Baylen’s Brit Pick: 10 Bands Who Deserve Love in 2018

The UK scene is as varied as it is exciting, even with doing an article each month, I haven’t really scratched the surface. There are so many fantastic UK acts that deserve some love, so with it being the end of the year, and the season of giving, let’s have a quick-fire round of artists that are worth some time in your busy ears. All are worth an entire Brit Pick, but time is short, and you have present to wrap so let’s get to it.

Yola

Yola is someone who is no stranger to BGS but she’s dropped her last name (Carter) and has a new single out, “Ride Out in the Country,” with a long-awaited new album on the way in 2019. She’s one to watch for sure. Country Soul at its finest, like taking off a pair of tight shoes, Yola soothes the soul.


O&O

London duo O&O formed in Liverpool via Israel and Colorado, with harmonies for days.


Treetop Flyers

Treetop Flyers have been rocking the UK scene for a while now but their 2018 self-titled album and appearance at Americanafest in Nashville kicked it all up a notch.


Emily Barker

Emily Barker has a lovely bluesy Memphis sound, she’s from Australia, but we’ve adopted her and she’s adopted us and everyone is happy. She’s a leading light on the UK scene and was named UK Artist of the Year at the UK Americana Awards in February.


The Marriage

A duo from Edinburgh and London, The Marriage are masters of sublime truth telling.


Hannah White

Hannah White has worked hard providing a space for homegrown acts to perform at her Sound Lounge initiative in London and has fought local government and developers every step of the way to do so. She’s a mighty fine artist as well, and one who gives back.


The Luck

The Luck are a brother/sister duo with a touch of the Eagles and Fleetwood Mac about them–what’s not to love?


Noble Jacks

Noble Jacks will get your feet stomping and raise any roof that’s not nailed down properly.


 The Hungry Mothers

Aside from having an amazing name, the Hungry Mothers combine dreamy folk with indie soundscapes.


Lucas & King

Finally, Lucas & King sound like they stepped out of the ‘60s in the best way. I love them.


So there you go, an embarrassment of riches from these isles to get you through the holiday season. If you want even more, dig into my personally-curated playlist and enjoy:

As a radio and TV host, Baylen Leonard has presented country and Americana shows, specials, and commentary for BBC Radio 2, Chris Country Radio, BBC Radio London, BBC Radio 2 Country, BBC Radio 4, BBC Scotland, Monocle 24, and British Airways, as well as promoting artists through his work with the Americana Music Association UK, the Nashville Meets London Festival, and the Long Road (the UK’s newest outdoor country, Americana, and roots festival). Follow him on Twitter: @HeyBaylen


Photo of Yola: Alysse Gafkjen

The Black Lillies Branch Out on ‘Stranger to Me’

The Black Lillies have taken a turn with Stranger to Me, a compelling project that unveils a tight new lineup, a wealth of original material, and a surprising element of three-part harmony.

After a reshuffle of band members, the Knoxville, Tennessee-based band is now composed of founder Cruz Contreras, bassist Sam Quinn (the everybodyfields), guitarist Dustin Schaefer, and drummer Bowman Townsend. Although Contreras has long been the primary songwriter and vocalist of the Black Lillies, even that’s changed on this album. Quinn takes lead vocals on three tracks, while the album offers a number of songwriting collaborations from within the band. A subdued cover of Scott Miller’s “Someday, Sometime” closes the set – the first outside song to land on a Black Lillies album.

Following an afternoon AmericanaFest show in Nashville, Contreras pulled up a seat to chat with the Bluegrass Situation.

I think your fans will be especially interested in this record because of the lineup changes – now with four guys in the band.

Yeah, if there was ever a chance for us to present a new sound, a new look, this is it. Anybody who follows the band knows that this is a different lineup than in the past. And we want to take advantage of that and say we can do anything right now. Probably more than any other record, it felt like that. This is the perfect time to do whatever we’re inclined to do and not think about what we should do or what people expect. You know, we don’t have any traditional record deals; we’re years in. Let’s trust our instincts and go with whatever we’re doing here at the moment.

Were you surprised by the songs you wrote, where you were stretched to do something you hadn’t done before?

Yeah. I’m not speaking for every artist, but as a writer you can get in your comfort zone – “Oh, I’m writing, here’s the 50th song I’ve written.” And when you look at it, “Oh, it’s sounds like the last 49.” And what does it take to bust out of that? What for you might seem a scary step — it’s never as big a step as you think it is. …

There’s one song, “Midnight Stranger,” that we all wrote together. And we really set out to write a really trashy song. We had this disco groove. And we were kind of laughing at the lyrics when we wrote it. Bowman wrote a verse and Sam wrote some verses and when we got done I’m like, “Yeah, it’s trashy but it’s good.” And once you sing it and play it, you get over whatever hang-ups you had and it’s fun. Music is one of the last places now where you can really express yourself and not get stomped out. Now, for us, it sounds normal. It’s not middle of the road yet, but it could end up being.

And no guest musicians this time, right?

Yeah. The unseen fifth musician is our producer, Jamie Candiloro. He did play organ and some keys on the album. He got in there, and he was like, “Hey man.” He pointed at me and he was like, “Go play the B-3 organ over there. And I was like, “Dude, I can, but I don’t need to do that. You play it, just get on in there.” I always like having that wild-card fifth element in there. I know it’s understated but it perks up, like, “Oh, there’s something else in the room here.”

This experience was the band from beginning to end. From the writing through production and recording. Through the process we consciously said we want to do this on our own and not complicate it. Stay focused on the songs, on the lyrics, coming up with arrangements. I’m kind of nerding out on the process here, but something I had never really done – and this was Jamie’s approach – was we tracked the songs everybody live in one room together, all four of us. We picked the track and then we would go sing it all together.

And I’ve never done that with three voices. When you sing by yourself, you sing one way, and then the next person has to adapt to that. And the next person has to adapt to that, too, so you get this layering, stacking on. But when you sing together with other people, your voice reacts differently, and if you’re singing lead vocals, you’re not hogging it up. You get this interaction, this synergy with the vocalists.

How did that three-part harmony affect the mood and the feel of the record?

I think it’s maybe the definitive texture of the record. It’s what makes this project unique, and stand out. It’s what makes it valuable. It’s the power of the vocals. And we all know that and recognize that and that’s something that we want to continue to develop.

But I don’t want to overlook your drummer, Bowman, because he’s a beast on this record.

Yeah, he is. You know, a lot of it is a rock record. Playing rock drums like that, you’re not hiding behind anything. You’re creating energy and movement and dynamics and this real ride. He’s the youngest guy in the band but he’s also been with the group for a good five-plus years now. He’s really become the rock, and family. I’ve always thought of myself as having that responsibility, as being the bandleader, but I can count on him to really keep things solid.

He makes the set list now. He counts songs off. He’s really to a large degree designing the shows. That was a process. It was like, “Well, shoot, if you want to make a set list, try it.” And if it hadn’t gone well I’d probably be like, “Oh…” But it went well and it continually gets better. He’s developing that skill, that ability. He’s kind of like the manager that picks the starting lineup. There’s a whole skill to that. And it allows me to do all the other things I get distracted with.

I noticed you have songs with titles like “Earthquake” and “The River Rolls.” As you’re traveling and you’re looking at the scenery, does what you’re seeing inspire you?

Very much. I’m a … how do I say this? I grew up in a cabin in the woods in southwest Michigan and didn’t watch much TV and didn’t get to eat too much sugar – it was that kind of upbringing. I’m a nerd, you know, and I love nature and I love traveling. And I love the regionalism of music so I don’t separate music from any element of life whatsoever. To me, nature and science and people – it’s all extensions of music.

So inspiration can hit you at any time?

Yeah. I don’t write on schedule or in a room. That’s probably one reason I love touring like I do — one reason I love touring out West. Those vast landscapes – a lot of our music resonates in the mountain regions. I don’t think it’s any accident.

Do you get your best ideas when you’re out in the mountain ranges?

Probably. Let’s see, “Earthquake” was written in Crested Butte, Colorado. We were at a friend’s house on the edge of the wilderness there, at high elevation. “The River Rolls,” I wrote in Wrightsville, Pennsylvania, on the Susquehanna River, a mile-wide river there, a beautiful setting. I think “Out of the Blue,” which is also on the record, I wrote there. We’ve laughed about this – I’ve written more songs elsewhere than my home because we travel. We let that inspire us.

When you get back to Knoxville you have other things you have to do.

Yes. Be a dad, take care of things, check in with our manager, and get your health back together.

What’s always impressed me with your band is how dedicated your audience is to you.

Yeah, we’re very fortunate. It’s like, Why does that happen? How does it happen? I think it’s a combination of things. It is a reflection of the dedication we have to the music and the art. But it’s also an attitude, an energy, affirmation. I don’t know if you choose your audience. Maybe you can, maybe there’s a way to do that. The way I’m built, not so much. I’m just doing my thing, whoever’s into it – I hope somebody’s into it. But yeah, I don’t know if you choose that. Your audience tends to be somewhat of a reflection.

And if you’re in a good place, then they’re going to be in a good place. If you’re not, it can be tough. And so, this many years in, you have different records and different energies to the records. But I think it’s our approach and attitude – and also being personable with the fans. And creating this fan base that is now networking amongst itself. It’s kind of developing its own community, which is a pretty good feeling. It makes me feel like we can do this for a long time.


Photo credit: Nicole Wickens

WATCH: Kate Campbell, “Long Slow Train”

Artist: Kate Campbell
Hometown: Sledge, Mississippi
Song: “Long Slow Train”
Album: Damn Sure Blue
Release Date: September 21, 2018
Label: Large River Music

In Their Words: “‘Long Slow Train’ comes from a phrase you hear from people who have been involved in the struggle for equal rights all these years. The one bit of hope is — ‘It’s a long, slow train, but it’s still moving.’ You have to be involved. You still have to be present to win. It’s not going to be magic and happen instantly. You have to hang in there. No change is gonna just be magic. It’d be nice if it was, but it’s not always that way. In writing about race and what I see happening in our country right now, hopefully, I’ve learned some things about myself, and speaking up, and and doing the best I can to have a conversation.” — Kate Campbell


Photo credit: Michael Wilson

After Struggling to Sing, Kathy Mattea Soars on ‘Pretty Bird’

Kathy Mattea’s latest album, Pretty Bird, is in many ways a continuation of the West Virginia native’s journey back to the simple Appalachian sounds of her homeland. Hints of the region’s acoustic roots have popped up throughout her Grammy-winning country career, best known to most folks for her signature song, 1988’s “Eighteen Wheels and a Dozen Roses.”

With 2008’s Coal, Mattea leaned into the music of the West Virginia mountains like never before, singing about the complicated area export that is still a political hot potato in 2018. The acoustic evolution continued with 2012’s Calling Me Home, but Mattea faced an evolution of a different kind leading up to Pretty Bird.

A few years ago, Mattea suddenly discovered her voice was changing, and she couldn’t hit the notes she once found with ease. In this Q&A, Mattea explains how she worked through her vocal challenges with the eclectic group of songs she recorded for the new project.

In the past decade, you’ve stripped away a lot of the instrumentation from your music to explore more acoustic sounds. Over the past few years, you’ve also had to relearn how to use your singing voice. Did that experience of first stripping away layers from your music help prepare you to later rebuild your voice?

It felt like that, only much more extreme. I didn’t have a choice except to strip away. When I tried to do it the way I always knew how to do it, it wouldn’t work. So, I didn’t know when I began this process if what I was experiencing was the beginning of the end of my singing voice, or if it was just a shift, just a change. For instance, the transition in my chest voice to head voice, not to get too technical, had gone down a half-step after I went through menopause. So, my body has been singing the same songs in the same keys for many years and would just go for the way it knew to hit a certain note, and it wouldn’t happen. I went, “What is going on?”

Was there a physical problem with your voice or was it just part of the process of getting older?

Really, it was the latter. There was nothing wrong with my voice except that it felt wrong because it was unfamiliar. So, it wasn’t like an injury or anything like that. I got to hear Kenny Rogers during this time. He was on his final tour and he was like, “Look, I have no voice left, but I love these songs, and you guys love these songs. So, I’m coming out to sing them for you one more time.” He’s very open about it and I thought, “Yeah, I can’t do that. I’m not wired that way.” If I can’t sing in a way that I feel like I’m really expressing myself, I will have to stop. I knew this about myself. So, I thought, “OK, I’ve got to answer the question.”

Who was there with you as you went through the process of relearning your voice?

Once a week, Bill Cooley, who has played guitar for me for 28 years, would come to my house, and we’d just jam in the afternoon. We’ll just brainstorm, because sometimes, in that open-ended time, that’s when the creative process happens and surprises happen. I said, “Bill, I’ve got to get to know my voice. I’ve got to experiment around and bump up against the edges.” So, I started throwing out songs that were really different than anything I’d ever done. They were God-awful in the beginning, but it started to open up.

You’ve recorded with Tim O’Brien many times, and he’s also from West Virginia. What were you looking for from him as a producer on Pretty Bird?

I realized during this process that I needed to make another record. The songs I’d put together were all so crazy different from each other! I couldn’t figure out how I was going to do “Pretty Bird” and “October Song” and “Mercy Now” and “Chocolate on My Tongue” all on the same record and make it hang together. I’m just chewing on this and chewing on this. Then one night, I woke up at 3 o’clock in the morning and said out loud in bed, “Tim O’Brien has to produce this record! He’ll know exactly what to do!” I’ve heard Tim do jazz-flavored stuff, blues-flavored stuff, bluegrass stuff, mountain stuff — all that. He does it all from a deep understanding.

I definitely see you being drawn to documenting the way of life in West Virginia as well as the music. What’s prompting you there?

When I was growing up, I was completely eaten up by music. But there wasn’t a lot of formal training around me. So, I would learn whatever I could from anyone who would teach me. My friend’s dad had a bluegrass band and he’d jam with me. I did community theater and I did folk music in my church. We had a little folk mass thing. Choral music in school, but there was nobody around to teach me the roots music of my place. So, that woke up in me in a big way later in my life. That last album, Calling Me Home, was about that sense of place that exists in Appalachia that has been lost in so much of the rest of the culture.

Most of my family lives back in the same basic area that we all grew up in and that our parents grew up in. Cousins, second cousins, third cousins now living just a few miles from where our moms were born. So, there is a sense that the contour of the land, the mountains, the river — all of that is like a member of your family. Bill, my guitar player, he’s from Southern California, and he was like, “Kathy, why don’t people move out and move away for jobs and stuff?” I’m like, “Bill, it’s not that simple.” You don’t leave your family. You don’t leave the nest, basically. And there’s a whole exodus of people to Detroit to work in factories and stuff when all the mines shut down. There’s a whole culture of displaced people that pine for what that is and come back home eventually.

I think of it as being an expatriate, you know? Even though I moved to Tennessee when I was 19, I think of myself as a West Virginian who lives in Tennessee.

Getting into the songs you chose, let’s start out with Mary Gauthier’s “Mercy Now.” Why does it appeal to you right now?

As we had this election, and it was very contentious, and there was all this tension and polarization and all the cultural stuff was going on, I just found myself listening to that song. I pulled it out and I would listen to it every day. So, one day I said, “Bill, I’ve been listening to this song, and it really gives me a lot of solace. It’s really different than anything I’ve ever done but I want to try.” I wanted to sing that song because in a time when people are polarizing, it’s really great to say, “I have pain. I have angst. I am scared. I am upset, and I need help from some place bigger than me.”

I love it because it’s not a “You, you, you” song. It’s an “I’m looking at this, and I don’t know what to do, and I need some help from something bigger than me.” Mercy doesn’t come from me. It’s a kind of grace that comes in from somewhere else. And I thought, “Man, how lucky am I? I get to sing that song every night.” The interesting thing is my audience doesn’t know that song. So, I get to bring that song to a whole new group of people. That’s been a really satisfying experience.

I hear a similar theme in “I Can’t Stand Up Alone.” It has a real gospel flavor with The Settles Singers backing you up. It seems to me that it would speak to the community that you’ve been leaning on during your issues with your voice.

To me, “I Can’t Stand Up Alone” is like the straight-at-it gospel version of “Mercy Now.” “Can’t Stand Up Alone” is like, “Honey, you need the Lord!” [Laughs] I love the contrast of two different approaches to basically the same thing. I’m not very overt about it, but a lot of the process of this was really praying. I felt like I was praying a prayer and feeling my way in the dark over and over again.

You start the album with “Chocolate on My Tongue,” which is an ode to the small joys in life, and then you go right into “Ode to Billie Joe.” It’s such a left turn. Tell me about that juxtaposition.

Hey, I’m not pretending that all that stuff makes sense! [Laughs] I love “Chocolate on My Tongue.” It’s so playful and, for me, to have gone through such a struggle with my voice and to come out with something that light and playful — and to allow myself the freedom to do that, was such a gift.

Then, “Ode to Billie Joe,” to me, is like a familiar, old friend. Those of us of a certain age know that and have memories of that song growing up. I found that when I went to sing it, that there’s this low end — this low register in my voice that was always there, but never this rich. When I found that, it was the moment I turned the corner from thinking of my voice as something diminished to seeing that it was opening into something new that was beautiful. I was astonished by how that song brought that about in my voice.

The last song on the record is “Pretty Bird” by Hazel Dickens. You’re singing it a capella. That had to be a vulnerable experience given all that you’ve gone through.

I have loved “Pretty Bird” for a long time and I wanted to do it on my last album. I lived with it. I wrestled with it. I danced with it. It’d pin me down, and then I’d pin it down. I could not find my way into the song. I could not sing it. I could not make it come out. I think the reason is that if you tighten up at all, it will just die in your mouth. It won’t work. I couldn’t pull back enough.

One night, [my husband] Jon is on the road and I’m home alone. I’m taking a shower before I go to bed that night and I just start singing that song. I’m like, “Oh my God! I don’t know! I think I’m singing it! I think this is happening!” But I’m soaped up now and I’m soaking wet. So, I keep singing, and I rinse off and dry off. The whole house is buttoned up for the night and my cell phone is plugged in downstairs. So, I grabbed the landline and I called my voicemail and I sang it into the voicemail so I have a record of what I did — so I’d know which key I was in and where it lay and explore from there. The next thing, I was like, “OK, I’ve got it.”

I haven’t done it live very much. So, it is still super vulnerable. I’ve been making myself pull it out and do it in the show because it’s the title song for my record. It feels like taking all my clothes off. But it’s like, “Well, you’ve been through a process, and what you’ve learned, Kathy, is that it’s not about perfection. It’s about being real.” This is as blatant a demonstration of that as I can give people. You just have to trust that they’ll get it.


Photo by Reto Sterchi

LISTEN: Western Youth, “Let You”

Artist: Western Youth
Hometown: Austin, Texas
Song: “Let You”
Album: Western Youth
Release Date: September 21, 2018

In Their Words: “This is a song I wrote while trying to get my infant daughter back to sleep. It’s a promise to the one person in my life that I hadn’t broken a promise to. It’s aspirational but honest. It’s for her. It’s one of the first songs I recorded with Western Youth and the last song on the album.” — Graham Weber


Photo credit: Steven Alcala

Baylen’s Brit Pick: The Southern Companion

Artist: The Southern Companion
Hometown: Lymington, Hampshire
Latest Album: 1000 Days of Rain

Sounds Like: Counting Crows, The Black Crowes, (yes they sound like two bands with “crows” in their names. Never thought about a crow genre before, but there ya go). They also remind me of some non-crow artists like Eric Church, Tom Petty, and Ryan Adams.

Why You Should Listen: The musicianship in this band is off the charts, with members having played for Lana Del Rey, Tom Jones, James Morrison, Rumer, and Vanessa May, these guys aren’t messing around.  They’ve played together on and off for more than 20 years, and you can hear that in their debut album 1000 Days Of Rain. Yes, it took them two decades to get around to making an album, but sometimes good things take a while – come on, they were busy.

The comfort and musical version of “finishing each other’s sentences” that comes from a band that’s known each other and played together for so long isn’t something you can fake. This band is tight and it sounds like they are having the time of their lives. In a different place and time, lead singer Darren Hodson’s voice would have made him a 90’s “modern rock” god and that’s a wonderful thing as far as I’m concerned. His voice and this album remind me of so many bands I was listening to growing up, that I almost had to check I didn’t already have 1000 Days of Rain on cassette somewhere.

That’s not to say this album is a pastiche or retro, far from it, but the influences are clear. That’s something they acknowledge with a bit of old school yesteryear glorification on “Wrong Side of the 70s.” For an emotional deep dive, check out “Dead Man Walking.” This album has been out for a minute, but it’s taken me until now to fully appreciate it, and sometimes that’s how it goes. I just hope we don’t have to wait another 20 years for more music from them.


Photo credit: Wilky


As a radio and TV host, Baylen Leonard has presented country and Americana shows, specials, and commentary for BBC Radio 2, Chris Country Radio, BBC Radio London, BBC Radio 2 Country, BBC Radio 4, BBC Scotland, Monocle 24, and British Airways, as well as promoting artists through his work with the Americana Music Association UK, the Nashville Meets London Festival, and the Long Road (the UK’s newest outdoor country, Americana, and roots festival). Follow him on Twitter: @HeyBaylen

WATCH: Malcolm Holcombe, “Black Bitter Moon”

Artist: Malcolm Holcombe
Hometown: Weaverville, North Carolina
Song: “Black Bitter Moon”
Album: Come Hell or High Water
Release Date: September 14, 2018
Label: Singular Recordings

In Their Words: “This world is full of goodness and a lot of positivity, but it seems like I can relate to the underdog and the downtrodden, for obvious reasons. Those types of songs seem to strike a nerve more deeply than the ‘Yellow Brick Road,’ because I think it’s a struggle for all of us to try to do the next right thing. Some people have the spiritual chemistry to be able to achieve that more easily than others, but I think we all struggle with getting up in the morning and trying to live in our own skin.” — Malcolm Holcombe


Photo credit: Jamie Kalikow

LISTEN: Nickel&Rose, ‘Americana’

Artist name: Nickel&Rose
Hometown: Milwaukee, Wisconsin
EP: Americana
Release Date: September 14, 2018

In Their Words: “The EP was inspired by over a year of touring, presenting American folk music to European audiences as well as side gigs playing bluegrass and blues in the US. It made us rethink what “Americana” really is. We wanted to show that we have respect for Americana as it is but also that we feel it needs to be moved in new directions. Each song on the EP is a inspired by American music but performed through our own experiences.” — Carl Nichols

“Americana is sonically our most traditional release yet. We didn’t necessarily set out to be an Americana folk band but the more we played and wrote, the more we identified with that genre. On this release we explored a lot of the roots of Americana and tried to pay homage to the music and the people who made it what it is today while challenging exactly what that looks and sounds like. Throughout the EP, we grapple with our personal experiences of loss, but in the end I think we persevere. We are able to say what we need to and perhaps offer listeners a little compassion. We can’t necessarily say to listeners everything is going to be okay, but we can relate our challenges and say that we got through it and so can you.” — Johanna Rose


Photo credit: Amanda Mills

Nic Gareiss: The Subtle Art of Queering Traditional Dance

American music and dance have always gone hand-in-hand. Immigrants, bringing their folk traditions, art, and music to North America, combined and cross-pollinated with and stole and borrowed from the art and music of Native Americans, African Slaves, and African Americans. In that beautiful, conflicted, human, melting pot way we arrived at the incredible roots genres of our modern time. Dance had always been an integral part of that reckoning, of the growth, adaptation, and molding of our country’s vernacular music, but at the advent of the recording industry and the commercialization of music, musical dance and percussive dance were left by the wayside. They fell from ubiquity and popularity, largely relegated to preservationist, folklorist, familial, and rural niches.

Nic Gareiss doesn’t believe that dance belongs in those shadowed corners of our musical realms. A percussive dancer, scholar, and ethnochoreologist (think ethnomusicologist, but for dance — choreography), Gareiss devotes his creativity to bringing dance as music back into the traditional and vernacular genres that have slowly but surely lost nearly all of its influence. In the process, he explores greater ideas about his listeners’ and audiences’ expectations about the relationships of dance and melody, dancer and musician, dance partner and dance partner, song and singer, and performer and audience. Not only does he “queer” dance, by stripping it of its normative trappings, and laying its essentials bare, he also queers its heteronormativity, its patriarchal tendencies, and its binaryism — in a fashion that’s supremely gorgeous to both the ears and the eyes.  

A good starting point would just be that we’re a music site, right? We cover music, not so much dance. Some readers might need a quick briefing on your mantra that “dance is music.” Can you give people a quick 101 on your worldview that dance is something that’s essential to music, not just tangential to it?

I work as a dancer who makes sound. The traditions that I study and continue to study — and love — are dance traditions that are percussive. Whether that’s Appalachian clogging, Irish step dancing, or step dance from Canada, all of these dance forms have as their impetus rhythm-making with the feet and body. Also characteristic of these styles is the fact that they occur in environments where traditional music is being played. One might actually argue, and I would probably puckishly argue, that the soundscape that’s created by dancers is actually as much a part of the soundscape of traditional music as someone playing a fiddle or a banjo.

It’s interesting that that is an extant truth about vernacular music — especially American vernacular musics — but the way that American music has grown and evolved, it’s extirpated dance from itself, and then brought it back in, in different ways.

I think that because of the commercialization of music over the years, especially because of recording technology, dance hasn’t had as prominent a role, sonically. For some reason people didn’t think that the sound of a moving body was worth recording as much as the sound of another moving body, but holding a guitar. [Chuckles] What I’m interested in doing as I work mostly with musicians, and usually musicians that come from folk music backgrounds of some kind, is creating dance for listening. That manifests in mostly concerts, but also in some recordings, some teaching, some lecturing — there are a lot of things that make up my year along those lines.

One of those things is Solo Square Dance, a show that you’ve worked up, which strips away all of the old-time music and folk music that’s a part of these forms of dance and just showcases the actual, physical dancing — the part that had been lost, perhaps due to that commercialization, like you were just saying.

Exactly. In Solo Square Dance there are no musicians, except for me! [Laughs] There are no sounds except the sounds that I create myself, using my voice, using my feet, snapping my fingers, whistling. The idea is to reference and pay homage to traditional music and dance as a symbiotic entity. Because I don’t play instruments in that show, that means that traditional music shows up almost as a specter, or as a concept of something that’s been erased, so you can still feel a trace of it. It’s not just the idea of traditional music as a nebulous canon of the music writ large. Instead, there are actually specific pieces of music that come from, say, the fiddle playing of Tommy Jarrell or a traditional Irish dance tune that shows up in a tribute to one of my Irish dance teachers. There is various music in the show, it’s just music as made through a sounding body without a prosthesis, without an instrument.

Something that you’re also digging into with Solo Square Dance is leaving behind a whole host of presuppositions and expectations about dance, but you specifically call out heteronormativity. There are so many layers here, because you have to unpack that dance is music, and that it’s always been an integral part of these musical styles, but then you have to unpack that dance is inherently heteronormative, too. That’s a lot of ground to cover!  

The interesting thing for me came out of these video clips of Bascom Lamar Lunsford dancing on the porch, in this film by David Hoffman that was shot in 1962. [In the film] Bascom is demonstrating what it would be like to be in a square dance, but he only has one body to do it, instead of the usual eight people that it takes to make up a square. I saw that and thought that that was kind of inherently lonely and beautiful. But also, it somehow simultaneously was merry and celebratory. I think Bascom’s reimagining or demonstrating of the square dance is kind of a queer thing — and by “queer,” in this moment, I mean a set of stylistics that are somehow “beyond,” somehow an outsider, that have that “crooked” or critical relationship to the normative. Making that first piece a solo square dance and building the rest of the show around it, I tried to think so much about the way that dance possibly enacts some kind of revolutionary potential. Through touch, through interaction of sound and gesture, through [considering] what it might be like to have communities that move together, and what it might be like to have an individual that a community watches.

In all those things, I kept coming up against this idea that there are, indeed, heteronormative facets of that. Like [in square dancing] when we say, “Gents, swing your corner lady.” We say only “gents” and “ladies.” We say only, “Gents do this.” So there’s also a patriarchal power there, in who does what to whom. There’s also a binary that doesn’t allow for, perhaps, the existence of something like polyamory, where there are multiple people involved in a romantic or physical connection. I started thinking about what it would be like, if instead of singing, [Sings] “I’m gonna get that, get that, get that, I’m gonna get that pretty little girl,” what is it like if someone who performs the gender that I perform sings about someone who has a similar gender as themself? That subtle switch turns more than I ever could’ve imagined. It didn’t take putting on heels and a feather boa to queer square dance, just the simple expression of speaking about intimacy, thinking about the gender dynamics of that special social form, and then creating that little shift in the reiteration of that call. Which, I’m really happy about! At first, to decide, I’m gonna “queer” traditional dance — it’s a little bit of an arduous project. I’m finding that it’s these subtle nuance shifts that maybe make the biggest strides to imagining anti-normative futures as well as pasts.

I read an interview of yours, years ago now, in which you mentioned so succinctly that straight people have always let their identities shine through their art, so why wouldn’t queer people do that, too? That was a groundbreaking moment for me, realizing that my identity has an equal right to being included in my art, because no one else is filtering out their identities, their identities just happen to be the norm. It doesn’t take a lot of effort, like you were just saying, it just takes a change in perspective to open that paradigm up. How do we help all kinds of folks to realize that anti-normative future that you see?

I think it’s important to remember that queer people are not a facet of postmodernity. Queerness has always existed.

That’s such an important point! It just hasn’t always been visible.

Right. When we think about traditional music, oftentimes we relate that not only to a particular place, but a particular time. It’s important to remember that there have always been LGBTQIA+ people in those historical moments, again, whether those people were allowed to visible or whether it was okay for them to be visible is another question. Now, some of what we’re starting to see is nascent queerness beginning to whisper, or to sing, or to dance. That feels like a very exciting time, but we’re not inventing that. Queerness [has] been around for a long time.

For example, people who sing ballads, who maybe keep the pronoun of the song the same, or maybe switch pronouns to express a sexual object choice that is somehow other than straight, this is a simple, subtle way people have always enacted some kind of queer performance. And for a long time! I don’t only think that it’s always related to romantic connections, to be honest. I really like the idea of queerness as a critical set of stylistics. For instance, my relationship to percussive dance is a little queer — or bent — because I had a teacher who always said, “There will be no scraping in our class.” That means, in percussive dance, good technique is a sharp, short, adroit connection to the floor, where you strike your foot against the ground, but you don’t leave it on the ground. That, for me, sort of became a provocation. It made me want to slide my foot, to whisper, to create this foot-to-floor fricative, for many reasons: One, it got me closer to a fiddle’s bow, sliding slowly across the strings, but secondly, simply for the pure joy of transgressing! It opens this world of other tambours I didn’t have access to before.

So then, in conclusion, if a reader and roots music fan is looking to have their ideas about traditional and percussive dance queered, where will they be able to find you in the near future?

Solo Square Dance will continue to tour, there are shows in Ireland and Scotland lined up. I have a new project called DuoDuo with cellist Natalie Haas, guitarist Yann Falquet, harpist Maeve Gilchrist, and myself. That project is out on the road. Also, my band, This Is How We Fly, is getting together to make our third record starting in November, which is very exciting. Then, in the fall, I’m touring with this incredible tap dancer, who is also interested in vernacular dance forms, vernacular jazz and swing — his name is Caleb Teicher. We have a duo dance project, again a project without any instruments! Just us, making the music with our bodies and voices.

Because dance is music, damnit.

Exactly! And, to be honest, music is dancing as well! [Laughs] I found, in my collaborations with musicians, when there’s a moving body on stage, musicians begin to consider their own bodies a little bit more. They start to think about where they stand and how they move. It’s actually an interesting metamorphosis to witness and be engaged with. It reminds everyone that if one person can cross the sound/movement divide, if a dancer can be heard, maybe a musician can be seen!


Editor’s Note: Gareiss will be featured in the Bluegrass Situation Presents: A St. Patrick’s Day Festival at New York’s New Irish Arts Center, participating in an opening night jam session with fiddler-banjoist Jake Blount, clawhammer banjoist Allison de Groot and fiddler Tatiana Hargreaves on March 17 as well as a headlining performance with Blount on March 18.

Photo credit: Darragh Kane

LISTEN: Tony Joe White, “Big Boss Man”

Artist: Tony Joe White
Hometown: Oak Grove, Louisiana (now in Nashville)
Song: “Big Boss Man” (written by bluesman Jimmy Reed)
Album: Bad Mouthin’
Release Date: Sept. 28 2018
Label: Yep Roc

In Their Words: “At the time I was just playing electric guitar and singing. When I heard Jimmy Reed and ‘Big Boss Man,’ I went straight to the music store and bought a harmonica with a holder. I thought I bought the wrong key, but come to find out, all the blues players pull on the harmonica instead of blowing on it so it was alright.” — Tony Joe White


Photo credit: Joshua Black Wilkins