ANNOUNCING: 2017 Americana Music Awards Nominations

Today, the nominees for the 16th annual Americana Music Association‘s Honors & Awards show were announced during an event at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum hosted by the Milk Carton Kids and featuring performances by Jason Isbell, Jerry Douglas, Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley of the Drive-By Truckers, and Caitlin Canty. The winners will be announced during the Americana Honors & Awards show on September 13, 2017 at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, Tennessee.

Album of the Year:
American Band, Drive-By Truckers, Produced by David Barbe
Close Ties, Rodney Crowell, Produced by Kim Buie and Jordan Lehning
Freedom Highway, Rhiannon Giddens, Produced David Bither, Rhiannon Giddens and Dirk Powell
The Navigator, Hurray for the Riff Raff, Produced by Paul Butler
A Sailor’s Guide to Earth, Sturgill Simpson, Produced by Sturgill Simpson

Artist of the Year:
Jason Isbell
John Prine
Lori McKenna
Margo Price
Sturgill Simpson

Duo/Group of the Year:
Billy Bragg & Joe Henry
Drive-By Truckers
Marty Stuart & His Fabulous Superlatives
The Lumineers

Emerging Artist of the Year:
Aaron Lee Tasjan
Amanda Shires
Brent Cobb
Sam Outlaw

Song of the Year:
“All Around You,” Sturgill Simpson, Written by Sturgill Simpson
“It Ain’t Over Yet,” Rodney Crowell (featuring Rosanne Cash & John Paul White), Written by Rodney Crowell
“To Be Without You,” Ryan Adams, Written by Ryan Adams
“Wreck You,” Lori McKenna, Written by Lori McKenna and Felix McTeigue

Instrumentalist of the Year:
Spencer Cullum, Jr.
Jen Gunderman
Courtney Hartman
Charlie Sexton

The Producers: Lari White

“We called it the Holler because we live out in the country in the woods,” says Lari White of her home studio, located just outside of Nashville. “Our house is tucked back in the Tennessee hills, in this real Loretta Lynn holler. We thought it was funny to have this very high-tech studio and call it the Holler.”

White has made a lot of music at this remote studio, both as a recording artist and as a producer. There is always a bustle of activity there, whether she’s writing songs with her husband (Chuck Cannon), tracking sessions in the studio, or running overdubs. Recently, she manned the boards for Shawn Mullins’ latest album, My Stupid Heart, and for Old Friends, New Loves, a double-EP of covers and originals that marks her return after a 10-year hiatus.

White is one of the most eclectic producers in — or just outside of — Nashville today, but she’s also one of the most ground-breaking. After establishing herself as a recording artist in the late 1980s and 1990s, she took on more and more producing gigs, including Billy Dean’s 2005 breakthrough, Let Them Be Little. When she helmed Toby Keith’s 2006 album, White Trash with Money (arguably the best entry in his sprawling catalog), she became the first woman to produce a platinum-selling album by a male country star.

Producing, however, is only one creative outlet among many for White. In addition to her six solo albums and a greatest hits compilation, she also appears in movies (Cast Away, Country Strong) and on Broadway (Ring of Fire, featuring the songs of Johnny Cash). But recently she finds herself drawn more and more to the Holler, where she is currently working with two up-and-coming acts: the Fairground Saints and Julia Cole, a young singer/songwriter from Houston.

“Right now we’re in the sweet spot, because there’s not a record label involved in other of those projects. So there is this blissful freedom of just being in the creative playground, where you write and record for the joy and the challenge of it.”

You started out as a performing artist. How did you make the transition into producing?

It really started as a kid, as a music fan. I just loved records. I loved the experience of music, and I loved making music. I loved live music. Really, I became a lover of music because of recorded music, the records that my parents had in our house. I was fascinated with playing records, back in the vinyl days. I would sit next to our turntable and just play records over and over and over. Even as a kid, I loved not just the song experience, but the record experience — how the guitars sounded, what kind of space the vocals were in, the sounds they created on Dark Side of the Moon, the soundscape, the whole environment of it.

I’ve always been fascinated by records, but I didn’t really understand that, as a gig, until I went to college and got into the music engineering school. I knew I wanted to be a recording artist and, when I got to the University of Miami, I discovered a whole new program that I’d never heard of before. The music engineering students got to have the studio in the school from midnight until 8 am. There were many, many all-nighters pulled while we were recording somebody’s new song. It was a great experience, and it made me realize: This is how you do it. This is the equipment that you use to get those sounds. This is the kind of microphone that you use to get this kind of sound. This is the kind of microphone you use to get this totally different sound. That’s when I thought, "I’m going to be a producer."

So that pursuit went hand-in-hand with becoming a performing artist.

Pretty much everything I’ve ever done in my life has been to support my performing habit. I looked for anything that would help me get up on stage in front of an audience and make music. That’s why I started writing songs — so I would have material that I could get up on stage and sing. It’s all about performing and sharing that experience with an audience. So I would have to say my first love is the stage. That’s just my happy place. I’ve really grown to love the experience of making records and being in the studio. It’s a very different animal, especially having a studio of my own and having the luxury of being able to be home, raise a family, have a somewhat normal life, and make music. That’s as good as it gets.

Does having a home studio allow you to have a routine as far as working and making music?

There really isn’t so much of a routine, except to make something every day. To sustain a creative life over the years and decades, you get to where you try to make it happen any whichaway. Starting with a song or with a groove, or a piece of poetry — however you can spark it. So I don’t know if there’s a routine, except just trying to listen to a song and get a feel for what it wants to be. It always starts with a song, either one we’ve written or one another artist brings in. Every song has its bones, and the bones might be a programmed drum loop or a guitar riff or some melodic signature. There can be a lot of information in there: Is it a rhythm section kind of record? Or is it a layered wall of sound? Does it need thick, dense textures? We try to figure out what it wants to be.

I’ve read some stuff about Michelangelo, who believed there would be a sculpture inside a rock. The sculpture already existed inside the rock, and he was just taking away what didn’t belong in the sculpture, getting rid of the extraneous material. It’s a little bit like that with a song. It feels like there’s a lot of inherent information in the song itself, and you have to get rid of everything that doesn’t belong.

So you’re not coming into the studio with a finished song. It sounds like you’re doing a lot of exploration in the studio, a lot of trial and error.

Until recently, most of my work in the studio has started with a complete song, but that’s just because I’m coming out of the Nashville songwriting community, where you have to be able to sit and play a song with just a guitar or just a piano. That’s how you test the song and know if it’s alive, if it can live on its own, just stripped down to the bare bones like that. Most of my production has been in that context, where we go in with finished songs.

But recently, I’ve been more into writing loops or creating instrumental environments that we can flesh out into a melody or a lyric. I’ve been writing with a couple of different artists, and the writing and recording process has been much more integrated. The track informs the writing of the song, and the song informs the development of the track. I’ve read about how Fleetwood Mac and a lot of rock bands will go into the studio with no complete songs, and they’ll generate songs and a complete record. That sounds like a really exciting way to work, and I’m getting a taste of that right now.

How do you balance the aesthetic demands of writing a song and the technical demands of working in the studio? Are you trying to keep them compartmentalized?

Like a left-brain/right-brain kind of thing? I can say this: I personally do not engineer my own tracking dates. If I’m producing a session with a studio full of musicians, I hire an engineer because I don’t want to be thinking about microphone placement on the kick drum. I want to be listening and responding to the sounds and to the emotional experience. So maybe that’s a partial answer. I hate to say "compartmentalize" because it’s never that neat. It’s more of an emphasis. On a tracking date, my emphasis is on the overall picture of how everything sounds together, how it feels — the emotional environment that the musicians are experiencing and the music is creating. I’m not ignoring the technical. It’s just a question of emphasis.

I really like engineering overdubs, where I can work really closely one-on-one with a musician to get a particular sound to drop into a track. I love cutting vocals and engineering vocals, because I work well with singers. I know how critical it is to hear your voice coming back at you, how important that can be to how you perform, how you use your instrument as a singer. It’s easier for me to integrate the technical into the musical in those situations, where it’s just one singer or one musician overdubbing. But I don’t like to be thinking of technical stuff at all, really. Unless it’s like, "We’re not getting the right sound, so let’s try another microphone."

You definitely seem to have a facility with singers. Something that struck me about Shawn Mullins’ new record, as well as Toby Keith’s White Trash with Money, is how you put their vocals in all these different settings, yet you allow them to move very fluidly from one style to the next.

I think I’m hyper-sensitive to that, being a singer who has had great experiences in the studio and some really miserable experiences, as well. When you’re giving a vocal performance that’s going to be captured forever and that’s going to define your identity as an artist, it can be really high pressure. So it’s important for me to create an environment where the singer feels comfortable and excited and energized and free to experiment and be spontaneous, yet safe to find their outer limits. That’s a big part of my process — making sure the vocalist feels good and empowered.

How do you do that?

I can’t tell you. It’s a trade secret.

I honestly don’t know. You just feel your way. It’s a very personal process with each singer. I don’t do a lot of passes. I never make somebody sing something more than a handful of times. Sing it just enough to warm up, make sure their instrument is ready to use, then sing a few passes. Then comp it up and let them listen to it, let them take it away and live with it for a day or two, so they can listen and make decisions about what they want to accomplish, so that next time they come in, they can still execute those choices with a sense of spontaneity.

Also, I have a kickass vocal chain. I have a serious M49 microphone that Bill Bradley did some beautiful work on, and I’ve got a lovely vintage tube tech compressor. I’ve got a hard pre-amp that is so transparent and so robust. I’ve had some great results with that vocal chain. That’s a big part of it — creating a sound that sounds like the singer. There isn’t anything in the chain that is coloring or noticeably filtering or altering the quality of the singer’s instrument, so that when they hear themselves back in the headphones, they feel like themselves. They feel natural and honest. That’s a technical part, but it’s a tender thing.

You just produced and released a double EP under your own name. How is producing yourself different from producing another artist?

It doesn’t feel different, except that I know my personal goals. As a producer working with other artists, I’m always making sure they’re happy and feel like this is the record they want to make, this is the sound they want to put out there. When I’m doing it for myself, I know whether I’ve nailed it or not. But it’s a pretty similar process, a similar mission, to ring some internal bell. You work on it and mold it and play with it until you’re ringing that bell.

Recording artists are always asked about their influences, but I’m more curious about producers’ influences. Who has been a guide or an inspiration for you in this particular field?

I’ve worked with some great producers, starting with Rodney Crowell. I owe him a great debt of gratitude for opening that door professionally to me as a young artist and as a young woman at a time when there weren’t many women producing. There was Gail Davies and Wendy Waldman, but female artists weren’t given that credit or that opportunity very often. Rodney watched me work with his band out on the road and, when I got a record deal, he said, "Listen, you know what you’re doing, so why don’t you and I producer this record together?" That was a very generous gift to me, professionally. I got to watch him work, and he’s a master at working with musicians and walking the line between spontaneity and craft.

And then there’s Garth Fundis, Dan Haas, and Josh Leo. I’ve really learned a lot from working with every one of those guys, but I also learn a lot from just the musicians I work with. In Nashville, we have an embarrassment of riches. You can pick up the phone and have these world-class musicians out to your studio in 24 hours. I’ve learned so much just picking the brains of Tom Bukovac, Michael Rhodes, and Jim Horn.

Does that factor into who you work with? Are you calling up people you want to learn from?

I think it has more to do with casting. You cast certain actors in certain roles for a movie and you cast certain musicians in a song. Or you cast them to complement an artist or create a rhythm section. But I’ve definitely reached out to musicians that I wanted to work with, just to tap into their genius. It’s all about collaboration. Very few records are made alone. Rarely is it a solo effort. It’s all about a team, and every team is going to look different: The collection of skill sets, the collection of experiences, the collection of wisdom … it’s all going to be different. What a producer does is make the most of whatever team they have the opportunity to work with.

In every context, the producer will have a different skill set or a different level of experience, even a different personality. Some producers bring a lot of technical skills and some bring more musical skills, but in the end, what it’s all about is having the intelligence and the humility to maximize the varied resources you’re applying to the project. And that’s what human beings do better than any other creature on the planet. We’re incredibly good at collaborating with each other and making the most of our individual potential. What can be accomplished by a group of human beings with a shared intention is formidable. That’s a lot of power to unleash. It’s beautiful.

 

For another female perspective on producing, read Stephen's conversation with Alison Brown.


Photo courtesy of Lari White

With Headphones on the Floor: A Conversation with Chely Wright

Though singer/songwriter Chely Wright made her name on the country charts back in the ’90s, her new album’s quiet confidence showcases what is probably the truest side of her: a conscious and caring, creative and compassionate woman rooted in faith and family above all else. Produced by Joe Henry, I Am the Rain features 12 tunes written by Wright, along with one Bob Dylan cover that feels right at home in the set. It also continues the artistic recalibration Wright began with her 2010 Rodney Crowell-produced release, Lifted Off the Ground.

Congratulations on a hell of a decade you’re having. Can I just say that?

[Laughs] Yeah. It’s been pretty crazy. I’ve been really contemplative in the past few weeks as I’ve been doing some press about, “Gosh, what has happened in the past decade?” It’s been pretty action-packed.

Check my timeline. I was just putting it together. In 2010, you came out publicly, Like Me was published, Lifted Off the Ground was released, and the LikeMe Foundation was established.

Yeah.

In 2011, you got married … happy anniversary, by the way.

Thank you! Yep.

And the Wish Me Away documentary … which, kudos. That was so brave.

Thank you. I’m really happy with it.

Then 2013, the boys.

Yeah. Wait. Hold on. Got knocked up in 2012.

Okay. We’ll put that in. [Laughs]

Well, I mean, being a lesbian, it’s a little bit more than a back-seat of a Pontiac and tequila. It takes some getting done. [Laughs] So that’s important for the timeline.

Indeed. Then, 2014 was your huge Kickstarter campaign. So did you make the record last year or this year?

We made it in 2015 — 2014 was Kickstarter and my mother died in May. That really was a seminal moment in the process of the itch. You’re a creative person, you know. If you’re thinking about a piece you want to write, you write a lot of it in your head, I’m sure: “What am I going to say? What does it mean? What’s the point? What’s the art?” Then you get an itch when you know to sit down and start typing. My mom’s death in May of 2014 was the itch that caused me to go to my pile of songs and start taking inventory of what I had.

Got it. That Kickstarter campaign must’ve made you feel REALLY great. Did you write the songs and plot the record after that? It probably directed a lot of how you went about things, yeah?

I’ll answer both questions: Did it make me feel great, the Kickstarter? It made me feel things I didn’t know I needed to feel. When my managers and I discussed crowd-funding, at first, I was like, “That sounds like something other people do. I don’t really think I want to do that.” But Russell [Carter] was like, “You have to pay attention to the way history is changing. It’s not begging for money. It’s, essentially, a pre-sale.” He said, “More importantly, it re-engages you with your fans.”

I didn’t really hear that, when he said it. So, in my mind, when we kicked the whole thing off, my thinking was that a successful campaign would be to get funded. I quickly understood that the success of it, for me, was to reconnect with fans that had been following me for 20 years and new fans that I could connect with. More sentimentally, I was reminded that I didn’t lose all of my fans. I didn’t even lose half. Maybe I lost 30 percent of my fans because there were people saying, “You don’t know my name, but I love your records.” Or, “I saw you in Bagdad.” Or, “I saw you at the Nebraska State Fair in 1996.” It was emotional for me, in that regard.

But you probably picked up just as many from the documentary and all the other stuff, I would assume.

Here’s the thing about those new fans coming aboard: More people, in other demographics, became aware of me because I’m the new lesbian on the street, right? And they would go to my Facebook page and hit “Like,” I think, out of support for my coming out. But there’s a big chasm between somebody who doesn’t typically like what we think of as country music and their clicking “Like” on Facebook. They’re like, “I’m going to click ‘Like’ because I like what she did, but I’m not going to buy a country record.” So, a lot of those new people aware of who I am because of coming out — it doesn’t necessarily translate into record-buying, concert-going fans. In some cases it did, though. And that’s great. I love it.

And, to answer your second question: Did I write the songs before or after the Kickstarter? I think 70 percent of the songs that ended up on the record, I wrote before. And 30 percent after.

This record, it’s polished and pretty, but it’s not slick, I guess.

Ding, ding, ding! [Laughs]

[Laughs] Yeah, yeah. It continues to stake your ground in the more roughly hewn Americana world, which may be surprising to people who only know you from the way-back radio hits. What would be your message to those folks, in terms of getting them to keep listening, or re-listen, or start listening?

I love that you say that it continues to stake a claim there in the Americana world. It’s not slick. When you make a record with Joe Henry, if you want to make a slick record, you might as well put your guitar back in the case and leave.

And go on home.

[Laughs] And go on. Because Joe Henry … I mean, I learned a lot on my last record with Rodney Crowell, and I learned a lot with Joe. It was terrifying, frankly, the notion of working with Joe because I know what he does. And what he does is, he brings in everybody and demands that they bring their A-game for every second that they’re in there. There’s no going back and fixing. There’s not a “We’ll do this, then put a real guitar overdub on later and you can tidy up your vocals.” You have to get it when the band gets it. That’s scary for a person who’s made 20+ years of records that you can make them slick.

Punch-ins and vocal comps galore, right?

Yeah. Yeah. I had to unlearn a lot. I wanted to unlearn a lot of that stuff. You know when you go play golf and everyone’s watching you hit the ball? You don’t want to use your new grip, you just want to go back to that old one you know you can hit it with. But, if you want to change your game, you really have to go out there and swing with your new grip.

[Laughs] Ummm … a golf reference?!

[Laughs] I know, right? That’s how I equate it. There’s that temptation to use your old grip. But I went in fully trusting Joe and, frankly, fully trusting myself that this was worth being courageous. For that, I feel like we have a record that sounds like somebody hit record at a really good live show.

Working with Joe and some of my favorite players ever … plus your voice … other than the nerves, that’s a recipe for success, right there — that combination.

Well, one would hope. Our intention, with this record, was that it’s a narrative. It’s not meant to be listened to on your computer speakers while you’re emailing. You put your phone down. You put your favorite headphones on. You lie flat on the floor. You hit play. And you take in … I don’t even know how many minutes the record is. Do you know?

Let’s see … 13 x four-and-a-half …

I’ve got some long songs on there, friend.

Yeah, you have that fiver at the end, but you have some fours and three-and-a-halfs …

Alright. Yeah. Well, what we intended and hoped for people to do is put their favorite headphones on and hit play and follow along and absorb it. I’m guilty, even these days … I bought somebody’s record the other day and had the nerve to listen to it on my iPhone speaker. Halfway through the second song, I was like, “Shame on me! What am I thinking?!” [Laughs] Isn’t that awful?

Headphones on the floor … with maybe a little wine or … something … that’s my favorite way to listen to a record. It just is.

[Laughs] That’s how you do it! That’s what I want. If you glean anything from our discussion today, please pass along that that’s what I really want is for people to take a moment and absorb it in the spirit it was intended. Because Joe and I are really proud of it and we hope people find something in it that moves them.

How did those groovy little cameos come about with Emmy, Rodney, and the Milk Carton boys?

Well, first of all, Rodney … I call him Shep because he’s my shepherd and he has been for a long time. He and I co-wrote one song on the record called “At the Heart of Me.” It’s a song I had written and I brought Rodney in on. It was completely finished and we decided to let Joe join us. We never shared with him the actual music of it. We gave him the lyric, and he helped re-shape the lyric and the new melody. So Rodney was on the record, but it didn’t seem like that was a song to put him on.

But Joe and I had written a song called “Holy War” and Joe called me about five days after I got home from the sessions and said, “Hey, I called Rodney. I’m going to have him come in and see what he can render on ‘Holy War.’” I said, “Of course! Why not?! That makes sense.” What I love about Rodney on the record, it really does sound like … Rodney and I have done a lot of shows together and we end up around one microphone in the middle just singing … and it really sounds to me like a live take of a show.

What’s funny is that I get press releases all the time claiming “This record features Emmylou Harris,” “This one has Rodney Crowell,” and “This one has Milk Carton Kids.” You got the trifecta!

[Laughs] I did! I’m telling you: I’ve always been the luckiest person I know. I don’t know why, but I’m like Forrest Gump. I walk into these really great situations.

So Joe called me, again, about a week or so after I got back, and said, “’Pain’ is really raising its hand. It’s really standing up for itself, wanting to be seen. I think I’d really like to get somebody special.” We did some talking and who doesn’t agree that Emmylou Harris is just about as special as it gets. What made me so happy about her vocal is that she said, “I just want to match where you are. I just want to match the emotion of what you’re singing.” Hearing Emmy’s heartbreaking voice, her haunting voice, on a record of mine … not to mention a song I authored … I made up these lyrics and SHE’S SINGING THEM! What?! [Laughs]

[Laughs] Yep!

And it gets better when you know that, shortly after I moved to Nashville in 1989, I chased her around a Kroger at midnight one night. [Laughs] I came from a place where we didn’t have 24-hour grocery stores. When I got to Nashville, I worked at Opryland, and I got off my shift and needed groceries, so I went to Kroger. I’m buying my stuff and I see this beautiful woman that looks a lot like Emmylou Harris, so I start trailing her a little bit — like eight cart lengths behind her. Chased her down a couple of aisles and finally she turned around and said, “Yes. It’s me.”

[Laughs] Perfect.

[Laughs] I just nodded and turned around and ran the other way. So … 27 years later that she’s singing on a song I wrote … Isn’t that the American dream? Isn’t that what everyone wants?

I read in a Rolling Stone interview where you said, “Who doesn’t want to grow up to be Emmy or Loretta?”

Well, that’s true.

Did she pass along any advice to get you there?

Not directly. But one only has to watch what she’s done. That’s the perfect advice. When Rodney and I made Lifted Off the Ground, that was part of the discussion: I want to be a 55-year-old, 60-year-old woman sitting on a stool with 200 people showing up wherever I decide to play singing songs that I can believably sing. And say something. And feel good about saying something. She’s the gold standard — she and Loretta and Dolly. That’s as good as you get.

And then those crazy Milk Carton Kids … Joe Henry has a relationship with them. It was his idea to make the Bob Dylan song really jump off the page and I think they did magical work on it.

Speaking of … watch what I do here: Same Rolling Stone piece, you talked about how the pronouns in your songs wouldn’t suddenly go gay. But on the Dylan song — “Tomorrow Is a Long Time” — you sang it like he wrote it, which I always appreciate. I hate it when singers flip it so they don’t come off as … whatever. The beauty of storytelling is setting yourself aside and allowing space for listeners to insert themselves into the story. Is that your thinking, too?

First of all, I just love the craft in that sentence. That was really beautiful, a really great couple of sentences that you just spoke there. [Laughs] That is, I think, the beauty of storytelling. If you listen to my last record, there’s nothing on there, except for the song “Like Me,” where it’s clear I’m talking about a woman with whom I’m having a relationship. It’s not clear, in the other songs, if I’m singing as a straight woman or a gay woman. For this record, I’m singing a song called “Mexico” and I’m not singing as me. I’m the waitress in the song.

But, as far as the Bob Dylan song, I didn’t want to change it … for a couple of reasons. Bob Dylan is perfect and how dare I alter anything. But I really loved … it’s so intimate and it’s so truthful for me to say, “If only she was lying next to me, I could lie in my bed once again.” To me, it would’ve felt too cheeky to change it.

It’s interesting, though, isn’t it? Like, Patty Griffin, her pronouns are all over the place and nobody ever brings anything up. But as soon as you or Brandy Clark sing something either way …

The thing about Patty Griffin — which, by the way, when I say her name, I sign the cross on my chest — she was never part of the commercial machine that would dare question something so trivial and small. … Patty is the ultimate … she is the character singer. We don’t know anything about Patty Griffin, the person, really.

No. And she won’t give it up in an interview, either. I can tell you that.

She won’t. That, to me, is just a different way of approaching her art. And, boy, it’s paying dividends for her listeners. We love it, right?

We really do. Talk to me about the difference in feeling you get from impacting someone’s life with your activism or your charitable endeavors versus your music.

That’s another … you’re on fire today!

Thank you!

Without a doubt, receiving a letter or speaking to somebody … I got a beautiful letter today from somebody in Washington state, a young person, that said my book saved their life and my film helped start a repair with their parents. There’s no comparison. That’s it. That’s the most gratifying, the most heart-warming, the most invigorating, humbling thing I can experience.

And you wouldn’t have that platform without the music, so they are really kind of inseparable, in a lot of ways.

That’s a great point. That’s a really great point. There was criticism, when I first came out. I remember seeing a few things. People’s rants about “She did this for attention” … which is ridiculous. I don’t know of anyone … that’s obviously spoken from a straight person. Or people who say, “I didn’t get an award for coming out as straight!”

Yeah, because did their family disown them for that? Did they contemplate suicide for that? Really, guys?!

Right. Yes. When people have been critical, and I don’t hear it so much anymore, but when people have been critical about my coming out publicly the way I did, my feeling is, “I’ll tell you what: You go move to a city, from a podunk Kansas town, with thousands of other people who want the job that you want. You get the publishing deal. You get the record deal. You go on all the radio tours. You do all it takes and work with the record label and bust your tail end and you get a couple of hit records and then you decide what you’re going to do with that.”

I made my decision and it was the best thing I ever did — not just to come out, but to come out the way that I did. I look at my life now … my wife and I are celebrating five years and I just know I wouldn’t be alive, had I stayed in the closet. So, life is good.

 

For more on country singers going Americana, read Kelly’s interview with Wynonna Judd.

AMERICANA MUSIC AWARD NOMINATIONS 2013

BY Z.N. LUPETIN

Though the ceremony was brief, there was a festive and electric atmosphere in the Clive Davis Theater in LA Live yesterday. AXS TV was filming the proceedings and as usual Jim Lauderdale was the grinning ringleader, joining his long time partner in crime Buddy Miller and their house band in a galloping version of the late George Jones’ “The Race Is On” to open the show. Honoring Mr. Jones was a fitting way to start, as it seems much of the AMA’s main mission is to honor and bring respect to roots, acoustic and folk artists and traditions, not merely hype them.

T-Bone Burnett was in the house in a stylishly funereal black suit and called Americana music our nation’s “greatest cultural export”, with men like Louis Armstrong being our greatest ambassadors imaginable. He was particularly impressed with the newest crop of young musicians making a name for themselves while subtly sampling specific traditions of the last century. He then introduced the skinny-tied, close-harmony experts The Milk Carton Kids who, if you haven’t seen them, really do live up the hype they’ve been accruing on a near constant touring schedule of theaters and festivals. While some may criticize the whispery, choir-boy similarities to early Simon and Garfunkel (think “Wednesday Morning: 3AM”), really they seem to be exemplifying precisely the something-old-and-something-new dynamic that T-Bone was referencing. One can’t help but lean forward in your seat when they play. Plus they are quite funny chaps – noting that since T-Bone Burnett had introduced them on live TV, they must suddenly be famous.

Of course, being famous and overexposed in a main stream sense is not something The AMA community seems all that interested in. Authenticity, skill and artistry rule the roost. As the Milk Carton Kids wrapped up with a deliciously deconstructed version of “Swing Low”, they noted the most important thing about Americana fans is that they cut the bullshit and actually listen. Jed Hilly, executive director of the AMAs followed the lads at the podium, noting that the awards were about showcasing the community as a whole.

Lauderdale and Miller thundered through “Lost The Job Of Loving You” and the Flatt & Scruggs favorite “The Train To Carry My Gal From Town” before introducing the day’s surprise guest – Lisa Marie Presley. She seemed tiny next to the lanky Lauderdale and T-bone as the men backed her on a sad, low-drawled ballad, but her voice was in prime form: soulful, weary, deep. Americana? It’s the shit the masses ignored, Presley remarked, with just a hint of edge in her voice…as if to say: what is their problem anyway?

Next up, Elizabeth Cook brought a bit of her twang and sunshiny humor into the room – plugging her new gospel album while also wondering if someone like her should be doing religious music at all – “I might burst into flames at any moment” she cracked, sending out one of her tunes to Buddha, Allah…whoever! Actually she brings up a good point. If Americana involves the whole spectrum of American song-craft, one must add gospel as perhaps the deepest root of the tree – and the genre maybe most available for evolution and transformation.

After 45 minutes of stories and songs, Presley and Cook got together behind the podium to read the nominations. Among the recurring stand-outs this year were old favorites Emmylou Harris, Richard Thompson and Buddy and Jim but none seemed to get more love than Charleston, SC-based duo Shovels and Rope, who AMA members voted for early and often: tapping them in the Emerging Artist category as well as Song Of The Year, Duo or Group of The Year and Album of The Year for their release “O’ Be Joyful” (Dualtone). It was almost surprising but welcome to see a rare mainstream hit single, “Ho Hey” by the Lumineers also be included. See? There is money in it!

Emerging artists like fellow Oklahomans John Fullbright and JD McPherson, the aforementioned Milk Carton Kids and Shovels and Rope show that the future of the Americana and roots community is in good hands.

For a full list of nominees and more information about the Americana Music Association, visit http://americanamusic.org