Artist:Marc Scibilia Hometown: New York/Nashville Latest Album:Seed of Joy
Which artist has influenced you the most … and how?
I would say Paul Simon. His lyrics are so perfect. His music is so joyful. It’s complex to create, but so easy to listen to.
What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?
The first time I played my song “Summer Clothes” live after it was released as a single. There is a lyric that says, ‘They built a new casino and they called it Little Reno, but the blinking sign’s got a busted light says Welcome to eno…’ On a whim I paused on the word ‘eno’ and the whole crowd sang it. They got the joke. It’s a good feeling when you put a lot of time into a lyric and the audience gets exactly what you were trying to do.
What other art forms — literature, film, dance, painting, etc, — inform your music?
Film would be the most direct correlation. I can’t help when I watch a Terrence Malick movie to hear melodies and lyrics. He is such an amazing director. One of his latest films, A Hidden Life, really challenged me creatively while I was finishing the album. It really encompassed all that, in my view, art can be about. The human condition.
What’s the toughest time you ever had writing a song?
Some songs come really easy, a few hours and done. Others I have mulled over and rewritten over the course of a few years. Now having a daughter… most songs are hard to write, because there’s so much going on in our house. I need concentration to really get the best out that time.
What rituals do you have, either in the studio or before a show?
In the studio I have a pretty extensive day planner. I plot out my entire day, review my big goals in life and a few other points. I can easily blow a day on Instagram, which usually just leads to anxiety, jealousy, and a sad, lost feeling. So if I have a grid I can avoid that stuff.
On the national music scene, North Carolina sets itself apart by blending the heritage of traditional roots music with the innovation of modern indie and Americana sounds. The bluegrass canon of North Carolina encompasses pioneers like Charlie Poole and Earl Scruggs, as well as groundbreaking musicians like Elizabeth Cotten, Alice Gerrard, and Doc Watson. Today’s spectrum of talent spans from modern favorites such as Darin & Brooke Aldridge, Balsam Range, and Steep Canyon Rangers, and the progressive perspective of the Avett Brothers, Rhiannon Giddens, Mandolin Orange, Hiss Golden Messenger, Mipso, and many more.
One example of how the state is merging past with present is the recent opening of North Carolina’s only vinyl pressing plant — Citizen Vinyl in Asheville.
According to press materials, the building’s third floor played host to Asheville’s historic WWNC (“Wonderful Western North Carolina”) which was once considered the most popular radio station in the United States. In 1927, the station hosted live performances by Jimmie Rodgers and made his first recordings shortly before he went to Bristol, Tennessee. In 1939, the station featured the first ever live performance by Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass Boys during its Mountain Music Time segment. Citizen Vinyl expects to keep the live music tradition alive in this former newspaper building, too.
Here at BGS, we’ve been committed to North Carolina music from our launch, notably with our Merlefest Late Night Jams, which are always worth staying up for. And how much do we love the IBMA World of Bluegrass week in Raleigh? Looking back on our archive, we gathered these songs from the artists we’ve covered over the years — and looking ahead, you’ll see all-new interviews with the Avett Brothers and Mipso, examine the classic country stars with roots in North Carolina, and spotlight some rising talent with video performances at the state’s most scenic destinations.
In the meantime, you can discover more about the North Carolina music scene through their website and on Instagram at @comehearnc
Editor’s note: This content brought to you in part by our partners at Crossroads Label Group.
Canadian singer-songwriter Julian Taylor didn’t set out to make a country record with The Ridge, but the album oozes with authentic tinges of the vibrant, pan-Canadian roots music scene. Based for most of his career in Toronto, it’s not surprising that the album (produced by Saam Hashemi) feels crisp, modern, and listenable, but its inextricable linkage to place — namely, the titular Maple Ridge, British Columbia, where Taylor summered on his grandparents’ farm as a child — ensures the folky, rootsy facets of the album feel entirely intuitive, raw, and perfectly placed.
Of course, Taylor is quick to point out that the pre-genre, elemental quality of The Ridge not only stems from his decades in music or geography alone, but from his family, their shared musical connections, and his Indigenous roots. His grandparents and family members feature heavily across the eight original songs’ lyrics, and cousins Gene and Barry Diabo join the band on drums and bass, respectively, literally underpinning the entire project with a sonic connection to Taylor’s Mohawk and West Indian roots. That The Ridge is a critically-acclaimed, stunning work of country-folk is due entirely to his commitment to compassion, empathy, family, and letting all of the above stand on their own merits.
BGS connected with Taylor via phone ahead of his Shout & Shine livestream performance, available to watch live on BGS, our Facebook page, and YouTube channel on November 11 at 7pm ET / 4pm PT.
BGS: I wanted to start by asking you about The Ridge’s connection to place, because it sounds like your story is a pretty classic, roots music/country story — spending your summers on your grandparents’ farm in British Columbia — and the title track evokes the western wild of Canada. Can you talk about the geographical spaces you’re evoking on the album and the longing I hear for them?
Taylor: When I think about Maple Ridge, BC, we’re going back now probably thirty-five years. It’s almost as if, when I close my eyes, I can see the road leading up to the house. There’s a big hill, and my grandfather used to like old cars — it’s funny, I say “old cars,” but I suppose back then they weren’t. So there’d be a big old Buick, a Mustang, and I remember taking the Buick up that hill. You’d have to get the mail way down the driveway, literally a city block’s distance, where everybody had a mailbox and you’d grab the mail, go back up the path, past these two huge trees. I don’t know if you’ve ever been to British Columbia, but I came from Toronto going to visit my grandparents, and I was always in awe of how big everything was. The trees were bigger, the mountains were there, everything was bigger. Even the slugs were bigger! [Laughs]
[My grandparents] lived in a wonderful house, a couple of wonderful places actually, one of them backed up to the Alouette River and you could see the salmon spawn. They had farmland where they had horses and a chicken coop by the horse’s stables, fields where the horses could graze, and in the basement of the house they bred boxers — the dogs. My life would’ve been composed of getting up in the morning with my grandmother, taking care of the horses, my grandfather would take me swimming because he liked to do that at the community pool in town. After that it’d be fishing, hiking, farming, and just a lot of nature. That’s what we did.
To me, the way you’re describing it with so much imagery, it’s really clear that these memories are indelible for you. I think that comes through the music — it’s not just that you’re text-painting to check the boxes of what a country aesthetic is, you’re painting a literal picture you see in your head.
This is true, I didn’t set out to create a country record. I didn’t, I just wrote these words and those were the melodies and arrangements that came to my mind. It was certainly, for me, more of a folk element than a country one.
This record feels like it bridges the gap between your life in Toronto and your experiences in British Columbia, and I mean in the way it sounds, its production, its arrangements. The music is crisp and clean and feels very polished, but there’s still this raw, sort of natural element that I feel like is the mixing of rural and city. Do you agree or disagree?
Now that you mention it, I can hear it and I know what you’re talking about. Before you had mentioned it, I didn’t. It’s a very interesting thing, because I would say the rawness of it is because these are takes that are completely right off the floor, there’s no overdubs except for when we added the fiddle, the pedal steel, and the girls’ voices. Those were the only overdubs, because we couldn’t fit everybody in the room. My cousins Gene and Barry, they’re from Kahnawake, the Indian reservation close to Montréal, so we’d go and play, jam at the campfire, jam on the back porch, jam in the garage, and we’ve been doing that for years.
So when I asked them to be part of this record, I deliberately only sent them songs that were acoustic-based, and didn’t really tell them what I wanted, because I wanted this rawness and I wanted to sing the songs as they were. That’s why I think that particular [sound is evident], it’s a family affair, there’s a conversation between the core band that’s happening anyways. Saam Hashemi, who co-produced and engineered the record, he’s from the UK originally, he’s now Canadian, and we’ve worked together before. His production style is very pristine, the way that he captured it. That’s not deliberate, but it’s a wonderful hybrid for you to pick up on it. I hope others did and after this I hope that more do!
To me, part of this record sounding so country comes out of that Western Canada, American Midwest, Great Plains tradition of Indigenous country music and country bands that come from that region. Is that a community you operate in or interact with? Was that an influence for you, pulling from the generations-long tradition of hardscrabble, garage band, Saturday-night-at-the-local-bar Indigenous country bands of the rural Canadian and American west?
Absolutely, I wouldn’t say that it’s the West or Midwest, for me, because it directly comes from the East, actually, oddly enough! My family are East Coast Indigenous people, my mom’s family is from Kahnawake. It does come from that kitchen party, grab-your-guitar, grab-whatever-you-got — doesn’t matter if it’s a pot or a pan. It comes from that aesthetic, for sure. Absolutely! When you research that aesthetic, it’s not necessarily a country feel, either. It has elements of country and blues. Blues is very big in that, too. The way that my cousins are playing on The Ridge, there’s a gentle sort of shuffle that’s very indicative of what we’re talking about, yet it has this kind of swing to it at the same time. It’s like a country swing. That happens on a lot of the tracks where you can really feel it. On “Ballad of the Young Troubadour,” on the conga and upright bass you can feel it really strongly, as well. It’s a garage band aesthetic, for sure.
It’s a very Indigenous thing! If you go back and watch movies like Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked the World it’s interesting because the history of American roots music — in my personal opinion, I’ve read books on this and stuff, I know others think differently — without Indigenous people and without Black people we wouldn’t have roots music at all.
Yep. Full stop. It’s that simple.
[Laughs] Yes! Full stop. Exactly. It’s interesting to see so many new Americana artists that are Indigenous and Black, I’m really so honored to be even considered in that group of people!
I wanted to ask you about “Human Race,” because I think that song pretty clearly lays out a framework for creating empathy and understanding and I wanted to ask you where that comes from, within you, specifically. Empathy is such an individual thing, I’m always interested in how people take it from being intensely individual and personal and turn it into something universal and relatable. What is that process like for you? Especially in writing “Human Race?”
That empathy comes across and feels universal because I know someone who is deeply close to me that has suffered from mental disabilities and mental illness and it has affected me and my family. You learn from a very young age, even before you know exactly what it is, that you have to be quiet and patient. You have to be strong, yet at the same time very gentle. You have to allow these loved ones’ triumphs and their dreams to be bigger than anything that you can possibly imagine, just so that they have an opportunity to express themselves in a way that makes them feel important. In writing the song, my message to this particular person was that I believe in them, their strength, and their pain — and to acknowledge that I go through all of those feelings too, just like they do. That’s how that song became so universal, by allowing myself to let go and also praise someone that I absolutely adore.
What have listeners’ or fans’ reactions to “Human Race” been like?
When I first posted it I think people really were shocked and gravitated to it in such a way that I didn’t realize would happen. This is the song that led me to believe I had to put this record out earlier than I was intending to. It was around the time the pandemic lockdown here in Canada started, so it touched a lot of souls. I was very pleased that it did. I think the aspects of the song about inner peace and overcoming challenges resonate with people.
It feels like “It’s Not Enough” is a song about grace, about how we all are enough, but through the opposite lens. So I wanted to ask you about the idea of applying grace to ourselves, especially right now when that feels so much more difficult.
Applying grace to ourselves is such a difficult thing to do, but such a necessary thing to do. People who think and think a lot, other people don’t realize just how much work that is and how tiring it is to try to figure out what’s on your mind, just as simple as that. I’m a person who feels compassion for other people and myself, but I’m also extremely difficult on myself and hard on myself — as most people would say, we are our own worst critics in a lot of ways. I’m trying to be a little less critical with myself and, in turn, with others. I’m trying to accept what is. I think this song, “It’s Not Enough,” in a way is insinuating that for humans to not to believe that is kind of an insidious frame of mind.
Can you tell me about the final track, “Ola Let’s Dance?” There’s a meditative quality to the refrain that resonates with me, the way it’s almost like a mantra, really intentional in the way you’re delivering it. Where does that song come from?
Well, I was thinking about beats in my attic where I do a lot of my demos. The beat came first, I just held onto it forever and ever and ever and ever and ever, just sitting. When my grandmother had passed away, and my grandfather had passed years before, we had to go out and collect all of her stuff. I was the one that inherited most of it. It’s sitting in my attic as we speak. Just rummaging through memories and stuff I found poetry that was written by my grandfather. The poem I recite in “Ola Let’s Dance” was not written by me; it was written by my grandfather, John Thomas Skanks. I just loved it so much, I had to try to write it into a song. I came up with the guitar part — it was very tribal, I wanted the whole thing to feel very tribal. It’s probably the furthest thing from a country or folk song on the record, yet it comes out like that anyway. [Laughs] It’s really bizarre!
The amalgamation of my maternal grandparents is what that song exemplifies, to me. I was trying to sing it, trying to put a melody to it, ‘til one day I just said, “Why don’t I just recite it and see what happens?” [Laughs] I did it and everyone was like, “YUP! That’s how it’s going to go.” My maternal grandmother’s name was Ola. She taught dance at the University of Buffalo for a little while. She raised four girls on her own, doing what she could to survive, and ended up teaching dance. So the song, in my heart, is both the meeting and separation of my grandparents, which brought me to life.
Artist:Madison Cunningham Hometown: Orange County, Califoria Album:Wednesday EP
“I challenged myself at the beginning of last year to learn and post a cover song every week as a way to stay inspired both in writing and performing. What started as a fun prompt cracked something open in me and stayed for good, freeing me up in the areas I tend to be too cautious in. After weeks and weeks of this, I decided to release four of these songs as an EP of interpretations, in hopes that they would bring comfort to people in the same way they for did me during this painful year.” — Madison Cunningham
Which artist has influenced you the most … and how?
It’s hard to give credit to only one as so many artists helped me along in different phases of my life. But if there’s one artist that encompasses all forms of my deepest interests, which is singing, playing, and writing, it has to be Joni Mitchell. She taught me how to sing and how to be a free thinker. Her music cracked me open as a young shy writer.
What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?
I was in Aspen, Colorado, last year opening for Amos Lee. I’m not quite sure if it was the elevation or the drunk audience, but it holds the record for being one of the most comfortable and freeing shows that I’ve played to date. For me, if there’s one small accident or interruption during the tuning portion of a performance, it makes me feel right at home. The conversation is the fun of it and makes the music feel invincible. Without it, I feel like I opened the door to the wrong apartment.
Since food and music go so well together, what is your dream pairing of a meal and a musician?
I think the only answer to this question is to eat some sort of red pasta with red wine, while sitting across from Joni Mitchell underneath a New York veranda. Ideally at sunset. But the truth is, I’d jump at any chance, at any hour, to have such a meal.
What’s the toughest time you ever had writing a song?
Probably when writing “Something to Believe In.” It’s quite possibly my favorite song that I’ve written, but cost me most of my hair. I sat on the chorus, and verses one and two, for about six months. And on the day I decided to finish it, I was pounding my fist against the floor and standing on my head trying to come up with verse three. Even after I finished it, I wasn’t convinced this song was for me to sing. So I gave it to a friend and then ended up recording it myself later.
How often do you hide behind a character in a song or use “you” when it’s actually “me”?
I think every character is some three-dimensional form of myself. The only way you can write sincerely about someone is by relating to them, and you really only have your own experience to go by. Writing from a character’s perspective also gives you a kind of bravery to write about yourself, freeing you up to say things you’d normally feel was too forward. It’s an “I’m only the messenger” sort of a thing.
Artist:Raye Zaragoza Hometown: Greenwich Village, Manhattan, NYC Latest album:Woman In Color (Rebel River Records) Personal nicknames (or rejected band names): Ray was my nickname for my whole life. My full name is Rayanna. I added the e when I started playing music!
What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?
My favorite memory of being on stage was when I was in the third grade and I was performing “I Can Do That” from A Chorus Line in my school’s talent show. I had my tap shoes on and everything. But I had what was probably bronchitis. I hardly had a voice and had a terrible cough. I guess my parents thought I was still ok to perform! I gargled salt water every five minutes while I waited for my turn. I got on stage and could barely get any of the song out. It was just low muffled coughs and groans and then tap dance breaks. I asked my friend how I sounded after and she said, “It was pretty bad.” Since then, I have never really had stage fright, and don’t really stress when I have to perform sick. I conquered bombing a set very early on in my stage career. I am so grateful for that!
What rituals do you have, either in the studio or before a show?
I love rituals. Before a show, I always stretch, which feels funny because I just stand there and play guitar and sing! I am not doing any dance moves or anything like that, haha. But when I was a kid, going on stage meant that I was dancing, so I feel like something is wrong if I don’t stretch before going on stage. I also always drink hot water before a show (even in the summer) and say a little prayer and land acknowledgment with my crew.
What was the first moment that you knew you wanted to be a musician?
I was always music obsessed as a kid. I always had headphones on and thought songwriting was the absolute coolest thing anyone could do. But I knew I wanted to be a career musician at my first real gig. I played House of Blues (restaurant stage) in Hollywood when I was 19 (2012). It was one of those “pay to play”-type deals that I my roll my eyes at so deeply now. I ended up selling the place out with all of my co-workers from my hostess job and got up there to play the four original songs I had written to date and some covers. It was the first time I played my own songs for people at a real performance. I had this crazy feeling during the first song. I felt like I was on the best drug trip ever. I felt happier than I’d ever felt in my life. It was a magical feeling and I’ve never stopped chasing it since.
If you had to write a mission statement for your career, what would it be?
Be the role model you wish you had as a kid. Make your ancestors proud. But don’t take yourself too seriously.
Which elements of nature do you spend the most time with and how do those impact your work?
I moved to Long Beach, California, in January and have recently become obsessed with swimming in the ocean. I honestly had very little exposure to nature as a kid growing up in New York City. Central Park was my nature. I now live three blocks from the ocean and go almost every day. The ocean calms and grounds me. It brings me to that grounded place where I can create best. And on the other extreme, I love the desert. The desert and ocean both make me feel so small and alone in a way that inspires me to create.
Kate Stables, principal of alternative roots outfit This Is the Kit, didn’t intend to write a pandemic album to follow her acclaimed 2017 debut, Moonshine Freeze. In fact, she wrote the entirety of Off Off On well before the term “COVID-19” entered our collective consciousness.
In the way that great art often can, though, the songs Stables wrote for Off Off On anticipated the needs of our current moment. Across 12 tracks, Stables sings of growth-inspiring personal reflection, the “two steps forward, one step back” nature of processing trauma, and continuing to move forward in the face of grief, all explored with deeply felt empathy and sharp insight.
Stables and her band recorded the bulk Off Off On prior to the COVID-19 lockdown alongside producer Josh Kaufman (Bonny Light Horseman, the Hold Steady) at Real World Studios in the U.K. Sonically, the album builds atop the lush, banjo-driven alternative folk of Moonshine Freeze, with complex, often subtle arrangements that offer thoughtful soundscapes for Stables’ striking lyrics.
BGS caught up with Stables via Skype to discuss finding sources of inspiration, writing about difficult personal moments, and living as a musician during the COVID-19 lockdown.
BGS: To start us off, everyone has had their own specific difficulties resulting from the pandemic, but musicians, especially, have been dealt a tough blow. How has that affected you and how have you adjusted to being home more, and not being able to tour this record?
Stables: At first, it was kind of novel and a bit of a relief, almost. For the first summer in living memory, I didn’t have loads of festivals to do. So it was a summer I spent with my family doing family stuff instead. So that was nice, at first. Now that the time for actual touring would have been starting soon but it isn’t starting soon, it feels a bit weird. It’s the longest amount of time I’ve ever gone without playing gigs and without touring. So it feels really weird and I miss doing gigs so much. And I really miss my band. They’re in the U.K. and I’m in France. I’ve never gone this long without seeing them.
With regard to the album, you wrote and completed the majority of it before the pandemic started. What were the origins of the album and how has its meaning evolved for you since you first began plotting it?
I don’t usually have a pre-album vision. It’s normally just me writing songs as and when they come and seeing what kind of shape it all takes along the way. One of the earliest songs that was written for this album was “Started Again.” “Started Again” is almost a bit of a bridge song from the last album to this album, because I feel like it could have gone on either, in terms of what I was thinking about. It feels like it’s connected to my past life, in a way, because I feel like everyone has a new type of life now. The world has passed through this strange portal and we’re all a bit different and have to adapt to things. It’s not an obviously key song on this album… but it’s also a bit linked to my thinking about perseverance and getting through the difficulties and coming out the other side again and again. It’s funny because that’s also what the world seems to be dealing with at the moment. Those are themes that accidentally came out while writing the album, without knowing that COVID-19 was coming.
I read the track-by-track notes that you wrote for the album, and one line that stuck out to me was, “Listening through to these recordings, I hear new COVID-19 references every day.” Could you elaborate on that? I heard some myself when I was listening, but am curious as to which resonated with you.
Partly there’s the “we’ve all got to get through this” that I was dealing with in the album, which now seems like I’m talking about COVID. There are lines like, “Try not to cough.” That is too ridiculous and coincidental. There’s a song about a hospital and the breathing apparatus in the hospital; that felt spooky, now that so many people are in hospitals than ever before. Things that were written with one story in mind and now this new situation has given them another story.
I’ve talked to a few other artists who have had similar experiences. It’s interesting, because obviously no one could have predicted where we are now, but it does make you wonder if you were intuiting that we were collectively going down this road.
Yeah, are we all tuned into something that we don’t know about? It does feel weird. I think also with writing, and you may get this in your work, you do end up with funny coincidences and predicting the future accidentally sometimes. It’s just the way it goes when you’re working with words and language and storytelling, whether it’s journalism or fiction or songwriting. These weird cosmic moments do happen.
One of my favorite tracks, both sonically and lyrically, is “This Is What You Did.” How did you write that one?
Writing it was fun because it was an example of me playing with rhythm, which is my favorite thing to do. I tried to find a banjo-picking pattern that was quite hard, something I almost couldn’t do, and worked until I got it. I tried to find a pattern where I wasn’t using the same fingers every time, something as random as possible. The beats were regular but the strings I was picking were somewhat randomly generated. Then I tried to find vocal rhythms that were difficult for me to sing at the same time. I guess it was like brain gymnastics. I like it when you can’t tell where a pattern starts and finishes. … That repetitive, cyclical nature of the music lent itself to this mind-loop approach with the lyrics.
Reading through your notes about “No Such Thing,” you reference both Jack Kornfield and Jane Austen as inspirations. How do you find inspiration? Do you always have your antenna up?
Language is the material I work in and I really enjoy exploring other people’s work with language. When I hear a phrase that makes me laugh or that sounds pleasing to say out loud, I’m always noting down little quotes of things that make a spark in my brain, even if it’s something out of Bob’s Burgers or something… So I guess I do always have a bit of a radar up for rhymes, assonance alliteration; things like that make my ears prick up.
When you reach the point in your writing process when you’re ready to fully arrange a song, what does your collaboration with your band look like? They’re such fantastic players and it sounds like you’re all quite close.
Sometimes I have a bit of an idea of the vibe or the kind of pace that I was envisaging for a song, but it’s also nice to not say anything until they’ve tried something out. Quite often they’ll find something that’s better than what I had in mind. I’ve ended up with three of my favorite musicians playing in my band, which feels like a privilege and a real kind of fluke. So it’s nice to let them do their own thing as much as possible. I’d be interested to know, though, if they think that’s what I do. Maybe they think I’m really controlling. [Laughs] What I hope I do is let them have space to do their stuff.
Prior to lockdown, you got to spend a lot of time on the road with the National. How does playing as part of someone else’s project inform your work as a solo artist?
In a few ways, but it’s hard to put your finger on one. Traveling is nutritious for me in terms of writing and wellbeing and being inspired. The act of traveling, even just looking out the window while you’re going along the road, is inspiring. But also the fact that you’re going to different places and meeting new people and having these new experiences… Also just seeing how other people work. I found it fascinating to be part of this symbiotic ecosystem that’s going around on tour. Everyone plays an important part and looks out for each other and it’s really fascinating to see how other people tour.
It’s a bit tricky to look too far ahead right now, but, in addition to getting your album out, what are you looking forward to in the coming months?
Because the gigs aren’t there to be looked forward to, I think I’m looking forward to seeing what I can get done instead. There are a lot of musical projects that I’d love to get stuck into, and I hope that I just will. This time, we’re all learning how to be ready for anything and not to assume that something is going to happen, so, ideally, I’ll just be making music instead of touring. I really hope I’ll be able to make music with people, even if it’s long-distance.
Artist:Stephanie Lambring Hometown: Seymour, Indiana Song: “Birdsong Hollow” Album:Autonomy Release Date: October 23, 2020 Label: Tone Tree Music
In Their Words: “One of my favorite views in the Nashville area is from the Natchez Trace Parkway Bridge, which stretches over a breathtaking valley called Birdsong Hollow. Many summer evenings I’ve parked in the lot on the north side of the bridge, stepped out of the car, and braved my fear of heights. It’s always a little busy — pockets of flowy dresses and duck faces and drones. But amidst the eager influencers and nature enthusiasts hangs a heaviness; there’s a sign on either side of the bridge that reads ‘There is still hope. Call anytime.’ It haunted me. I knew there was a story that needed to be told.” — Stephanie Lambring
Artist:Andrew Grimm Hometown: Baltimore, Maryland Song: “A Little Heat” Album:A Little Heat Release Date: October 30, 2020 Label: WhistlePig Records
In Their Words: “This song is a departure from the rest. I cannot offer up dark and depressing ideas without suggesting some type of a salve or solution. That’s the deal here: when we start seeing each other as humans, when we smash our phones, when we begin to trust each other, when we thaw the frost between us, we will come out the other side of crisis, together. ‘All we need is a little heat.'” — Andrew Grimm
Artist: Justin Farren Hometown: Sacramento, California Song: “Fixer Upper” Album:Pretty Free Release Date: October 23, 2020
In Their Words: “A reflection on the experience of building the home I currently live in with my wife and daughter. With no previous experience, we broke ground in 2004 and finished construction in late 2007. As the financial market collapsed, our janky new home was initially appraised at a value less than the cost of the materials it took to build it, let alone the three years of exhaustive labor. I felt dumb. 🙂 On the whole album, I used the only acoustic guitar I’ve ever owned. It’s a cheap Simon & Patrick I bought when I was a teenager. The electric guitar is a Les Paul Standard that a friend left at my house 12 years ago. I’m not much of a guitar nerd. I feel like they’re all pretty similar. I took an acoustic approach on this song because it’s about building a home. So a natural ‘wooden’ sound seemed right.” — Justin Farren
Artist:Sarah Dooley Hometown: Brooklyn, New York Song: “Is This Heartbreak?” Album:Is This Heartbreak? Release Date: October 23, 2020
In Their Words: “This song is kind of the thesis statement of the album. I wrote it when I was falling for someone, and terrified. I’d been burned badly fairly recently and yet there I was, making myself vulnerable again. You feel like an idiot. Like, will I ever learn? It’s about that terrifying moment where you lose control and let emotions take over. Your brain’s instinct is always to protect your heart, and attempt to prepare for the two options that every relationship presents: ‘is this love? is this heartbreak?’ But ultimately, living a full life means taking that plunge, regardless of future pain, fully knowing the devastation that may wait for you on the other side.” — Sarah Dooley
Photo credit: Carly Hoogendyk
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This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
