Tag: Sam Amidon

Into the Squishy Middle: Humbird Celebrates Being Wrong on ‘Right On’

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

When I first heard Right On, the new album from Humbird, (the moniker for Minnesota-based singer-songwriter Siri Undlin), I thought immediately of Jason Molina and Magnolia Electric Co. There’s an emotional rawness in the production paired with a choral background vocal style on songs like “Fast Food” that reflects a Midwestern landscape to my ears. Imagine a million ears of corn singing to nobody in the blazing heat of summer, right beside a sprawling concrete strip mall.

“Quilted miles of iron and wheat / does it count, if it just repeats?” Undlin sings.

I had the privilege of talking to Undlin over the phone about her new album, while she was at home in Minnesota and I was in a parking lot outside of a Barnes & Noble somewhere in Maryland. The first thing I asked was if she was familiar with Molina’s work, and much to my surprise, she was not. So, I will have to assume that what I heard as historical reference is merely a shared landscape of influence and delicious, melancholy songwriting.

Throughout her new album Right On, Humbird explores the human desire to retreat into ease, safety, and ignorance, rather than put oneself at risk of being wrong. Undlin begins this exploration with the experience of heartbreak, but quickly zooms out to include topics of cultural conflict, destruction of natural ecosystems, societal priorities, and gun violence. All the while, these songs ask us not to know the answers, but to merely be willing to ask the questions.

On “Child of Violence,”she sings: “I could be a break in the chain / you could be a break in the chain / you could be a piece of the change / When you talk about it call it by it’s name…”

I have been a fan of Humbird ever since I saw her performance at the Mile of Music Festival in Appleton, Wisconsin, this past summer and I was thrilled to get to interview her about this album.

Central to this record is a kind of celebration of being wrong. Can you speak to the specific benefits of being wrong and what being wrong means to you?

Siri Undlin: I find that there is a carefulness and reservedness, a real fear of being wrong, that often gets in the way of important conversations, and prevents people from trying to learn and do better. The reality is that sometimes you’re wrong, but you still have a responsibility to show up and be a part of things.

Ah, that makes sense. So on the title track you sing, “You might be dead wrong… at least you’re trying…” This particular song seems to be about a romantic relationship, but in a broader sense, is this about avoiding apathy?

Yes, it’s a central message of the album, and honestly I need to hear it as much as anyone. There is a time for resting and rejuvenating, but I think it’s important to be really honest with yourself about whether you are in that process, or whether you are making excuses because it’s hard. You have to be able to get into the squishy middle of things and really dig in.

I’m from Minnesota and in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, which I have written about explicitly on other records, I’ve had to realize how slow change can be. You have that initial communal outrage, but then what happens a year later? What happens two years later?

Whether its a global event or personal event, I’ve done a lot of growing up and I can’t just ignore these things. It’s a kind of rugged realism that comes with this greater knowledge, which can be really beautiful, but there’s a reframing that just has to happen.

When you talk about rugged realism, it makes me think of your song “Cornfields and Road Kill,” which is one of my favorites on the album.

That is my favorite song to play live and has been for years. I just think it’s one of the more honest songs I’ve ever written. I was able to capture a lot of what I feel about the landscapes where I’m from and the complexities and subtle beauty of it.

There’s so many road songs, but there’s very few songs written about the landscapes of the Midwest; roadkill and monocrops, soy and corn, and animals that are dead is the reality of traveling and the landscape and the economy of the area. It’s this visual representation of the choices that we’ve made about culture and society.

I was just mad about that when I wrote that song. I wrote it as a connecting tool and a bridge rather than just rage… but it is also just fun to be loud and turn up the amps and be cathartic…

I feel like the Midwest is having a real artistic moment right now with Waxahatchee/Plains and Kevin Morby, how do you think the Midwest and specifically Minnesota influence your work?

It’s tricky, because it’s such a subtly nuanced place in a lot of ways. It’s home, first and foremost, which is an endless topic of analysis. But creatively, I do feel really inspired by the landscape of the prairie, because of its subtleties. It’s a landscape you really have to sit with and pay attention to in order to understand it. You have to really slow down. I also think there’s a lot of space for a creative community, which is really exciting when you take into account income inequalities and the densities of the larger cities. There’s space here to collaborate and there’s not really the infrastructure that super ambitious people are interested in, so they move away… I think it was Prince who said that “The cold keeps the shitty people away!” [Laughs]

I am blown away by the production on this record, you worked with Shane Leonard who is another artist heavily rooted in the Midwest. What was the process like working with him, and what did that collaboration bring to the project?

Shane is a dear pal who I have recorded with before, so we have an established workflow. I, along with two of my bandmates, had been playing these songs live for a couple years on tour by the time we went to record, so going into it we were aiming to capture the live feeling of these songs, very much trying for the sound of a band in a room.

In approaching the record, I thought, let’s just go and hang with Shane and record live to tape and try to capture that energy. Because we do tackle heavy and weighty topics, but at the end of the day we still have a blast playing together.

I loved recording to tape. Instead of going into it with infinite options it was like, “Here’s how we play it and just do your best.” That infused the whole process with some magic and adrenaline, and it was awesome.

Humbird is a pretty fluid project, there’s a cast and crew of folks who are always shifting based on people’s lives, but I made the record with Pete Quirsfeld (drums) and Pat Keen (bass) and the three of us have been playing together for six-ish years. So these are road worn and comfortable songs that were ready to be captured.

I read that you spent a year doing research as a Watson Fellow. I’m interested to hear about what you were studying and how that has influenced your own music?

Yeah, the Watson Fellowship is this insane opportunity you basically do research on a topic of your choosing for a year. In my case, I was comparing Celtic and Nordic traditions and their storytelling. Historically, so much happened via trade routes and conflict, particularly in the balladry tradition and saga tradition, you will find that similar motifs and melodies crop up across folklore traditions that are also so specific to certain places.

I spent a year shadowing storytellers and musicians, compiling this bank of folk tales and ballads. I was doing a lot of writing and researching and playing music already, but I didn’t actually know that making music could be a job. When I went and did this research and was shadowing all these folks who were essentially doing DIY touring, or playing or performing in community spaces, witnessing how they move through the world I realized, “Oh my god, you can do this?”

One person I spent a lot of time with is Brendan Begley, on the west coast of Ireland. The Begley family are these incredible musicians on the Dingle Peninsula. It was the first time I was exposed to a DIY arts culture… it was so mush part of the fabric of life there and when I came home I realized I want to make art this way, I don’t want to do it academically. I feel like often in the classroom you’re in the business of taking art apart and I wanted to actually create it.

Speaking of the ballad tradition, when I heard your song “Ghost on the Porch,” it sounded like a brilliant remake of an old ballad a la Sam Amidon, but in this case it is actually an original song. I find your songwriting to be more through-composed in a storytelling way than a typical commercial song might be. Do you draw on that ballad tradition in a conscious way or do you hear that influence?

That is actually a song that started as a short story, a fairy tale of sorts. I love to write fiction and non-fiction and it generally happens on a Humbird record that one or two songs per album are drawn from a short story or some other writing format. I’ll write out prose and then think, actually this could be a song.

Anytime you’re writing fiction your own life is in there, but I have not personally had the experience of a ghost of my own likeness standing on the porch telling me to run for my life, which would be terrifying.

Sometimes with writing, it’s almost like dreaming, where you don’t know where things come from!

Photo Credit: Juliet Farmer

BGS 5+5: New Valley String Band

Posted on by Justin Hiltner
Artist: New Valley String Band
Hometown: Malmö, Sweden
Latest Album: New Valley
Personal nicknames (or rejected band names): A Justification for Playing the Banjo

Which artists have influenced you the most?

Our greatest source of fiddle tunes would be the American fiddler Rayna Gellert. We fell in love with her groovy playing and her taste in source material. Many of the tunes we play are from her record, Ways of the World, including the title track which we also recorded for our debut album, New Valley.

Sam Amidon is another source of inspiration. His exploration and retelling of the traditional material with a quite minimalist style of arranging is something that guides parts of our process and something we strive to achieve ourselves.

Anna & Elizabeth would be our go-to when it comes to vocals. What they do is just absolutely astounding and continues to give the shivers to this day, even after hearing their music many times over.

Lastly we have many inspirations from the Nordic, especially from the Swedish trad scene. The duo Hazelius/Hedin and the band Bäsk are both big inspirations. Just like us, they both play traditional fiddle/dance tunes in a modern style and arrange old songs and ballads with a lot of after thought.

If you had to write a mission statement for your career, what would it be?

Musically, the three of us all come from the Nordic folk scene and the modern style of playing and arranging traditional Swedish dance tunes. When the band was formed we made a conscious choice that instead of fondly playing old-time music as historically or culturally accurate, we’d rather discover it and express ourselves in the way that we felt most natural. The result of that process became our own unique style of playing the old Appalachian fiddle tunes and songs. With interest and respect for the individual instrumental traditions, we arrange our music in a similar way that we would with the Swedish polskas or schottises. We call this style “Nordic Old Time” and we see it as our mission to explore this concept, and with it we can spread the traditional North American music to our peers and colleagues in the Nordic folk scene.

What has been the best advice you’ve received in your career so far?

Lukas, our banjo player, once met with the great Swedish folk musician Ale Möller, one of the founders of the Swedish world music scene. His advice to young musicians was to choose between being a specialist or a generalist. Either you can fit in any band or project or you establish your speciality so that when someone wants that, you’re the only one to ask. This spurred Lukas to both get more into the old time tradition that is otherwise a bit unknown in the Swedish folk scene, and to learn all stringed instruments there are. With all that being said, which path do you think he chose?

What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?

In April this year we performed at a small festival called Växjö Country Roots Festival. It’s a one day festival where six different bands that play American folk and roots music are doing one concert each during the evening. The event was sold out and there was a nice energy in the room. The performance went well and the audience seemed to like our way of interpreting the old time style, but the best thing about the festival was that it was a great way of gathering a lot of musicians doing bluegrass/Cajun/old-time/Americana music in Sweden.

It was really nice seeing the other concerts, but also jamming backstage, talking to other people doing a Nordic version of American folk music, and realizing how different it can sound. The arrangers did a great job with finding bands doing quite different sounds and even if it was a long night, the audience had a high energy the whole evening and it all ended with the musicians having a long jam session at the hotel until late night.

What rituals do you have, either in the studio or before a show?

As a band, the only ritual we have so far is to warm up our voices together. We’re including more and more songs in our repertoire, and to be able to push our voices on stage it’s important for us to do some warming up and check-ins with our intonation. Apart from that we all have some individual things we like to do before going up on stage.

If Adam has the time he likes to massage his feet. He picked that up from one of his teachers at a camp some years ago. According to this teacher, if you’re comfortable and grounded with your feet, you will be comfortable and grounded on stage.

Michael likes to take some time backstage to do some breathwork and settle his mind. If it’s possible, he also likes to take the time to get familiar with the room/venue from the perspective of the stage before the show, to be more comfortable and prepared for what to expect with that specific stage.

We’ve also learned from experience that Lukas needs to eat something before a show.

Photo Credit: Aija Svensson

MIXTAPE: Wila Frank’s Cinematic Folk

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Ever since I started making music, it’s been in this sort of folk-infused soundtrack sort of style. When I was little, I would imagine that I was in a film constantly. I would hear music in my head supporting the emotions I may be feeling. It sort of helped me express my feelings to myself and figure out what sort of character I want to be in this life. My brother is famous for his excellent mixtapes and he introduced me to most of my favorite contemporary artists, many of whom make music in this way; fusing together modern attitudes and techniques with personal impressions of roots music.

There’s something about traditional sounds that really resonate with me. I grew up in a rural place and spent my childhood playing the fiddle. Folk music has always been connected to nature and the sounds that go along with it. Nature is where I do my best self-reflection. The hypnotic rhythm of an acoustic guitar line repeated. The rich, molasses drones of the violin. 

On my debut album Black Cloud, I intentionally challenged myself to produce in a more edgy, alt-rock style. However, I could not escape many of the musical sensibilities I grew up with. You can hear undertones of trad music in my guitar playing, in the song forms, vocal inflections, and choice of vocabulary. This playlist starts off with the first track on my new record and ends with a song from my folk duo with Emily Mann, Paper Wings. Both are songs I wrote and feel very close to my heart. The songs in between have all been inspirations to me over the years and demonstrate of the cinematic quality realized when folk techniques are fused into modern creations and vice-versa. Hope you enjoy. – Wila Frank

“Tonight” – Wila Frank

I wrote Tonight over a rolling guitar line inspired by traditional banjo techniques. While the rest of the production is quite contemporary, you can hear elements of folk influence in my singing. Especially in the line “It’s a long and lonesome road” — a reference to lyrics you would hear in a bluegrass song.

“Fire Snakes” – Laura Veirs 

This has been a favorite song of mine forever. I love the beautiful and unusual contradiction of the acoustic guitar line with the artificial beat. To me, it makes the song feel more emotionally vital and critical. The strings at the end are a luscious bonus.

“Desert Island Disk” – Radiohead

This song reminds me of the trance-like quality of a lot of traditional Malian guitar playing such as Ali Farke Toure who I’m also obsessed with. The simplicity of the production on this song is essential and perfectly supports the beautiful message of the lyrics.

“Walkin’ Boss” – Sam Amidon

This is the only trad American folk song on the playlist. Sam Amidon has a really neat way of taking old Appalachian songs and bringing them into a new contemporary light. The rhythm of the banjo and drums together make you wanna groove and bring out the power of the lyrics.

“Psyche” – Massive Attack

I included this one because the repeating artificial guitar line reminds me of the banjo and is a cool example of the magic achieved when electronic artists sample natural sounds. This particular song was an essential inspiration for me in coming up with the guitar line on my song “Tonight.” When it comes to cinematic music and transporting the listener to a new world, you can’t get any better than Massive Attack. 

“Imitosis” – Andrew Bird

I was obsessed with Andrew Bird when I was a kid for his witty lyrical style, use of the violin as a support instrument for his songs, and the unapologetic quirkiness of his music. On this album, he fuses all kinds of music and makes something completely unique.

“Ecstasy” – Crooked Still

I grew up going to a lot of music camps and owe much of my musical development to various members of Crooked Still. Aoife was one of the first singers I learned from and I was lucky enough to spend a lot of time around this music. I love this album in particular and how this song fuses Appalachian fiddle tones with classical string parts.

“The Weekend” – Dave Rawlings Machine

This song features pop chords, but has Dave Rawlings signature guitar style all over it. It’s a fun Americana-style story of a song. I like how the violin parts sound almost like they’re imitating synthetic strings. A cool example of folk music imitating pop music. 

“Dog Walkers of the New Age” – Breathe Owl Breathe

One of my favorite albums ever. Completely unique and vibey. The lyrics are quirky and witty, and somehow get at an essential emotion of feeling less alone. 

“Grizzly Man” – Rockettothesky

The shimmering acoustic guitar in this track brings this beautiful and spooky song to life. This is the only song I really know from this band, but the haunting, witchy vocal style in this song has stuck with me through the years and has an essence of woodsy appeal.

“Dyin Day” – Anaïs Mitchell

Anaïs Mitchell does a really nice job of innovating within the structure of a song itself. There are elements of traditional call and response in this song, religious references and images of nature, but somehow it still feels relevant and potent.

“Carrie & Lowell” – Sufjan Stevens

This was an incredibly influential album for a lot of people I think. Stevens’ swirling guitar style paired with the vocal effects and simplistic percussive elements make it feel like a pop song without any overly artificial elements. There’s even banjo on this song, but used almost like you would use an arpeggiated synth.

“Middle Distance Runner” – Sea Wolf

To me, this is a perfect pop song with a folk song structure. I love the natural guitar tones and the use of real sounds as percussion. 

“The History of a Cheating Heart” – Damon Albarn

One of my favorite artists, producers, and songwriters of all time. Damon Albarn released this solo record in 2014 upon which he plays this song paired down with acoustic guitar. There’s very minimal production featuring dry and stark strings along with a chorus of harmonies on the bridge. It’s rare to hear such a minimal song recorded at such a high level and the result is beautiful.

“Clementine” – Paper Wings

I wrote Clementine on a writing retreat we went on in Big Sur. Emily and I spent the week sitting in the sun amongst the trees and flowers overlooking the ocean. This is really a simple pop love song, but we paired it down and sang it in harmony over fiddle drones. Arranged this way, it became stark and vulnerable and the essence of the song revealed itself. The imagery of nature became more vivid, and the emotions came across as more sincere.

Photo Credit: David Piñeros

The BGS Radio Hour – Episode 199

Posted on by Shelby Williamson

Welcome to the BGS Radio Hour! Since 2017, the show has been a weekly recap of all the great music, new and old, featured on BGS. This week we’ve got everything from quirky pop hooks by Aaron Lee Tasjan to outcries about workers’ rights by the Local Honeys. Remember to check back every Monday for a new episode of the BGS Radio Hour. 

APPLE PODCASTS, SPOTIFY

Black Pumas – “Black Moon Rising”

As we welcome the spring, we bid farewell to our February Artist of the Month – Black Pumas. The duo, up for a total of three Grammy Awards this March with their breakout album, sat down with BGS this month to talk about Black Pumas (Deluxe Edition), and the influences that brought them together.

Terrible Sons – “What A Friend”

From Christchurch, New Zealand, Terrible Sons brings us a song this week from their newly released Mass EP. “The song looks into a life that is unravelling internally and externally, a character who struggles to communicate, someone who’s on the edge,” the duo tells BGS. “We’re really singing about being a failure as a friend, about not being there.”

Aaron Espe – “Take You Home”

February brought many great releases; Aaron Espe’s Rock & Roll Man EP is certainly no exception. As the Nashville-based songwriter told BGS, songs can mean many things to many people, all of which are valid, and shouldn’t be ruined by the songwriter explaining it to them – so best for us not to spoil this one!

Lonesome River Band – “Love Songs”

Steve Martin used to tell a joke about how no one could be sad while playing the banjo. And while the banjo strikes a happy tone, songs from the bluegrass repertoire just aren’t the most optimistic – often, they are about heartbreak, loneliness, or death. In their new single, the Lonesome River Band recognizes that we have to write about what we know – and it ain’t always love songs.

Judith Hill – “Baby, I’m Hollywood!”

For Judith Hill, “Baby, I’m Hollywood!” is a defining statement, summing up the drama, love, and pain that surrounds her life as an entertainer in an epic performance and video.

Cristina Vane – “Prayer For the Blind”

From her upcoming Nowhere Sounds Lovely, Italy-born and Nashville-based Cristina Vane brings us an old-time banjo meditation on finding levity in heavy situations, and the bonds and intergenerational burdens shared between mothers and daughters.

The Wild West – “Better Way”

Women-led upergroup The Wild West strike on uniting us all amongst the differences that divide us – touching the idea of being born with love and without hate, and calling us to find our way back to innocence, understanding, and compassion.

Aaron Lee Tasjan – “Up All Night”

This Nashville artist is no stranger to BGS. Tasjan is his own producer on his newest release Tasjan! Tasjan! Tasjan!, the most-Tasjan album that he’s released so far — quite literally. From deep personal experiences in his writing to silly pop hooks, Tasjan’s newest album is one worth hearing.

Lily B Moonflower – “Midnight Song”

One thing we’re all surely missing is community, be it local jams, concerts, or just visiting with your neighbors. From Lawrence, Kansas, Lily B Moonflower brings us a song inspired by her community coming together through music and love, and the magic that follows on the honky-tonk floor.

Spencer Burton – “Memories We Won’t Soon Forget”

From Ontario, singer-songwriter Spencer Burton joins us for a 5+5 this week – that is, five questions, five songs to go along. From favorite stage memories to a dream musician and meal pairing, our conversation with Burton is one we won’t soon forget.

The Local Honeys – “Dying to Make a Living”

Even while they’re stuck at home like the rest of us, the Local Honeys continue to get their message out to the world. While in past times they’d be touring Europe with Colter Wall or Tyler Childers, the Kentucky-based duet now sit down with BGS to talk about the problems created by extractive industries like coal mining in Appalachia, reflected in their new two-song release.

Chris Pandolfi – “Astral Plane”

From Grammy Award-winning band the Infamous Stringdusters, ‘Panda’ joins us this week on a 5+5 in celebration of his latest album, Trad Plus Presents Trance Banjo. What’s better than banjos, beats, and Stuart Duncan?

Moira Smiley – “Days of War” (feat. Sam Amidon and Seamus Egan)

With the accompaniment of Sam Amidon and Seamus Egan, Moira Smiley brings us “Days of War,” a song written after yet another shockwave of white supremacy in 2017. While Amidon sings the ‘human’ voice in this song, Smiley is the ‘bird,’ who flies and sings in spite of all.

Photos: (L to R) Black Pumas; The Local Honeys by Melissa Stilwell; Aaron Lee Tasjan by Curtis Wayne

WATCH: Moira Smiley, “Days of War” (Feat. Sam Amidon and Seamus Egan)

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Moira Smiley
Hometown: New Haven, Vermont
Song: “Days of War” (feat. Sam Amidon and Seamus Egan)
Album: In Our Voices
Release Date: February 19, 2021
Label: Moira Smiley Music

In Their Words: “As I write these words for the Bluegrass Situation, I’m traveling for the first time in nine months. I’m seeing the birds-eye view that ‘Days of War’ imagines… and it’s extraordinary to see this beautiful earth today. I’m flying to my beloved California to work with Tune-Yards and write some new music. ‘I fly because I must carry on.’ ‘Days of War’ is one of three banjo-driven tracks on my new album, In Our Voices. This album returns me to my a cappella, collaborative roots and kicks up a lot of percussive dust while bowing deeply to American folk music.

“Seamus Egan (Solas, Seamus Egan Project) and I wrote the core of this song after yet another shockwave of white supremacist hate hurt more people in 2017. It evolved into this form when my old friend and fellow Vermonter, Sam Amidon, said ‘yes!’ to singing the ‘human’ voice so I could converse with him as ‘the bird’ who flies and sings in spite of all. The bird is also the voice of our inner resilience — our artistic and humanistic gifts that carry us through times of upheaval and violence.” — Moira Smiley

Photo credit: Alexandra Defurio Photography

A New Generation of Bluegrass Stars Reflect on ‘O Brother, Where Art Thou?’

Posted on by Editor

The soundtrack to O Brother Where Art Thou? was a phenomenon in the early 2000s, turning bluegrass musicians into superstars and creating an instant mainstream market for old-time music — from folk to gospel to children’s songs to prison chants to blues and everything in between. To celebrate the twentieth anniversary of its astonishing success and to wrap up our Artist of the Month series, we spoke to several musicians about the impact O Brother and its subsequent tours had on their lives and livelihoods.

Sierra Hull: “I grew up in a little town with maybe 900 people, and there used to be a poster section at the Walmart the next town over. You could flip through the posters and there would be pop stars like Britney Spears and Backstreet Boys. I was always convinced that one day I would find an Alison Krauss poster in there. She was as popular in my little kid brain as Britney Spears. So it was cool when O Brother came out and elevated some of those people who were already giants to me, like Alison and Dan Tyminski and Ralph Stanley.

“I was already playing, but I was too young to be touring yet. By the time Cold Mountain came out [in 2003], I was part of that tour. Alison was part of both soundtracks, and she invited my brother and me to go on that tour. So we got to help celebrate that second wave. I was 12, and it was really the first time for me to be out on tour, travel to so many different places, and play Red Rocks and the Beacon Theater in New York. Standing at the side of the stage and listening to Alison sing to hundreds of people every night every night was one of my favorite memories.

“It was amazing to watch people go crazy over Ralph Stanley every night. He had this dazzled suit jacket that he wore every night. Sometimes he would sit his banjo down while his band played and take that jacket off and throw it to me at the side of the stage. I would get to wear that dazzled jacket at the end of the show when everybody came out on stage. It’s one of the most special musical experiences I’ve ever had.”

Sara Watkins: “O Brother was something we somehow became affiliated with. Nickel Creek had just released our band’s first record on Sugar Hill, after years of doing just little homemade projects. Alison Krauss produced it, which had been out maybe a year and a half when O Brother came out. She was a big part of that soundtrack, of course, so our band was gaining a little bit of notoriety. I remember reading a huge New York Times spread, and we were listed among the people on that scene. We were part of that conversation, despite not having been part of the soundtrack in any way. We were just at the right place at the right time, and the awareness of the bluegrass scene just exploded. We were able to reach a different level very quickly. It was a huge advantage to our career. We already had some momentum, but the soundtrack really put the wind in our sails.

“T Bone Burnett [who produced the album], one of his brilliant skills is finding the right people for the right song. He brought in some incredible musicians in a way that really showed the musicianship in our community and made everyone really proud of our scene. We saw our heroes up there, and it was gratifying to see them celebrated by a huge audience. I remember feeling a new respect for Ralph Stanley with that vocal [on ‘Oh Death’]. That actually turned me on to shape-note singing. Someone told me his delivery was reminiscent of those old communities that did shape-note singing and those old preachers who used to sing that way. I’d never heard anything like it. And to this day, whenever I see Dan Tyminski, I make a point to stick around until he plays ‘Man of Constant Sorrow.’ No way I’m leaving before then.”

Dave Wilson (Chatham County Line): “I remember going with our old bass player to see O Brother in the theater. We snuck a bottle of whiskey in and sat in the back row and just laughed and drank. I remember thinking, ‘Bluegrass has arrived!’ We were already a band and playing small gigs around town, but we weren’t at a place where we had dedicated our lives to it. So it was kismet for us. That record came out, and the scene just exploded. Suddenly we had this huge advertisement out there in the world for the style of music we were playing. We definitely noticed a change. There were more strangers coming to see us play gigs, and they were really excited about it. One side effect was people would yell out for us to play ‘Man of Constant Sorrow.’ They did it enough to make me wonder if they had heard the soundtrack or just seen the movie. But we never played it. We didn’t know how! It would have probably shut them up if we had!

“I really got into the record. There are some badass arrangements on there. And it’s not corny. It’s not super traditional. I love that they reached out to the right people. It could have been bad. They could have gotten Toby Keith or someone like that. Oh god, I don’t even want to think about that! One of my favorite parts is that blues song by Chris Thomas King [a cover of Skip James’ ‘Hard Time Killing Floor’]. It makes for such a special moment. Later, they booked that concert film [Down from the Mountain, recorded at the Ryman Auditorium] at our old classic movie theater here in town, and I remember the boys going to see it and we were all just floored. That was almost bigger than the movie as far as having an impact in the folk music scene.”

Sam Amidon: “People in the folk world can be very protective of the music, which I think is valid. But my inclination is that if I find something I’m excited about, I want to share it. I want people to know about it. To have grown up in a world knowing a lot of the corners O Brother explores, it was beautiful to think about how many people all of a sudden were going to discover these field recordings and these great musicians. And I was thankful because until then, portrayals of traditional music in the mass media had just been so bad and so clichéd or so simplistic. Nothing had depicted this stuff on this scale before. Before then, if you told somebody you played banjo, they would think Deliverance. That was their frame of reference.

“For O Brother to do it without messing it up was a miracle. To see these different corners of American music — beyond just blues and bluegrass as the two major industry terms — was a very positive thing, especially because ‘folk music’ can be such a heterogeneous category. Nobody would even really know what you were talking about if it wasn’t bluegrass or blues. O Brother pointed to all of these different areas. It’s singing games and banjo songs and all these different things. O Brother is weirdly inclusive. It cast a wide net. Nowadays it’s easy to go to the soundtrack and hear more problematic elements of the whole Americana genre thing, but I think it’s good to remember that when it first came along, it was much more nuanced compared to what had come before.”

Woody Platt (Steep Canyon Rangers): “It’s interesting that the twentieth anniversary of O Brother is fairly parallel to the twentieth anniversary of our band. We formed in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, when we were seniors in college, right when the movie came out. We all had been exposed to bluegrass and old-time just by being Carolinians. We all had that music around when we were growing up, but none of us in the band really dove into it until we were in college. We’d only been following that music a few years when the movie came out. I’m not sure we were aware at the time of the impact that the movie and the tour had on bluegrass, old-time, string band, mountain music, but we could feel some excitement when we were playing bars on Franklin Street, which is the main drag in Chapel Hill. But we didn’t really have anything to compare it to. There was no before or after. It was just what we were doing, and that’s all we knew.

“I really enjoyed the movie, but I was a big fan of the album. Hearing Ralph Stanley’s voice in a film, or Dan Tyminski’s, or just seeing people I admired in that movie was pretty incredible. Looking back on it, it was good timing for us to be getting off the ground, and we were having so much fun and finding so much joy in it. The music we were playing had been a small niche, but all of a sudden it had this national interest. I have no doubt in my mind that the awareness of the music was fueled by the movie. It’s a fascinating phenomenon to think about, because it wasn’t marketed in any significant way. It just happened. It was just this thing where people were suddenly into this music.”

Molly Tuttle: “The movie came out when I was seven years old, and I remember my dad showing it to me when I was in grade school. I loved it, and the music really stuck with me because I already had an affinity for bluegrass and old-time music. Seeing it performed in a movie was new and exciting. My dad teaches bluegrass for a living, and when the movie came out, he had an influx of new students.

“It’s had a lasting impact on the popularity of bluegrass music. But I was so young that I didn’t know many of the musicians on the soundtrack by name, so it introduced me to a lot of artists who later became my favorites. And the Down from the Mountain documentary further familiarized me with people like Emmylou Harris and Alison Krauss. Many of those artists, like Gillian Welch and John Hartford, have been big influences on me, and that was my introduction to their music. I’ve performed ‘I’ll Fly Away’ and ‘Angel Band’ a number of times, and I got to do ‘Man of Constant Sorrow’ with Dan Tyminski at the IBMA awards one year.”

Dom Flemons: “I actually saw Ralph Stanley on the O Brother tour in Flagstaff, Arizona, in the year 2000. It was at this random high school. I saw the poster on a telephone pole when I was going to college there. I’d started playing the banjo by that point — six-string and four-string banjo, guitar, and harmonica. I remember the place was really packed out, and he gave this amazing performance. I just loved watching the man at work. When he sang ‘Oh Death,’ he pulled this piece of paper out of his pocket, put on his glasses, and made a joke about how old he was. And he just sang it off this piece of paper and blew our minds.

“O Brother was very interesting, and I think it’s still a milestone album for several generations. A lot of the old folks who played those old styles and sang those old songs were starting to pass away, so the soundtrack ended up being a perfect vehicle for getting younger people into the music of the ‘20s and ‘30s. It reminded people of the really good old recordings that were available. That’s where I went. I found the old RCA Victor and Columbia recordings, and that was it for me.

“It’s a perfectly structured record, opening with the prisoners on the chain gang and then it goes to that beautiful ‘Big Rock Candy Mountain.’ And then you get into “You Are My Sunshine” with Norman Blake, and then Chris Thomas King presenting ‘Hard Time Killing Floor.’ That in itself was a revival of Skip James. People talk about Ghost World and Devil Got My Woman, but I think O Brother got it going. People just started casually bringing those songs back in at shows and festivals, and it seemed like a lot more people knew them. Of course they would sing them like the recordings on O Brother. Those are just things I observed before I was a professional musician, and it was amazing to see.”

 

Kronos Quartet and Friends Salute Pete Seeger With ‘Long Time Passing’

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“There’s no place like home,” says David Harrington, co-founder and leader of the venerable Kronos Quartet, with a little chuckle.

It’s not just because of the smoke from California fires or the pandemic lockdown at his San Francisco home. With the new album Long Time Passing — Kronos Quartet and Friends Celebrate Pete Seeger, Kronos, after more than 47 years of redefining the very nature of a string quartet through explorations of music traditions and contemporary composers from around the world and, to many ears, exotic, is having something of an Oz moment.

Seeger, of course, was one of the key figures of American folk music, from the early 1950s until his death in 2014 at age 94. The album includes interpretations and adaptations of some of the most beloved songs of the folk canon, among them “Where Have All the Flowers Gone” (which gave the album its title), “Turn, Turn, Turn,” “Kisses Sweeter Than Wine,” “If I Had a Hammer,” and “We Shall Overcome,” which Seeger helped bring to national prominence during the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. All are transformed through the Kronos prism, which has made magic with everything from Thelonious Monk tunes to Bollywood soundtrack songs to young Iranian and Afghani composers and, spanning decades, an ongoing relationship with American avant-garde composer Terry Riley.

Among the friends on board are young American folk singers Aoife O’Donovan, Brian Carpenter, Lee Knight and Sam Amidon, Spain’s Maria Arnal and Ethiopian-born Meklit. Amidon is making a repeat appearance, having been one of four singers along with Rhiannon Giddens, Natalie Merchant and Olivia Chaney, who joined Kronos for 2017’s Folk Songs album. That collection of American and English-rooted songs is something of a precursor to this new one.

Harrington resists the notion that this is somehow a break from what Kronos has done in the past. “I think all of our work is related,” he says. “For me, Pete Seeger’s work is an extension or a variation of [composer George Crumb’s] ‘Black Angels’” — a keystone in the Kronos repertoire and the work that inspired the group’s formation in the first place — “and Bartók and Beethoven and all kinds of music.”

Making that point emphatically is the piece that is arguably the core of the album: “Storyteller,” a 16-minute sonic collage combining Kronos’ playing with audio of Seeger from interviews and on-stage talk throughout the years, all composed and assembled inventively by Jacob Garchik, a regular Kronos collaborator. The ambitious work made its concert debut last year at Kronos’ San Francisco festival.

“He has been part of our work for probably 15 years,” Harrington says. “It’s so wonderful to see him flower as a musician. Jacob and I have had innumerable conversations about all aspects of music from traditional cantorial music to pygmy songs. It seemed really natural that Jacob would be part of Long Time Passing and that he would make a piece that would bring Seeger to life.”

As well, there is no lack of global cultural reach here. There are songs in Spanish, German, and a South African dialect, plus the instrumental “Raghupati Raghav Raja Ram,” associated with Mahatma Gandhi’s 1930 Salt March protest, which Seeger learned on the instrument bhajan on a trip to India and made a regular feature of his concerts. In one “Storyteller” passage, Seeger himself is heard singing “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” in German. Arnal sings two songs, recorded in Barcelona last year, one being the Spanish Civil War ballad “Jarama Valley,” a bloody tale of fighting the fascists, written to the tune we know as “Red River Valley.”

And then there is “Mbube,” the South African tune that transformed into the international staple, “Wimoweh/The Lion Sleeps Tonight.” This serves as tribute to Seeger’s lifelong dedication to finding and sharing songs from other cultures, following in the footsteps of his father Charles, a musicologist, folklorist, and composer.

“Alan Lomax [the famed folk archivist and producer] gave him a pile of LPs that they were going to throw out at the Library of Congress,” Harrington said. “Lomax said, ‘I’ve got these LPs from Africa. Would you like to listen to them?’ Seeger comes over and in the middle of the pile somewhere is that song. I mean, what a story! The Weavers [the ‘50s group Seeger was in that launched the folk boom] started singing it. Then the Tokens had the big hit. And then Disney picked it up for The Lion King. I mean, that’s culture. That’s the way it works. But what an ear Seeger had!”

Meklit’s performance is not in Ethiopian. Rather, the Bay Area-based artist was asked to do the elegiac “The President Sang Amazing Grace,” a relatively new song by songwriter Zoe Mulford, inspired by President Barack Obama singing the hymn at the pulpit of the Mother Emanuel American Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, shortly after the 2015 mass shooting there.

“I have always been a fan of Pete Seeger and his empathetic yet passionate advocacy for the people,” says Meklit. “This is a song about how music carries us when the limits of language can’t meet our deepest grief, anger, and heartbreak. It’s about a President who understood that and offered us empathy made of melody. It’s about how the violence of racism and white supremacy continue tear at us and cost people their lives. Ultimately I hope the song provides the smallest bit of catharsis in our ongoing season of reckoning with America’s ghosts.”

Having an East African-born singer do this song honoring Obama, with his Kenyan ancestry, brings a lot together, and while it’s the only song on the album that was not part of the Seeger canon, coming after he died, it fits perfectly in his sensibilities.

“There are all sorts of connections,” Harrington says. “They just happen. It’s part of the texture of our society.”

The real magic of the album is finding the new, the current, in the old material, of bringing into vivid life Seeger as an artist, an organizer, an explorer. It’s there from the opening song, “Which Side Are You On?” a question that as much in Kronos’ hands, with Knight almost channeling Seeger, demands a definitive answer. And it’s there in “Garbage,” again with Knight and a child’s chorus, linking today’s concerns with climate change to the environmental concerns Seeger championed through his life, from well before it was a “movement.”

“In terms of the moment in which we live now, obviously Pete’s music and his sensibilities and his spirit came from troubled times,” he says. “He grew up privileged and he knew it. And he paid it back. He was able to adapt throughout his life and address the struggles and issues that were coming in. He saw a real continuity of it. Now we’re talking about civil rights. Not we’re talking about the environment. Now we’re talking about racial divisiveness. It felt like it was all one thread, the same thing. You can see [today’s issues] through that lens, and you can see it through the continuity of what Pete was through his life and what he experienced.”

Harrington stresses that while the album itself seems like something different for Kronos, he can connect it to the very first work written specifically for the quartet back in 1973, “Traveling Music” by composer Ken Benshoof which quoted “Kisses Sweeter Than Wine.” And that is by no means the only thing on this album with which Kronos has history. He notes that his kids and more recently his grandkids have been raised on Seeger recordings, and that a few years ago the group played “We Shall Overcome” for a third-grade class taught by his daughter. But the song has been in their world for much longer than that.

“The idea of doing ‘We Shall Overcome’ is something that we tried out in New York in the early 1980s,” he says. “At that point we did not have the right arranger. I didn’t know how to do it. We tried it, but it didn’t work. But the flame was always there.”

They finally had success with it a few years ago, in a concert that included a piece featuring tapes the voices of gospel great Mahalia Jackson and Chicago writer, labor activist and radio host Studs Terkel, on whose show Kronos had played a few times. Also in that concert was a piece incorporating recordings of Clarence Jones, Martin Luther King Jr.’s lawyer, telling the story of the “I Have a Dream” speech.

“The only thing we could imagine doing as an encore was ‘We Shall Overcome,’” Harrington says.

So yes, Long Time Passing is, for the Kronos Quartet, an act of coming home.

Photo credit: Jay Blakesburg

MIXTAPE: Anthony da Costa’s Quarantine Chill Out Roots-Grass Mix-Up

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I know what you’re thinking, Anthony da Costa doesn’t really bluegrass…but hey, I live in Nashville and I have friends and I even say “y’all” now. And there’s something about roots music that cuts to the core of everything and deeply influences what I do…even if it doesn’t always sound like it. Here are some tracks to not go outside to! — Anthony da Costa

David Francey – “Border Line”

David Francey is one of my favorites ever and nothing will change that. I lucked out by sharing a stage with him at the Tønder Festival many years ago. He blew me away with his simple approach, golden voice, and powerful storylines. He stood there like a bard and held our hearts in his hand. After our show, I asked his guitarist which album I should start with and he emphatically stated Torn Screen Door. “Border Line” is track one from David’s debut album, which he made when he was 45 years old. Let’s take a journey with him, since we can’t really go anywhere else.

Jordan Tice – “Chicken Dog”

This playlist has a lot of mood, interspersed with that spontaneous dance party that we could all use right now. You don’t even have to put on real clothes, just dance. Jordan Tice is one of my best friends and also happens to be my one of my favorite acoustic guitar players on planet Earth. He has a fabulous new album that will be coming out soon… but until then, let’s jump to this scorcher of a bizarre bluegrass song called “Chicken Dog.” I still don’t know what it’s about, but also, like, who cares?

Molly Tuttle – “When You’re Ready”

This playlist wouldn’t really be complete without something from Molly Tuttle. I had the pleasure of touring with Molly for her album release in 2019. When the bluegrass kids all told me that Molly had made a “pop” album, my first thought was “ALRIGHT. Calm down, kids. What, are there drums or something? Are you scared?” But the young “queen” of the bluegrass world and honestly craziest picker out there made one of the best albums of last year: pop in the ’90s Aimee Mann singer-songwriter kinda sense. Molly knows how to write a poignant, catchy chorus — and then somehow squeezes in some pretty insane bluegrass runs –in the SAME SONG. Are you ready?

Bill Frisell – “I’m So Lonesome, I Could Cry”

Because, you know, quarantine sucks, right? And I live alone. And it HAS gotten lonesome at times… so lonesome that I could pull up this great compilation entitled The Best of Bill Frisell, Vol. 1: The Folk Songs and just mellowly and totally NOT CRY to myself. ♥

Sam Amidon – “Blue Mountains”

Speaking of Bill Frisell, he features on this pretty mesmerizing track from Sam Amidon. This record made me a believer. I don’t know that anyone else can do what Sam does with folk music. I don’t even know what this music is. It’s Sam Amidon music.

John Mailander – “Forecast”

John Mailander is one of the nicest people in the world, but PLEASE don’t tell him that I said that… it might go to his incredibly large and insufferable ego. All kidding aside, John released his debut solo album (as far as I’m aware) last year. It’s called Forecast and this is the title track… and it’s one of those “get up off your couch and dance” songs I was talking about before. John is as versed in Phish as he is the oldest of old-time fiddle and bluegrass. He is very dear to me and his music endlessly inspires me to push things further.

Rachel Baiman – “Something to Lose”

I met Rachel Baiman within the context of her duo with Christian Sedelmeyer, 10 String Symphony (check them out, they’re out of this world). I’m so glad that Rachel has been doing a lot of her own music these days in addition. This record, produced by Andrew Marlin from Mandolin Orange, has a warm, “right there in the room” kinda feel to it. This song makes me cry. There, I said it. Love is fine, OK? Will I ever see anyone again!?

Aoife O’Donovan – “Pearls – Live”

I recently revisited this live album I got to make with the inimitable Aoife O’Donovan. Lots of people know Aoife from her work with Crooked Still, as well as her more recent recordings and travel as part of I’m With Her. I toured with Aoife as her guitarist and harmony singer from 2016 into 2017. We toured her album In the Magic Hour, which was produced by Tucker Martine and features gorgeous arrangements of strings, horns, fuzzed out guitars, drums, voices… We had to recreate Aoife’s music live with three people and no bassist… which means we made it our own. This particular song is a favorite deep cut of mine.

Paper Wings – “As I Walk Down”

I’ve been saying to anyone who will listen, and I will say it to you now: Paper Wings is currently my favorite band. This is as rootsy as I get and I’m quite alright with it. Wilhelmina Frankzerda and I met when we were touring in Joy Williams’ Front Porch band. One night in Houston, Wilhelmina gave me a pair of headphones and showed me some mixes from what became Paper Wings’ Clementine album. It’s my favorite album of 2019. They’re clearly drawing from a very deep well of tradition but with new, crooked and inventive melodies…plus, they’re writing SONGS! New songs. Great, great songs.

Mipso – “Coming Down the Mountain”

Because we’re all going to come out of this eventually, right? Here’s a song to take off your mask to. See you all on the other side. ♥

Photo credit: Jacqueline Justice

MIXTAPE: Nate Sabat’s Quiet, Poignant & Powerful Playlist

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Something completely magical happens when musicians find the perfect blend of darkness, quietness, and intensity. It almost feels like the bottom drops out of the music, guiding the listener’s ears into the void of beautiful nothingness below. I still can’t pin it, how such a soft sound can feel so immeasurably huge, like it somehow contains the entire universe within itself. It’s something I’ve grown to love over the past few years, and I hope these songs will touch you as they’ve touched me.

P.S: The tracks on this list have been responsible for the majority of my tears over the past few years, so get your tissues ready. — Nate Sabat

“Humble Me” – Norah Jones

The raw story mixed with the incredibly honest delivery of the lyric always gets me with this one. Norah at her absolute best. I also particularly love the line “it never rains when you want it to.” I feel like it sticks out in a really, really good way.

“Pink Champagne” – Kathleen Edwards

The combination of Kathleen Edwards’ brilliant songwriting and Justin Vernon’s production approach are in full force on this track. Since hearing this song I’ve made it one of my life goals to not feel like this on my wedding day.

“Unless” – Hawktail

I love the winding, lush melody of this tune, paired with the beautifully shot video at Nashville’s Downtown Presbyterian Church. And also, I like, TOTALLY geek out at Paul’s bass shredding. Ya know, as a fellow bass player and all.

“Louise” – Daniel Romano

I first heard Daniel Romano on WUMB, Boston’s premier folk music radio station, with his song “Time Forgot (To Change My Heart).” Since then I’ve dug into a ton of his stuff, and particularly love his record Modern Pressure, an ode to the psychedelic sounds of yesteryear.

“Dreams of Nectar” – Abigail Washburn

This track is so cool and collage-like. I’m such a sucker for horns, so was instantly pulled in from the start the first time I heard it.

“Turning Away” – Crooked Still

I love how exposed Greg Liszt’s banjo part is on this track. The track is so short, but also the exact right length.

“Bonden & fan / Leffes polska” – Hazelius Hedin

This pair of tunes from Swedish duo Hazelius Hedin are so dark, so expansive, and so, so rich. I always picture a dark Swedish forest after an intense rainfall when I listen to this one.

“Your Long Journey” – Sam Amidon

This song, written by Rosa Lee and Doc Watson, has been beautifully reimagined by the great Sam Amidon. In my opinion he’s one of the greatest interpreters of folk and traditional music on the scene today, so definitely check out more of his stuff if you haven’t already.

“Harbour Hawk” – Becca Stevens

Becca Stevens’ music is some of the most interesting stuff I’ve heard to date. Constant texture and groove changes are tied together with impeccably crafted lyrical content. I love the opening riff of this song, and how it re-enters throughout in such a smooth way.

“00000 Million” – Bon Iver

One day last summer I was in a dark place, so naturally I listened to Bon Iver, specifically the entirety of 22, A Million. This song, the final one of the record, was so comforting. I remember being amazed at how powerful music can be, that it could somehow reach into my mind and make me feel better.

“Closer” – Joe Walsh

Man, Joe wrote an absolute gem. I don’t know if I’ve ever heard a melody so simple and profound. I told him how much I loved this tune, and that I always thought of the name as meaning “closer to someone or something,” but he told me that it’s actually “the closer of the album,” as it is actually the closer of his latest album, Borderland. Go figure.

Small World: Fascinating Albums From Ivory Coast, Turkey

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Jess Sah Bi fondly remembers as a young man hearing Don Williams’ 1982 country hit “Listen to the Radio” played, well, on the radio, and becoming obsessed with country music.

Özgün Semerci sentimentally recalls Sundays in the late ‘80s watching old Westerns on TV with his dad and becoming enraptured with the sounds of the banjo.

Nothing unusual about either of those things, except maybe that the former took place in the town of Sinfra in the Ivory Coast and the latter in Istanbul, Turkey.

The fruits of each of those passions are now found, respectively and delightfully, in two fascinating album releases this month. And each is a revelation of the flow of musical inspiration from culture to culture.

Our Garden Needs Its Flowers, via the Awesome Tapes From Africa label, brings us a captivating mix of country and country-folk influences — replete with weeping steel guitar sounds — and West African styles made in 1985 by Bi and partner Peter One. Semerci’s A Nightmare on Clawhammer Banjo, from Turkey’s Lu Records, showcases a distinctive vision in a series of fantasias that bridge Appalachia and Anatolia.

Of course, we’re accustomed to American music sounds turning up in unexpected places. Delta blues interpreted as British skiffle, and later the British Blues Invasion. Skittering bluegrass mandolins in Tokyo. Jimi Hendrix guitar pyrotechnics in the Tuareg desert trance of West Africa. Psychedelic surf guitars everywhere from Cambodia to Peru to Bollywood.

But these artists and albums are in ways more surprising, more unexpected. And both are not part of movements, per se, but of individuals in pursuit of sounds that had seduced them. And while the two releases are very different from each other, their very existence bespeaks a common bond of dedication and invention, the latter just to achieve the basic elements behind them.


“I didn’t even know the music was American country music,” Bi says of his early exposure to it. “We used to listen to Crosby, Stills & Nash and then later Don Williams. This was so popular in West Africa because some radio host played his records every morning. He became a huge star in West Africa.”

Most of what he heard then, though, was French music (Ivory Coast is, of course, a former French colony) and various West African styles. All of that kind of got jumbled in when he started his own musical career, first playing in his brother’s band at age 15 — he’s 61 now — and then moving to the capital, Abidjan, where he and Peter One started working together.

“We started playing acoustic guitars and singing very simple melodies, like we sing in the village,” he says. “But our style was kind of different. With our style, people thought about country music. So we had to add more country music instruments to get more real country.”

That meant some research and adaptations.

“We have some musicians back home who listened to the sound,” he says. “We asked questions, ‘What instruments to play?’ We found out and did it.”

That’s not pedal steel in there, though, or even Hawaiian steel, as Nigerian star King Sunny Adé used to such great effect in the distinctive aesthetics of his ju ju music grooves.

“Use the bottle,” he and One were told. “Electric guitar with the bottle on the finger to make that sound.”


It clicked, their music becoming popular not just in Abidjan, where they ultimately had their own radio and TV shows, but in the region, with regular touring through the Ivory Coast, Benin and Burkina Faso. By the time they made the album they had a sound of their own, with songs in both English and French, looking beyond their borders to issues across the continent — one song is titled “Apartheid,” another “African Chant.”

And eventually each went not just beyond their borders, but halfway around the globe to the U.S., Jess Sah Bi currently living in San Francisco and Peter One, fittingly, in Nashville, playing music separately for the most part, but occasionally together. A few years ago, the original album caught the ear of Brian Shimkovitz, the dedicated music explorer behind the Awesome Tapes From Africa web site, who tracked the two of them down and arranged to reissue it. And now the two will team again for two shows celebrating the release, Aug. 17 at the club Zebulon in Los Angeles and Sept. 21 at New York’s Union Pool.

“African people playing country music in the United States,” Bi exclaims. “That’s something funny! African country music before a Caucasian audience that knows country. Different styles, different things. Life is more interesting. Our voice carries very loud!”

Bottleneck slide guitar, of course, is standard in blues music. But here at times it is employed with remarkable nuance and sophistication to give that Nashville feeling.

For Semerci, pursuing his banjo obsession was even more of a challenge. At least they have guitars in the Ivory Coast. Banjos in Istanbul? Not so much.

“Don’t get me started!” he says. “As I am the only banjo player around, there’s next-to-nothing banjo-related here. My ex-roommate was a girl from Austin, Texas, and my second-favorite banjo was a gift she brought me from home. Maybe this album might have never happened if it wasn’t for her. Thank you, Joy!”

An earlier attempt didn’t happen, as Semerci, when he acquired his first banjo some years ago, first used bluegrass fingerpicking technique, but though he says he got pretty good at it, ultimately found it unsatisfying for material he was working on and gave up in the course of recording an album.

“I was after a more mellow tone with the banjo and the clawhammer technique seemed more suited for me as a singer-songwriter, so I leaned toward that and almost immediately fell in love with it,” he says, saying that the style allowed him to come up with his own melodies in the playing.

He repeatedly watched instructional videos by Josh Turknett, Mike Iverson and Cathy Fink that he found on YouTube, obsessively listened to albums of both classic and contemporary players — icon Pete Seeger and Sam Amidon (who mixes classic styles with bold experimental approaches) “are two names that I hold dear,” and he cites Ken Perlman and Bob Carlin as key to his development as well.

“I tried to learn and played so many traditional songs, but my favorites are ‘Will the Circle Be Unbroken,’ ‘Cluck Ol’ Hen,’ ‘Bristlecone Pine’ and ‘Roll In My Sweet Baby’s Arms.’”


But in the course he developed his own approaches that suited his musical goals.

“I wasn’t just playing known rhythms and that made this process a whole lot more stimulating for me,” he says. “I know it’s a technical detail, but the hardest part of it all was using the drop-thumb with clawhammer. But I believe I found my way around it with loads of practice.”

And in that, he found a banjo “voice” at once drawing on the music he’d embraced from afar, and the culture in which he’d been raised.

“I live in Istanbul, but my roots go back to Anatolia,” he says. “For me, the raw sounds of clawhammer and the technique itself has an Anatolian-Turkish vibe of its own within. The Turkic/Anatolian music tradition is quite raw, poetic and idyllic. If there is a common ground between those traditions, it’s attitude.”

And, he notes, there is some sonic and perhaps technique overlap with the native Turkish instrument the cümbüs, with its metal body, stretched-skin head and five pairs of strings, as seen and heard in this video he sent.

The music he created on the mostly instrumental Nightmare sets its own course, though, some leaning more to the traditional banjo elements, some more atmospheric, maybe reminiscent in places of the Bernie Leadon/Eagles banjo-centric piece “Journey of the Sorcerer” (a.k.a. to many as the theme from the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy sci-fi satire radio, TV and film adventures.)


And the album title? That’s from something else he watched on Turkey’s lone state TV station in his childhood.

“When I was a kid, the only thing that made me forget the nightmares of Saturday night horror movies was the sound of the banjo I heard in the westerns the next morning. I like being hung up on nostalgia and feeding from it while I write my music. That’s why I wanted to use the sound of the banjo as an element of horror on some parts of the album.”

And ultimately it’s a cathartic delight that reaches across continents and cultures.

“Whether it’s in America or in the steppes of Anatolia, people always find a way to say what they have to say through music,” he says. “And I just love that.”

Photo credit: Awesome Tapes of Africa for Jess Sah Bi & Peter One / Lu Records for Özgün Semerci