struck by his warmth and attentiveness. It was a couple years before I would get him to Brevard to join me, but immediately during rehearsals I knew we’d be friends and this would only be the first of many times we’d share a stage. I had a blast on this episode (as evidenced by my over-playing) and I’m happy to share it with you.
This episode was recorded live at 185 King St. in Brevard, North Carolina on May 30, 2023. Huge thanks to Ed Jurdi and Tommy Maher.
Timestamps:
0:08 – Soundbyte 0:49 – Introduction 2:09 – Bill K’s introduction 2:45 – Travis’ audience greeting 3:31 – “All I’m Asking” 7:33 – “Bumblebee” 12:52 – “What a joy” 13:27 – “Jackson Station” 18:32 – Interview 34:11 – “South By Somewhere” 38:51 – “The Good Doctor” 42:45 – “Walking and Talking” 48:43 – Outro
Editor’s note: The Travis Book Happy Hour is hosted by Travis Book of the GRAMMY Award-winning band, The Infamous Stringdusters. The show’s focus is musical collaboration and conversation around matters of being. The podcast is the best of the interview and music from the live show recorded in Asheville and Brevard, North Carolina.
The Travis Book Happy Hour Podcast is brought to you by Thompson Guitars and is presented by Americana Vibes and The Bluegrass Situation as part of the BGS Podcast Network. You can find the Travis Book Happy Hour on Instagram and Facebook and online at thetravisbookhappyhour.com.
Sun Without the Heat is Leyla McCalla’s fifth solo album, but it is different from past efforts and she brings the listener through the transformative process with her. Produced by Maryam Qudus at Dockside Studio in Louisiana, McCalla dug into her personal history, primary sources from Amistad Research Center at Tulane University’s archives, world musical influences, and her creative trust in her long time bandmates to bring forth a bright, kinetic, and meditative project.
The studio, nestled along the Vermilion Bayou, offered an insular, bucolic setting for the nine days McCalla and band were recording; a place where friends and children could visit and local fishermen provided fresh catch for dinner. Qudus’ direction provided McCalla with space and vision to piece together her research and personal edification, while her relationship with her band allowed a deeply creative process to unfold. McCalla spoke wistfully about the experience, “It was very luxurious to have that kind of space. And it’s just really a very nurturing environment.”
Traditionally a cellist, on this project, McCalla explores her relationship with the guitar. She delves into West African and Brazilian polyrhythms flowing underneath lyrics that, at times, feel like a repetitive prayer or mantra. She balances the seemingly unanswerable aspects of life with the sometimes illusive, but simple notion that many contradictory feelings can be true at once.
BGS spoke with McCalla via Zoom from her home in New Orleans earlier this month. McCalla discussed the experience of researching, writing, and recording, her relationship with fans and supporters, creative freedom, and trusting the process.
I’ve been listening to all your music the past couple of days and I’ve noticed that the sonic palette of this album is somewhat of a shift for you. It seems like there’s a transformation theme running through it, both lyrically and musically, and it seems like even in the process of recording it. So I wanna talk about that on multiple levels, but can we start with the process for this? It sounds like you went into the woodshed and didn’t come out until the record was done.
Leyla McCalla: This is an album that was mostly finished in the studio. I had a pre-production session with Maryam Qudus, who produced the record. It was also just this really crazy time in my life. I was on tour a lot and coordinating with kids’ schedules. We really only had 36 hours of workshopping songs. Maryam was really amazing at being like, “Okay, let’s play with this idea, and come up with a verse and a chorus.” So I think we came out of that pre-production session with about 7 different demos that were just these rough sketches and we sent them all around to the band. When we went into the studio, everyone contributed what they were hearing to the songs. I’ve been working with my band now for about six years. I think that we have developed fluidity in our process of coming up with parts and talking about music. And so I knew that I had these sort of vague notions of delving into psychedelia and Afrofuturism and mining, this incredible music from Africa, ultimately. I think that that’s been a consistent through line in all my work is connecting my music through the ancestral lines of the sounds themselves.
I played a lot more guitar on this record than any other record. For me, it was really about delving into the songwriting and figuring out what I wanted to say. I’d been doing a lot of reading of Black feminist thinkers, and contemporary thinkers like Adrienne Maree Brown, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, and Octavia Butler. I think this record for me was really about, “How am I going to survive life? What does it mean to be resilient? What does it mean to transform and change? And give myself the space to grieve and also to hope and to dream.” There are a lot of things that I was meditating on when I wrote these songs.
I remember feeling very vulnerable, because I was really going back into this more beginner’s mind. I’ve never gone into the studio and been like, “I don’t know what it’s gonna sound like on the other side.” I’ve always had the band pretty well rehearsed and gone in. This time it was like, “These are the things that are emerging in real-time.”
Did you feel nervous about it? It seems like you have a lot of trust with your band, which is a great starting point. And you had the 36 hours of workshopping and all the ideas that you came up with. But were there nerves about it walking in to record?
Oh, yeah. It was not nerves about, “Can I trust my bandmates to be awesome?” It was more nerves of, “Do I suck?” Which is classic imposter syndrome that artists have as part of the process of writing. You get an idea. It’s a good idea. You question whether it’s a good idea.
I’m trying to do a new thing. I’m trying to break new ground in my creative life and in my sonic expression. Within that, I think that there’s a lot of room for self-doubt. That’s why for this album it was critical to have the support of my bandmates and of Maryam, who didn’t have that kind of attachment to any of the songs. They were just there to help execute what I wanted. I think this album really has strengthened my trust in my songwriting and in my creative process. And just knowing that you don’t always have to know what’s gonna happen to know that it’ll be good.
Absolutely. I was just going to say when you said it was a sort of meditative for you, I think that really comes across, lyrically and sonically. There are these phrases that you repeat that are meditative and it seems like you’re asking questions, you’re answering the ones you can, and you’re submitting to the ones that you can’t. What you are saying you wanted to happen comes across.
Yeah, I think so. I think that there is, on a spiritual level, deep healing for me in writing these songs. I was calling that in. I was navigating single motherhood, divorce, breakups, and big deaths in my family. It was like, “How do I call myself back to myself, what is gonna guide me through that?” I think for me, doing a lot of sort of ancestral healing work and meditating on the the gifts and the things that I’ve inherited from my ancestors, those made their way into the songs.
Speaking of process, you mentioned in your liner notes that you are grateful for creative freedom on this project. And I’d love to know what creative freedom looks like for you and how it impacts your work. And maybe what a lack of creative freedom has felt like in the past for you.
I think creative freedom, for me, was kind of twofold. I have a label that is mostly doing stuff outside of the commercial realm. Obviously, we’re part of the music industry, but I never felt like I needed to make a particular album. I felt like the question from the label was, “What kind of album do you want to make? What is coming through right now for you? What do you want to say?” Being able to come from that place is very different than, “Try to take over this part of the market,” or something. It’s a lot more empowering experience. Also, not being afraid to go in different directions. Not being afraid to use weird pedals on my guitars, experiment with synths, have a freaking psychedelic freak out, or have piano on the songs or organ. It was just sort of intuitive, “Yes, this belongs.” And not feeling like anyone was going to disapprove of that.
I never felt that there was a particular agenda outside of the agenda that I wanted to fulfill. That has been a really empowering experience for me, coming off of my previous record where it was like, “Okay, these are these ancient rhythms that are Haitian and African, and this is a mapping of where Haitian people come from.” I felt empowered by that, but in a very different way, almost like I wanted to serve this music. For this record it felt like, “Okay, how can this process really serve me and serve my creative genesis?” Returning back to like a more beginner’s mind, “What are the things that really I love about music? What are the things that make me wanna write songs?”
I didn’t have as much of a mind for that with Breaking the Thermometer, because it had been such a longstanding collaboration that I had been working on for five years with a crew of theater makers and different musicians and then going into the studio.
I always felt like that project was like a garden of weeds that are growing out of control. It could be a book. It could be a theater project. It could be a dance piece. I explored the intersection of all those things together. Whereas this was like, “Okay, I’m just returning back to this one format. We’re making an album.”
It meant connecting with some of my earliest influences. That’s why I went back to listening to a lot of artists from the tropicalismo movement in Brazil, in the ’60s and ’70s. There was all this experimentation with traditional music forms and rock and roll and psychedelia. I love that music. There’s something about it that just really speaks deeply to me. And I think that it’s also because of my generation, who I am, and where I am. I’m drawn to things that are out of the box. And I’m also drawn to really solid groove and feel and deep emotional content. I never had an agenda other than to figure out what I want to sound like and being able to have that space. A lot of these songs were about like, “How do I get out of my own way?”
When you started thinking about making this record did you know that you’d be playing more guitar than cello? Did you write on guitar? What was the relationship with that instrument like?
I was writing a lot on guitar. I wasn’t like, “I’m gonna play guitar and not cello.” I didn’t have an agenda in that way. I really wanted to explore different shapes in my fingers and try different rhythmic structures. Guitar is exciting for me in that way. I’ve done a lot of finger-picking in my work and there’s plenty of that on this record. But I’m like, “What about this inflection? What about this texture? And what about this feel? What does that conjure?” That was really fun for me.
Fun was also really central to the process. I was like, “I want to heal, I want to be creative, I want to expand my sonic palette, and I also want to have fun.” I do this work to have fun. I don’t do this work to be the “king of the capitalists” or something. I want to have a good experience with it and find it enriching. I feel like the guitar is the ultimate symbol of liberation and freedom. It has a different meaning to me than the cello. With cello, I know the notes. I am thinking about technique and I have to think about how I’m holding my body. Guitar is just like, “This is who I am.”
For sure. Partly because the guitar is so mobile. You can walk off into the woods with it.
Yeah, totally. You should see me walk through an airport. I’m carrying my guitar, my banjo, and my cello, and I’m always like, ”Man, life would be so much easier without this cello.” But it’s such a powerful thing. When I’m playing cello, it feels totally like, “Wow, this is also home.”
Cello moves so much air. It can completely change the vibration of a room.
Totally. I always tell my bandmates, “Oh, we gotta be careful with that cello. It’s like melting a dark piece of chocolate on stage.”
I think a lot about sense of place and how a place can affect the creative process. Since you were sort of in a “lock-in” at Dockside Studio, I want to know if that studio and that place had an effect on this record.
Oh, yeah. Dockside is an incredible place. There’s a house with a pool and then a whole other house with a studio. The grounds are beautiful and well-kept. You’re right by the river.
There was a sense of deep relaxation for me there, because it is kind of separate. If it were in the middle of a city, there would be so much more distraction. But because there isn’t, I felt like it really helped me to focus and to tune in. We burnt candles there every day. We were calling in a lot of spirits and support. I did a lot of just sitting by the river and writing and reading in order to write.
And Maryam is amazing. If it had just been me producing the record, it would have been way more disorganized. Maryam was amazing at being like, “Okay, Leyla, we don’t need you in the studio right now. What we really need from you is to go and write.” I feel like I do best in those sorts of relationships, when someone is gently nudging me in the direction of what’s gonna be most productive for me. I was really able to get to a place of being productive and feeling quiet enough to actually hear whatever was coming through. If we had made the record anywhere else, it would have probably sounded completely different. We are all pretty well versed in the different styles of Louisianan music, so we kept thinking, “What is this sound that we’re coming up with?” And we were like, “This is Louisiana tropicalia.” It’s a fun construct.
Tell me a bit about what your relationship is like with fans and supporters of your music and the impact that they might have on your creations or your career.
For my first record, I did a Kickstarter campaign and I asked for $5,000, because I didn’t know how expensive it is to make albums. I ended up making over $20k. That whole process of doing the Kickstarter was such a boon to my career. At that point, I had been touring with the Carolina Chocolate Drops. No one really knew who I was, but I realized that there was support and space for me to be doing these projects that combine research and intellectual pursuits with making music. That’s the line that I have been toeing this whole time. And it is incredible, over the years, the number of connections that I have made from pursuing two things at once and growing this academic life within my body of work as a recording artist.
People have brought me, over the years, limited edition Langston Hughes, Haitian Creole poetry from the 1800s, translations of Zora Neale Hurston books that are in French or German. Those are the kinds of connections that feel so sustaining creatively for me and really enriching. The music industry is so inundated with artists, and everyone’s trying to stand out. That kind of symbiosis, I think, is really critical not only to me as an artist but to me seeking support.
That’s wonderful. There’s something sort of clinical about the traditional record label rollout of material in the past, but now it feels like, because of social media, because of things like Kickstarter and house shows, a wall has broken down.
Totally. And I feel people really connect to that, even sometimes more than the actual songs. Which may be problematic in one way. Everything is kind of about more of this “cult of personality” thing. Not that I’m super invested in developing that, but I do feel like the fan base is invested in me as a person, and wants to want to support the music as a result of that.
Can you talk a little bit about the collaboration with the Rivers Institute and the Amistad Research Center at Tulane, and how that might have informed this project, or what you’re working on in general?
I was invited by the Rivers Institute to be their first music fellow. They have this incredible artist-in-residence program that is in concert with the Amistad Research Center at Tulane University, which is an incredible archive of stuff from all over the South, particularly Louisiana Black culture. There are so many oral history interviews. I discovered writers that I didn’t know about, particularly a guy named Tom Dent, who feels like he’s kind of like the Langston Hughes of Louisiana.
I’ve always known how important archives and libraries are, but it’s just so much information. There’s a woman named Jade Flint who works there who helped me. She was like, “What are you interested in?” I’m like, “I like poetry. I like organizers. I like movement work.” I found myself down this path of discovering letters that Fannie Lou Hamer had written to her best friend. She was from the Delta in Mississippi and in the ’60s was really active in registering Black voters at the height of Jim Crow. She was attacked. She was beaten really badly for that. She just kept on fighting her whole life for Black people to have the right to vote and for political participation for Black people at a time where that came at a great cost to her mental, emotional, and physical health.
There’s an organization called Core New Orleans, which actually did a lot of COVID testing during the pandemic, but they were also working on voter registrations. I was reading their pamphlets that were like, “This is how you deal with potentially violent situations. This is how you approach people about trying to get them to vote.” I was doing that and concurrently reading things about emergent strategy and pleasure activism and comparing notes like, “These are the activists of yesteryear and the organizing principles.”
And then I was reading Adrienne Maree Brown’s books. She’s like, “You’re gonna need to masturbate before reading this chapter, because otherwise you won’t be connected with your pleasure center. That is essential to this activist work.” You could see this sea change in the attitude about what is actually going to aid our collective liberation the most.
During this time, my grandfather passed away and he [had] started a Socialist Haitian newspaper called Haiti Progress. Both of my parents are activists. I’ve been immersed in a lot organizing and activist stuff my whole life like going to protests throughout my childhood, especially regarding Haitian immigrants and human rights issues in the United States.
All of these things just really filled me with this feeling of, “Wow! It’s taken so much bravery to be able to fight the good fight and keep these conversations moving forward.” I think we still have a long way to go. I did a lot of reflecting on that. And that song, “I Want to Believe,” was written during that residency. It’s a simple song, but I wanted to write something that was almost a song that could be sung at a protest, something that was not quite gospel and not quite protest music, somewhere in the middle.
I love a library, I love an archivist, and I love being in that space and finding things that feel like a secret. How you process that as a person in the present, feeling the history in the present, and how it comes across – that is reflected in your lyrics. We have access to so much information today, but that information is very much filtered by these multinational corporations. There’s search engine optimization and all that, and we can’t really dig down until you go into a place like that where those regional details exist, like in an archive or library.
It just is incredible to me, because there’s so much to keep track of. And you know, even the different categories like oral histories or audio interviews or drafts of books or poems. There are unpublished pieces that may only be read by five people every year. Those five people then know about this thing and can share it with their community, and make work from it, or include it in their research papers. There’s there’s endless ways to see the world and then filter this information.
I feel like my job as a musician is looking for those bits of information that feel like the diamond in the rough, like the thing that I’ve been looking for my whole life. That’s really the chase. It really keeps me in the archives.
Can you talk specifically about the title track, “Sun Without the Heat?” In your liner notes, you dedicate the song to Susan Raffo and Frederick Douglass. I’d love to know more about that.
Susan Rafo released a book called Liberated to the Bone: Histories. Bodies. Futures. I went down this rabbit hole of progressive thought. Her book is written for healers, people working within the medical industrial complex, and anyone who’s engaged in healing work, whether that be on a community level or on a one-on-one basis. I read that book, and it was really fortifying for me.
She has this theory of the original wounds of our society, which are the genocide of Indigenous peoples and the enslavement of African people through the transatlantic slave trade. It’s about our inability to grapple with the harm that has been perpetuated and is being perpetuated from those original wounds. It is holding us back from larger systemic change. There’s a chapter where she references a speech that Frederick Douglass gave in 1857 to a room full of white abolitionists. He said, “You want the crops without the plow. You want the rain without the thunder. You want the ocean without the roar of its waters.” I was immediately like, “Those are song lyrics.” I just heard it immediately. Those were just such beautiful words and and phrases and concepts, and I kept on singing that.
It occurred to me, “You can’t have the sun without the heat.” I was like, “There are only three phrases, and I need that one other thing.” I was also thinking about how so many of these songs to me are about transformation, and are about what change really requires of us. And it felt like those phrases spoke so well to that theme.
I read a book called Undrowned by Alexis Pauline Ghums. It’s a Black feminist study of marine mammals off the coast of South Carolina and Georgia and the things that we can learn from them about survival, resiliency, living on this planet, and our inherent connection to nature — you know, how to thrive on this seemingly unsustainable planet. It is also about our connections to each other and community.
For a long time, I think in my own personal life I was like, “I just can’t help but feel like I’m drowning.” But I didn’t want to just make a record about that feeling. I wanted to make a record about getting through that feeling: about breaking through the overwhelm.
Photo Credit: Chris Scheurich
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