WATCH: Donovan Woods, “Back For The Funeral”

Artist: Donovan Woods
Hometown: Sarnia, Ontario, Canada
Song: “Back For The Funeral”
Album: Things Were Never Good If They’re Not Good Now
Release Date: July 12, 2024
Label: End Times Music

In Their Words: “‘Back For The Funeral’ is a story that a lot of us end up experiencing. Big life events – deaths, births, divorces – seem to pull us out of the flow of time somehow. The days around these events can feel like a dream wherein the regular rules of our lives don’t apply. People fall back onto old habits or maybe construct a new temporary-self to shield them from grief or shock. What I like best about this song is that it reflects that dream-like feeling without sacrificing clarity. It feels the way those life-dividing days feel. I wrote it with Lori McKenna and Matt Nathanson. I’m about as proud of it as anything I’ve written. I hope it’s useful to people.” – Donovan Woods

Track Credits: Written by Donovan Woods, Lori Mckenna, Matt Nathanson.

Acoustic guitars, vocal, piano – Donovan Woods
Synths, drum programming – James Bunton
Bass – Mark McIntyre
Strings – Drew Jurecka

Recorded in Toronto at Union Sound Company – Studio B, Small Dog Sound.


Photo Credit: Brittany Farhat

Artist of the Month: Kaia Kater

BGS first had the opportunity to work with singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and composer Kaia Kater all the way back in 2016. She appeared on our inaugural Shout & Shine showcase stage that year at the International Bluegrass Music Association’s business conference in Raleigh, North Carolina. It was the first ever showcase celebrating diversity at the headline bluegrass event and it was also where I met her for the first time in person. We were both panelists for another first-ever, IBMA’s round-table style panel on inclusion that was convened the day after Shout & Shine. Partially planned in response to North Carolina’s just-passed transphobic measure, HB2 – one of the first anti-trans “bathroom bills,” beginning what would become a nearly decade-long and as yet unfinished battle in state houses around the country for equal rights for trans folks – the panel’s format was all about direct conversation and reaching folks where they were at.

A grassroots collective of musicians, artists, and industry professionals who represented often marginalized identities in bluegrass had decided enough was enough, we would have to stake out and hold space at IBMA’s conference to have these long overdue conversations about who is and who isn’t excluded from these roots music genres and what we can do to make all folks feel safe(r) and at home in these communities we love. Kater was right there, engaging and often leading dialogues on these important subjects. A handful of days later, she published her first byline on BGS, an incisive, compassionate, and necessary op-ed on Breaking the Wheel of Silence – calling out all too common “closing of ranks” and music industry status quos that reinforce and protect misogyny, patriarchy, and systems of sexual harassment and sexual violence and their perpetrators.

In short, Kater has long been a thought leader in roots music, especially in bluegrass, old-time, and our BGS family. We’ve been fortunate to get to collaborate with her in various ways on that vital work, from having her writing published on our site and in our year end round-ups to covering her own art and roots music creations.

Luckily, the music she crafts and the messages within it make it infinitely easier to spotlight these often touchy and incredibly nuanced issues. From her debut, 2015’s Sorrow Bound, to 2016’s impressive Nine Pin – which some call her “break out” record – Kater has been spinning complex and entrancing roots music threads that draw on her lived experiences as a Canadian-Grenadian banjo player and lifelong folk musician, turning over and examining what are often called “thorny” or “divisive” issues. Her music grounds abstract and theoretical concepts in the past, present, and future. But her songs don’t sound mired in these issues or concepts at all, just the opposite.

Over the course of her career, from her teens and young adulthood to today, on the cusp of releasing a new album, Strange Medicine (out May 17 via Free Dirt Records), this singular perspective Kater has cultivated continues to blossom, grow, and come into sharper focus. 2018’s Grenades, a sort of concept record placed decidedly in the Caribbean and tracing Kater’s roots back to the beautiful island of Grenada, processes generational traumas, the machinations and intricacies of culture, the nebulousness of belonging, and so many other colors and textures decidedly at home in folk music, but enlivened constantly through Kater’s creative lens. Grenades is a master work, demonstrating a creator and musician who knows who they are – even when they do not.

Six years later, enter Strange Medicine, another album masterpiece that finds Kater still more confident, more at ease, and just as convicting. Genre parameters, her prior records, and her strong positioning of community are all present here, but perhaps not as directly. Instead, Strange Medicine seems to be grown from the fertile, rich, and dense soil of Kater’s career to this point. There are indirect touches of all of the above, but overall this collection feels brand new. It is a novel synthesis of her values systems and worldview, one that feels assured while still exploratory, firm but flexible, responsive but not reactive. Strange, indeed, but never odd (or estranged).

With stunning collaborations with Taj Mahal, Allison Russell, and Aoife O’Donovan – who is featured on “The Witch,” a track made available today – Kater demonstrates how, more than ten years since she began her professional trajectory, her music shines with cross pollination, positioning the community members who helped shape her own music within that very body of work. It’s part of why her new band, New Dangerfield – with Jake Blount, Tray Wellington, and Nelson Williams – can be called a supergroup, though that moniker immediately feels reductive. Kater and her cohort are no longer simply adding their voices to an ongoing conversation, they are the conversation. The center of gravity – in folk, old-time, bluegrass, Americana, and beyond – has shifted, and with that shift we see Kater, many of her peers in her generation, as well as those collaborators and influences who came before continually advancing these discourses.

Her medium, as always, is music. Her dialogue, as always, is not simply with those who choose to consume her art, but specifically with those who engage with it, try it on, turn it inside out, and kick the tires. This is music that will stand up to that sort of holistic interaction. It’s infinitely listenable, incredibly fun, and grooving, too; Strange Medicine might be the danciest record in Kater’s catalog. It’s intellectual, yes, but more than that, Kater shows us that music can be nutritious, challenging, and dense while effervescent, joyful, and soaring.

All month long, we’ll be celebrating our pal, collaborator, and constant source of inspiration Kaia Kater as our Artist of the Month. Below, enjoy our Essential Kaia Kater Playlist and watch for an exclusive AOTM interview coming in just a couple of weeks, too.

Back then in 2015 and 2016, when we were just introduced to Kater and her music, if you had asked any of us if we’d expect her to be our Artist of the Month someday, down the line, I think almost any of us would’ve responded with a resounding, “Yes!” So we’re especially proud to celebrate Strange Medicine and Kaia Kater as our May Artist of the Month.


Photo Credit: Janice Reid

Humbird: From Dinner Table Singing to Dismantling White Supremacy

Siri Undlin, better known as Humbird, is a talented singer-songwriter from the Twin Cities with deep roots in Minnesota music and the land that surrounds her. Growing up, she was a true cold-weather kid who loved hockey during winter, but also loved music and feeding her vivid imagination. Her interest in music was nurtured by her parents, religious music, church choir, and also her Aunt Joan, who taught Siri guitar at age 12. Hockey actually led her to her first band, Celtic Club, which would play at Irish Pubs, talent shows, and of course, at the local hockey rink. They introduced her to Celtic music and her first live performances.

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In this episode of Basic Folk, Undlin shares her rich experience studying folklore and fairy tales, which greatly influence her musical journey. She discusses her intensive research in Ireland and Nordic countries, exploring how music intertwines with storytelling traditions.

Throughout the episode, Undlin reflects on her upbringing, her time at an art school, and her evolving approach to songwriting, blending traditional folk music with indie music and experimental sounds. On her new album, Right On, Siri is acknowledging and addressing white supremacy in middle America, as highlighted in her song “Child of Violence.” She talks candidly about what writing and releasing the song taught her about white supremacy. Touring has provided Undlin with unexpected challenges and valuable insights, shaping her perspective as a musician and performer. We talk about the importance of being open to chaos and disciplined in one’s mindset while navigating the music industry and life on the road.

(Editor’s Note: Read our recent interview feature with Humbird here.)


Photo Credit: Juliet Farmer

Katie Pruitt on ‘Mantras’ and Letting Go of Control

Knowing how 2020 and the years that followed would unfold, the dynamism of Katie Pruitt‘s debut record is even more awe-inspiring. Expectations introduced the Nashville-via-Georgia singer-songwriter alongside her deepest aches and most intimate struggles as an openly queer individual raised as part of a devout Roman Catholic family in the conservative South. It would go on to earn a GRAMMY-nomination and ample praise for her lyricism, empowered performances, arranging, and instinct for production. In short, it’s undeniable that Pruitt set quite the high bar of expectations for herself and the music she would choose to share next.

Four years later, Pruitt has unveiled Mantras. While flashes of brilliance from a familiar autobiographical lens inform and inspire the 11 track recording, these aren’t simply more straightforward, memoir-style anecdotes. The truths and experiences Pruitt shares on Mantras feel more revealing than Expectations, as this time, Pruitt’s lens looks decidedly more inward at what she has lived through, reflected on, and learned from since writing her last album.

Not only is Mantras‘ thought process largely internal in nature, but each song leads to paths, stories, and developments that have yet to be fully resolved – if ever they will. The album showcases a great deal of inspiring perseverance in the self-contained conclusions of songs like “Self-Sabotage” and “Worst Case Scenario” and more generally, it unveils a journey of self-healing from start to finish.

However, while Mantras ultimately provides reassurance, peace, and closure, the takeaway isn’t meant to be one of permanent resolution or rigid perspective around anything Pruitt has seemingly conquered in each song. Like the recapitulating nature of a mantra, she is mindful of being continuously attentive and compassionate towards her inner struggles, rather than seeing them as singular moments of adversity.

Speaking with her by phone, BGS shared an insightful conversation with Pruitt about how her focus on inner-healing shaped the sound of Mantras, how her perspective around disagreement and connection has changed, how she cultivates inner strength, and much more.

How was it navigating the presence of expectations for Mantras, considering your intent to move away from a focus on external validation?

Katie Pruitt: On the first album, I was dodging different expectations, you know? I was dodging expectations of my parents or of how people in my hometown saw me and who I am now. I sort of accidentally set high expectations for this next record. I felt like I was competing against myself in a lot of ways and I really had to find moments to just surrender, come back to center, and just focus on the fun feeling in the present moment and talk about that, instead talking about things that I think people want me to say. I needed to focus on what I needed to say, which is maybe different than what other people expected or wanted to hear on this album.

Knowing this album is an expression of personal growth and a journey of sorts for you, what does it feel like to just now be talking about these songs after holding onto them for so long?

Coincidentally, I feel like everything on Mantras is lining up with my life as it’s coming out.

With me talking about my parents selling my childhood home [in “Naive Again”], yeah, my parents are selling my childhood home as we speak. And when I finished a lot of the songs about my partner slowly checking out and leaving, maybe a week after I turned in the record, we broke up. So I’m still experiencing a lot of these things in my life. It’s kind of a first for me, because when Expectations came out, I had kind of already patched things up with my parents and there were things in my personal life were kind of resolved. But then I was having to dive back into those issues every day on stage or whenever I sang those songs. This is different, honestly. It kind of feels good to be able to deal with what’s going on in my life with the songs in real time.

You’ve talked about building “the tracks from the ground up as opposed to cutting everything live, which gave so much more room to let the songs evolve and become what they needed to be.” What does that mean for you and what did those moments of full realization for the music feel like for you, and producers Collin Pastore and Jake Finch?

Jake and Collin’s workflow is very quick. And that was a challenge for me, but I felt like we challenged each other in the right ways. They move very fast and I was like, “Wait a second. Let’s take a look at this. Let’s sit with it for a second and make sure we like it.”

I think having the option [to record parts individually] instead of having all this pressure to be in the studio with a full band and having everyone play the right parts at the right time, was nice for us – to just build one part at a time and ask ourselves, “Is this correct? Does this fit?” And if it doesn’t, we’d say, “We can always mute it.” … There’s not necessarily a wrong answer. We’re just trying to evoke a feeling and if we feel it then other people will too.

What brought you together with Christian Wiman’s work, ultimately inspiring you to writing the album title track?

I was listening to this poetry podcast, [Poetry Unbound], I was really into that during the pandemic and that was obviously a tough time for a lot of people, [creating] a lot of points of contention, especially around beliefs and belief systems. I just felt like, my parents believe different things than me and my friends started to believe different things than me. So that poem, [“All My Friends,”] just really resonated as this “A-ha!” moment.

At the very end of the poem [Wiman] says something like, “My beautiful, credible friends.” In the first part of the poem, you almost feel like he isn’t mocking them, but like, he’s kind of poking fun at how many rabbit holes there are to go down, as far as spirituality goes or, finding yourself goes. Then at the end, he’s like, “And all of them are credible, all of them are valid.” And that really struck a chord for me and I just think that’s a really powerful statement.

Given the open and accepting mindset you impart through “All My Friends” and its juxtaposition with the piercing, personal insights you share in “White Lies, White Jesus, and You,” where would you say religion, particularly Christianity and Catholicism, exists for you now, compared to when you were writing Expectations?

I really try to make clear to my parents or to some of my friends who are still Christian, that [the song] is talking about people who take the Bible and abuse it for their own benefit – whether that be political or just to justify shitty behavior on their end, like saying, “Oh, well, it says that gay people aren’t allowed in heaven. So I’m allowed to say this.”

That’s the part of [Christianity] that really turns me off to it in general. And that’s a shame, because the dude in the Bible, Jesus, the version that I have kind of come to discover as I’ve gotten older, is a pretty progressive dude. And I don’t mean that in the political sense. I mean, in the sense of he’s accepting of everyone no matter what their background is. Like, Jesus himself never says anything about gay people. He’s friends with kind of some sketchy characters if you were going to look at it through a lens of today. So that’s the Jesus that I wish I were taught more about when I was growing up. I think “White Lies, White Jesus and You” was a way for me to process the [version of] Jesus that I have experienced as a closeted gay kid and how the ways that version hurt me and put that in the past and put that behind me.

In what way would you say your journey of self-healing helped you to stop seeing religion as having the power to dictate your worth?

I let go of religion dictating my self-worth a while ago. But then I let other things [take its place]. I used to seek external validation from the church or from my parents or from older mentors in my life. I let that go as I became a young adult and then I started giving other things power to do that. Like success and relationships. I let those things dictate my worth. But then I started delving into the power that intrinsic happiness has.

We really fully don’t have control over what happens in our life. We have some control, but very little. And if your worth can come from within, then those moving parts of life have less control over you or less effect on you … once I learned that, I was able to focus more heavily on, “Let’s have this voice in my head be kind and then I can go from there.” Just me practicing being kind to myself first kind of put this armor up around me and it helps me navigate the world.

What’s changed about your songwriting process since you’ve taken on more personal strength and inner compassion?

For a long time, when my inner voice was more critical and cutthroat and editorial, I couldn’t really write. I wasn’t able to get the thoughts just out of my head and onto the paper, which is the first step you know? Then you have something to work from when you’re able to just say what you feel. But I was just so scared to write a bad song that I wouldn’t write anything. And I think that’s the worst mistake you can make. There’s no harm in writing a bad song.

I think that it’s just about setting the bar, taking a chill pill and [remembering], “Oh yeah, songwriting is fun, songwriting should be fun.” It should be a way for me to get an outlet, a way for me to get this out of my head and look at it. So removing the critical voice is huge. And that was connected to therapy and to me slowly learning how to be kind to myself and slowly learning how to just enjoy writing songs again.

Where, with whom, or in what, do you find your hope and strength to persevere when life feels overwhelming or your inner reserves are running low?

The past or other people’s experiences really help me. I read a lot of Patti Smith and sometimes I’ll just open to a random page and it’ll be the piece of advice that I needed. So definitely words and art and poetry. Another thing would be when I’m feeling, “Okay, all hope is lost,” I have this urge to just run to nature and I just go to the mountains or go sit by a river for a long amount of time and think and meditate and try to put my problems and my fears and everything into perspective. I think, “Well, I’m on this planet right now and I’m sitting by a river. How cool is that?” Just kind of zooming out and not zooming in so closely – that helps me. And like, just good friends and just laughing and having buddies that you know you have a drink with or dinner with and just fuckin’ laughing about the crazy things that have gone wrong. Like, laughter is huge. I know it’s like, “Oh, laughter is medicine,” but it literally is.


Photo Credit: Alysse Gafkjen

More Than A Trend

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Based in northern Alabama with deep, organic ties to so many sounds and styles of the “Americana Music Triangle,” the Secret Sisters have built a musical brand on a distinct iteration of Southern gothic songwriting steeped in familial harmonies. Their music is grounded, but broad, specific but infinitely relatable.

Over the course of five studio albums released since 2010 – including 2020’s Grammy-nominated Saturn Return, which was produced by Brandi Carlile – the sisters, Laura Rogers and Lydia (Rogers) Slagle, have strayed very little from the sounds that first entranced audiences all across the South and around the country more than 14 years ago. Still, while they occupy a distinct and confident sonic aesthetic, their catalog never reads as tired, weary, or redundant. Mind, Man, Medicine, their latest record, was released on March 29 and while it listens like classic, iconoclastic Secret Sisters, it also registers as brand new, vital, and innovative.

It follows that two women proud to be Southerners and proud to be from Alabama would not feel limited by maintaining a stylistic brand that is rooted in one particular vein. At times, their songs remind of the Civil Wars but without affectation, of Shovels & Rope but with a more quiet and genuine anger, and of so many other Americana duos – Gillian & Dave, the Milk Carton Kids, War & Pierce – where the focal point is two voices and creatives in dialogue, collective music. But the indelible throughline, that centering “vein,” is simply being true to themselves.

Mind, Man, Medicine, among the siblings’ handful of releases, all at once feels like a comforting and cozy continuation of everything we love about the Secret Sisters rooted in northern Alabama, while also demonstrating the dawn of a new era. In our conversation with Laura and Lydia, we chat about the distinctions between style and redundancies, about compassion and community, about grounding and intention. Throughout, it’s clear that the Secret Sisters know exactly who they are, how they sound, and why they do what they do – even, if not especially, when each of those truths becomes clouded by the intricacies and complications of life.

I wanted to start by asking you about your specific brand of country and Americana. You have always made music that’s mindful, connected to the earth, and connected to your community. It often feels a little witchy and a little gothic, but it also feels like musically wandering down a winding garden path.

That style, that y’all have had present in all of your albums, it feels like it’s so “in” right now. From the new Kacey Musgraves album, Deeper Well, to Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter, there are so many touches in country today that seem like something y’all have been doing for more than a decade. I wanted to see how you felt about this current landscape of Americana and country and how you feel your music relates to or fits into the constellation of this ongoing trend?

Laura Rogers: I have noticed that trend in a lot of ways. It seems like there are artists who are even more successful than we are who reach this point where, like you said, they reground or they just tap into something that’s maybe [been] suppressed by the other music that they’ve made. I don’t necessarily think that that’s a bad thing. I think that every artist has his or her own evolution, as far as what inspires them, whether it’s what they’re listening to or what they’re feeling or just what they want to sing. Some people don’t want to [tap] into their history or their community or their roots in any way.

I can understand that and sympathize with that, it’s just that’s who we are. It isn’t a trend for us. There’s no marketing scheme behind what we’re doing. I’m not implying that other artists who are doing that are just doing it for the moment, but for us, it’s always been [that] we don’t really know any other kind of music to play other than what you hear.

I don’t even know if it’s an intentional mindset. We want to be grounded and rooted and pay tribute to where we’re from. I don’t know if that’s like a conscious decision that we make. I think it just kind of happens naturally for us.

I know what it’s like to go through a journey of growing up and reconnecting to where you’re from and appreciating your history. I think it takes a minute sometimes, as an artist and a writer, to go back to that and see it as a good thing. Maybe other artists who are doing that, it’s probably a sincere moment in their life where they’ve reached a point of, “Hey, I want to go back to something that feels a little more like me.” I love that chapter of certain artists’ careers as much as I love the ones that maybe aren’t as rootsy and connected.

Lydia Slagle: I feel like some of that might be due to the pandemic. I might be taking liberties by saying that, but we were just home for so long and I think that probably grounded a lot of people in that way and made people get more in touch with their roots, musically.

I think you’re right. And you’ve both immediately grabbed onto the thread that I was pulling here, which is that there’s this trajectory that artists really enjoy bringing into their own art of “going back to basics.”

From the beginning of y’all’s career, from the first album, it seems like you always started “back” at the basics. I think what’s so interesting about that is how it never seems limiting to y’all. It feels like there’s always an entire universe for you to explore, even while you’re still remaining so close to that home base. You continue to showcase this sense of grounding and rootedness, highlighting where you’re from and who you are, but there’s still so much to explore.

LS: I think we can’t take credit for a lot of that, because we have had a lot of really great collaborators over the years.

We’ve had really good co-writers and great producers who are willing to stretch our limits of what we knew we were capable of. I think some of it is just our general involvement as artists, but a lot of it is who we work with and the people who play the instruments on the records and who produces them.

LR: I don’t know how Lydia feels, I’m sure she probably feels this to a degree, but it’s an insecurity of mine. I listen to other artists and I think, “Oh, if I could just write a song like that one.” I’m constantly doing that terrible thing that humans do, where I compare what I’m capable of producing to what everyone else is currently producing.

I’m so hard on myself about just wishing that I were better, you know? It’s nice to hear that, even after five records of writing music, that what we [make] is still the essence of who we are, but it isn’t overdone. I think that the fear of mine is like, how many more albums can we do before we have to venture into a crazy genre that we’ve never done before to keep people interested? [Laughs]

Thankfully, five albums in, it seems like people are not weary of what we do. But that is a total insecurity of mine, I hear so many songs and I think, “Man, I’m never going to be able to do that…” But then I also realize that there are people who hear our songs and think that they are works of art in ways that I think that was just a Tuesday afternoon!

LS: It’s also a struggle for me, but when I think of my favorite artists, I don’t get weary of the same stuff. I think of Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings, they don’t really deviate from their original sound and it is just as fresh and exciting for me. Hopefully some people can see our music in the same way.

I think that if we were to just derail and do something completely different, I’m sure that would be exciting, but I’m also sure there would be a part of us that would be like, “What are we doing? What are we trying to prove?” I don’t even know how to describe it, but it would be very hard for us. So, we do what we know and what we like and hopefully people stay on board.

LR: I do think a huge part of it [is that] we’ve had multiple people who have produced things for us and songwriters that we’ve worked with kind of reassure us in this. But, any time we decide to do anything that’s maybe a little bit out of the box for us and that kind of pushes our limits, they always remind us, “What you are is not the sound that you work within, it’s your harmonies together and it’s the way that your voices blend.”

I do think that anytime I feel nervous about new territory or repetitive territory, I just remind myself we are two sisters who grew up singing together, who harmonize together, and for some reason, people really love the way that our voices blend. That seems to be the crux of it. It’s great if that’s framed with interesting sonic landscapes or up-tempo, energetic songs, or sad minor chords. All of those things are interesting, but at the end of the day, if you don’t have that two-part sibling harmony that we are known for– I do think our sound hinges on that, to me.

I don’t ever foresee us having a record where only one of us sings. Period. There’s always going to be both of us, even if we’re both singing in unison together. There’s just something about that. And it’s so much more than what you hear, it’s an energetic thing. You can hear the shared chemistry and energy that happens when two voices that are really, really connected blend together. It doesn’t have to be people who are related to one another, but I think that there’s some unidentifiable, intangible sauce that comes over everything. It’s almost like hypnosis or something.

I think probably every artist that we admire would be like, “Yeah, I have days where I really don’t know what my sound is. I don’t know what my genre is. I don’t know what my style is. I just make it.”

I’m glad that you mention singing in unison, because it was something that really jumped out at me from this record. There’s some tasty ass unison singing on this record! What’s so interesting to me is that you can hear the space in the room between your mouths and the mics – and you can hear that space almost more than the space between your voices, since you’re singing in unison.

LR: Yeah, unison’s hard. I would say for me unison is harder than harmony, getting that blend and making sure that your voices are not rubbing against each other in a way that’s kind of cringy.

LS: We get some of that on the road, I feel like. When we’re performing live and we do unison, there are times when one of us is just maybe a tad sharp or a tad flat and it does not sound like good tasty unison. So finding that perfect sweet spot is a little trickier than you might think.

Shifting gears, I love how y’all always have such a strong sense of place in your music, drawing from Muscle Shoals, drawing from the “Americana Music Triangle.” And I have been obsessed recently with the idea that music always exists in a space, in relationship with place. It feels a bit “forest for the trees” to say it, but without air we wouldn’t have music – without sound waves, without air, without space.

I thought it was so perfect that you start the album with “Space,” it feels like a beautiful, spiritual moment where you’re asking folks to enter a space with you. You’re holding this space with your voices and with your songs, and inviting all of us to enter that space with you.

So I wanted to ask you about that song, writing it, but also deciding that it would be the first in the sequence.

LR: I didn’t even think about that at all! This is what I love about making records, there are always things that you discover about it after it’s out and you’re like, “Oh, I didn’t even consciously decide to do that.”

But it makes so much sense. I never thought about having that song as the opening track of the record and it being an invitation of, “This is a space for you to enter and and it’s a safe place for you to feel.” I never thought about that and I love that you discovered that for us.

LS: I don’t feel like that was so much a conscious decision to frame it as this invitation into our record, but I love that perspective.

As far as sequencing, I think that it was more the production of that song and the sound that we approached it with that was pretty different for us. So we loved starting the record with a completely different sound for us. To let people know this is a little bit different from what you’ve heard in the past.

LR: We wrote that song with Jessie Baylin and Daniel Tashian, so when we got to Daniel’s studio to write with him, I just remember there being instruments all over the floor, all over the walls. It literally was like, come in and pick what you want to use. I’m not an adventurous instrumentalist at all, but he picked up this little tiny guitar that we plugged into this amp and we put this crazy effect on it. We just started strumming on it, and that was kind of the beginning of the song. I don’t even really remember what started the inspiration for that song, but I really feel like, timing-wise, where it landed was just after we had started writing with people after the pandemic. It was finally safe enough to sit in a co-writing situation in person. Coming from that place of the weird and divisive time of COVID, two songs, “Space” and “If The World Was a House,” were really just trying to capture that feeling that we gotta start being better to each other.

I think that there’s a quality in this album that you’re opening a space, you’re inviting folks into it, and then you’re kind of pointing out, “Hey, if the world was a house and that house was on fire, we would all do something about it, right?” I’m not sure if that message would feel as compassionate or as kind or as open if it didn’t come after this sense that you’re inviting us in, we’re on the same level, we’re in this space together. Then you can talk about these ideas and these songs that are challenging us to be in community, to be with each other, to make a better world. It doesn’t feel like you’re preaching.

LS: I hope people listen from that viewpoint. When we wrote that song with Ruston Kelly in Nashville, I think it was the beginning of 2022 when it was just starting to die down a little bit, but people were still very divided on COVID. It was ever present in our minds, so whenever we started writing “If The World Was a House” that day, it just came out. We could not get the words out quickly enough. I think it could have been a 10 minute song if we let it.

LR: “If The World Was a House,” now that I listen to it and process it as a finished product, I just keep thinking about how if you were passing by a neighborhood and there was a literal home on fire, it would not matter to you if they were Republican or Democrat or gay or straight or Christian or atheist or man or woman. It would not matter, you would do something! You would run in, you would call for help. You would make an effort, right?

When I feel the most dismal and depressed about humankind, I keep coming back to the thought that, if it’s really a matter of life and death, you’re going to step up for people. I do truly believe that most people have that sense of, “I got to do something.” I try to remember that it doesn’t matter that we have differences. The differences are always going to be there, but at the end of the day, would you fight for someone? Would you fight for someone who is different from you?

I like to believe that most people would. Once all the dust settles, of all the things that we bicker and separate ourselves over, I really like to think that everybody has a general sense of kindness that they could tap into. Maybe that’s a little naively optimistic, but…

I think that that message is so impactful coming from y’all, knowing that you place yourselves purposefully in your community in Alabama and in these parts of the country that people tend to write off as being “backwards” and not being capable of nuance. The South and rural places are always a scapegoat for the entire country and all of its problems. So, I think that it makes the message in your music so much more impactful, knowing that. You don’t see yourselves as outliers in the place that you’re from, you don’t see yourselves as exceptions to the rule or like you’re the only ones who think like this, who are “enlightened.”

LS: I think there’s more of us than people realize, there’s a lot of us in Alabama and Tennessee and Mississippi – we’re not the only ones. Hopefully we can represent that community of people a little bit better.

Another song I wanted to ask you about before we close is “Planted.” I love birdwatching, I love gardening and I feel like a lesson I learned – and so many of us learned – from COVID is that we need to have roots. We need to have nourishment and we need to be grounded, planted. I hear that song and I hear the love in it – the romantic partnership and the life partnership – but I also hear so much more. I love that I had already written down in my notes that this album is so “rooted” and then I got to “Planted” and I was like, literally!

LS: I think I wrote Planted in like 2015, a while back, and it had been sitting in my GarageBand for years and years. I think that when I first wrote it, it was about a year after I got married and my husband and I were going through a season where we were both traveling a lot, we’re both in artistic careers. So we were sort of rubbing up against each other, being like, “Whose job is more important? Which is more impactful?” I don’t know, we finally ended up in a place where we were like, it doesn’t matter. We’re in this together. We’re rooted together. It doesn’t matter if somebody is on a different trajectory, we’re in this thing together. I sort of tried to approach that song with that perspective, but yeah, I never thought that it would make it onto the record eight years later.

LR: There are songs you have for years and years that you think maybe there’s just not a place for it, and then all of a sudden it’s like, “This is the place!”

I feel like that song is very true to this record, even though it was written years ago about a romantic relationship, you’re completely right about it fitting into the narrative of this record, because I think so much of this record is about finally reaching a place in your life where you’re at peace with what you are and who you are and where you’re from. And, what your history is and what your sound is.

We have reached this point, hallelujah, where we are like, “What you see is what you get.” We are who we are and all we can really offer the world is a healthy, whole, self-satisfied version of ourselves.

We did the thing in our twenties where we said yes to every show opportunity, every appearance we could make, we said yes to everything. It was good in a lot of ways, but it was also just soul sucking, you know? I think one thing that I’ve really struggled with over the years is how I never thought that I was gonna be a professional musician. I’ve always just loved music for its therapy purposes. So it’s been hard for me to have my favorite hobby become a livelihood, because it feels like a lot of times the magic strips away and the comfort mechanism isn’t there anymore, because it’s your job. It’s like, “Well, this is what I do every day. This is how I keep the lights on.” And then it’s not what I want to do after hours. That’s been a hard thing for me to process.

I think that this record, in a nutshell for me, is about coming to a place of still loving what I do. I still want to make art that matters to me and that people respond to, but I do not have to kill myself in the process.

If I want to be home for someone’s birthday, I can say no to [an opportunity] for that. And, I’m finally at a place where I know I can always make money. I can always find a way to make money. But if I am going to sacrifice being home to watch my kid walk across his pre-k graduation stage, that’s not a fair trade for me anymore. Whereas years ago, in my youth – and I guess you would call it maybe ignorance or just immaturity – I would trade those for things that really mattered. Now I realize what I’m going to look back on in my life when I’m an old lady is not, “Did I play every show? Did I fall in bed exhausted? Did I come home and completely dissociate from everything around me, because I was so overstimulated by life on the road?”

I feel so happy to be in a place where music feels healthy again, because sometimes I think it’s easy for it to not feel healthy.

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Photo Credit: David McClister

Cottagecore Country

(Editor’s Note: Sign up here to receive Good Country issues when they launch, direct to your email inbox via Substack.)

You can’t have country music without the country. (Us city slickers belong in the genre as artists and fans, of course, but we’ll get to that later.) There is a fundamental relationship between the natural world and folk music, and the artists featured on our cottagecore playlist demonstrate that. Humans have been mapping their emotions onto nature for as long as we’ve been around: so much of our inner life defies explanation, as does our outer world. And while we may find endless ways to make new environments for ourselves, there are few things as moving as a beautiful sunset or gorgeous vista.

While we can’t create those ourselves, we try to make beautiful – and cozy – spaces for ourselves. In creating our homes the way we like, we try to control the world around us – even though we know we can’t. The songs here look to animals and plants as metaphors for the people and emotions we don’t understand, the ones that got away and are beyond our comprehension – the things we can’t control, but we accept as natural as a bird’s migration.

But even as these songs can be melancholy, they inhabit a place of comfort and tradition – cottagecore. The term reached peak popularity in 2020 to describe a movement that celebrates home, attention to detail, nostalgia, cutesiness. (Back in my day, we called it “twee.”) The aesthetic is largely driven by white women who found comfort in going “back to the land” – but a specific type of return, one that celebrates rural life while sugar-coating the backbreaking labor that is actually involved in homesteading.

Like anything that relies on nostalgia, it’s a double-edged sword. Cottagcore has been claimed by some on the alt-right as the desirable expression for women: tending to the hearth, spending time on making beautiful pies, making everyone else around them feel as snug as a bug in a rug. On the other hand, cottagecore became popular in some queer subcultures precisely as a means of subverting that sort of wisdom. Still, cottagecore assumes that this idyllic lifestyle conforms to Eurocentric views of agrarianism, architecture, and holding oneself separate from nature – and some seek to use cottagecore to question that colonizer logic.

At Good Country, we don’t want to take the easy way out. This playlist is designed to embrace the desire for comfort and retreat, one that is all-too-understandable in a chaotic world. But we would never settle for anything simply reactionary, instead wanting to intentionally offer new ways our society must change for our survival. These are songs about awe, acceptance, change – and regeneration, an aspect of the natural world we would do well to embrace.

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Photo Credit: Kacey Musgraves by Kelly Christine Sutton

Ed’s Picks: A Breath of Fresh Air

(Editor’s note: Each issue of Good Country, our co-founder Ed Helms will share a handful of good country artists, albums, and songs direct from his own earphones in Ed’s Picks. 

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Cam

A photo of Cam with the quote: "One of the best makers of pop country and mainstream country today – even Beyoncé took notice! Cam has co-write and production credits all over 'Cowboy Carter.'"

Maya de Vitry

A black and white photo of Maya de Vitry with a text quote: "Once a member of string trio the Stray Birds, Maya de Vitry's solo music is emotive, grounded, and poetic, combining rock, Americana, and country-folk."

Courtney Hartman

A black and white photo of Courtney Hartman with a text quote: "My pal Courtney, a fantastic flatpicker, writes and records timeless music with striking connections to place, nature, community, and the motion of the planets."

Kyshona

A black and white photo of Kyshona with a text quote: "Kyshona's genre-fluid album, 'Legacy,' (out April 26) finds redemption in exploring generational traumas - with compassion, heart, and family ties front and center."

The Local Honeys

A photo of roots duo the Local Honeys in black and white with an accompanying text quote: "East Kentucky-based roots duo the Local Honeys combine folk, old-time, bluegrass, and country, channeling the storytelling and folklore of their ancestors and Appalachian community."

Caroline Spence

A black and white photo of Caroline Spence with a text quote: "Your favorite songwriter's favorite songwriter, Spence makes pristine singer-songwriter folk with a country patina that's perfect for a stroll through your summertime garden."


Photo Credits: Cam by Dennis Leupold; Maya de Vitry by Kaitlyn Raitz; Courtney Hartman by Jo Babb; Kyshona by Anna Haas; The Local Honeys by Erica Chambers; Caroline Spence by Kaitlyn Raitz.

Basic Folk: Community vs Capitalism, Live from Cayamo

We’re live at sea! Our hosts Lizzie No and Cindy Howes recorded this episode onboard Cayamo, which is a singer-songwriter, Americana cruise that’s been sailing yearly since 2008. It’s one of the best music festivals we’ve attended and it’s another edition of FOLK DEBATE CLUB.

This time it’s “Community vs Capitalism.” Our panel features Jenny Owen Youngs (musician and co-host of Buffy the Vampire Slayer podcast, Buffering the Vampire Slayer), Amy Reitnouer Jacobs (co-founder/executive director of BGS) and Natalie Dean (director of events at Sixthman, which presents Cayamo). We talk about both of these concepts through the lens of folk music and the music industry at large. Community building amongst folk artists and fans in authentic and unique ways will help drive your passion. Organically finding community through event production, online presence, or music promotion is at the core of folk culture. Community trust and cultural diversity are key in ensuring that folk music artists will thrive in our capitalistic society.

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How do you build that trust among your audience in a way that allows them to build trust with each other? How do you stay true to your values while being able to pay for your life? How have musical community leaders cultivated their particular communities?

Capitalism is our current reality, but it historically has not mixed well with community. Clearly, one must be pursued vigorously, moreso than the other! Or does it? Is there a way that these two can live side by side in folk music?

If you are listening to this or reading this right now, I can make this assumption: You want to support music financially and with your heart. Music is something that sustains our lives, but it’s also a profession and something people consume. Don’t worry, we “figure it all out” in this episode of FOLK DEBATE CLUB AT SEA!


Photo Credit: Will Byington

John Smith Explores Life’s Beauty in Tragedy with ‘The Living Kind’

His name might be a little … beige? But those who know John Smith have long loved the vibrant colors of this gifted guitarist and singer-songwriter’s creative palate – especially the serene sophistication at its core. A unique form of meditative propulsion has endeared Smith to heavyweight collaborators like 3-time Grammy winner Joe Henry and his own fans alike, but with his new album, The Living Kind, Smith paints with a new shade of calm, confident, consciousnesses.

Produced by Henry and driven by Smith’s steamroller of a right hand, The Living Kind seems to have a gravity of its own making – a contemporary folk album that is both spartan and lush, modern and timeless, desolate and dense with the movement of life.

Perhaps that’s due to the subject matter, since it was written as Smith grappled with a season of change and an Alzheimer’s diagnosis that impacted not just his father, but the whole family. Or maybe it came down to the recording style, which found the UK native escaping to Maine with a few vintage guitars in the dead of winter, finding new courage in Henry’s home studio. But no matter the reason, the result is a work of deep reflection – and ultimately deep revelation.

Just after The Living Kind’s release, BGS spoke with Smith about the mix of experiences that led to his cathartic new album, a project that helps convey the beautiful tragedy of living itself.

Thank you for making some time for us to connect, John. To start, I just wonder how you’re feeling about the act of making music these days?

John Smith: I mean, I love music. Music is the good bit. I feel like music is the bit I do for free. The music business itself is tough. It’s in a strange place at the moment and everyone I know is working five times harder for half the money. So I feel that going on tour and playing shows cannot be taken for granted, especially since that moment where it all shut down. It feels like a real privilege to be able to go and do live shows. To make this record with my favorite producer was just a dream come true. The whole thing feels completely satisfying and good to me.

Tell me a little about where these songs came from. I understand they came in sort of a creative burst and you had a lot of tumultuous things going on in life at the time before that. Did this music have an impact on you personally – were you using it to process?

I think the album before [2021’s The Fray] was all about that. It was me writing so I didn’t lose my mind. This album feels more about moving through turmoil and looking behind you, looking at the rear view mirror and seeing a part of your life fade into the distance and recognizing it and keeping your eye on the road ahead. I wrote this as I was emerging from a time of tremendous – well, yeah, I say turmoil again, and the songs came very quickly. Once Joe and I had decided to make a record together, I wrote the songs over the course of the winter of 2022 into ‘23, wrote most of the record in about six weeks.

That’s crazy.

I think the thing is, when you’re writing and you put up your aerial, sometimes you catch a good frequency, you get lucky, and you catch something that falls into your lap.

I noticed that you described this project as an actual song cycle, which is not always so common anymore. What’s the story you feel these songs are really taking people through?

Actually, I think that was a journalist who said that, and it kind of hit me that it was not entirely untrue. The album moves through a series of different moods. It starts in a place of despair with “Candle” – a song about Alzheimer’s and looking after someone and feeling burned out. And it ends with this song “Lily,” which is a kind of evergreen love song about hope and being able to get through something, because you’ve got someone to do it with. And I think the album takes you through various situations of grief and longing and love and hope, and then it ends in a very hopeful place.

You mentioned earlier, “Watching the person you were get left behind.” I mean, is that a scary feeling at this point in life?

Yeah, I think I never seem to have any say in it. Things happen and I move around them. What I’m learning as I get older is just to be more malleable, be more subtle. There’s a line in “The World Turns:” “We’ll be stronger if we soften and yield,” and that’s kind of what I learned over the course of the last five years. I was always someone who would attempt to resist the flow, but I’ve learned that just jumping in and seeing if you don’t drown is probably the best way.

I did want to ask you where your sound is landing on this record. It’s got this very peaceful, but sort of propulsive feeling and it puts me in a good place. I like it a lot. I wonder, does that energy show up in your daily life, or were you sort of getting out of yourself to find this mix of calming but also pushing forward?

That’s a really good question. It’s almost as if you’ve done this before. [Laughs] That’s really good, man. I never thought of that. …

Well, I’m a calm person, but I’m always moving. I’m always thinking of the next thing and always planning and always on it, but I’m generally very calm, and maybe that’s a reflection of me. When I went in, I wanted to record something that sounded like me, but also sounded idiosyncratic to this one recording process.

Most of these songs are driven by the right hand. It’s that propulsive groovy right-hand thing that I do, and I’ve been working on my whole life, really. That is at the center of the mix, and Joe wanted to frame that, then just have other actors walk out onto the stage, do their bit, and then walk off. We wanted to put that front-and-center instead of me being part of the ensemble.

Do you think that’s maybe part of why this one was so satisfying feeling?

I think so. I think that’s largely down to Joe and his recording process. He just put a mic up and asks you to play a song. This felt like the record I’ve been trying to make my whole career, just sometimes you need a beautifully gifted Grammy-winning producer to help you get there.

Fortunately, I’ve played on lots of Joe’s records. I’ve played on four or five of his solo records and a bunch of his productions, so I’m used to that way of working – and as soon as I saw him do it the first time like 13 years ago, I just said, “Right, that’s how I want to record.”

He’s always been very encouraging of me, and tried to get me to do my thing without inhibition. And there was a moment when I was singing the song “Silver Mine.” He looked over and he just kind of winked at me and said, “You’ve done it now, son. You’ve done it.” And it was like, “Yeah, I have actually done it. I’ve managed to sing without inhibition on a record,” which I don’t think I’d ever really done before.

How did the setting of Maine – in the winter – impact what you made?

Well, the idea for the album was born there a year previous. I was on tour in New England in February ’22 and then Joe and I wrote this song early after dinner, went upstairs, made a demo, and then Joe just said to me, “There’s no reason why we shouldn’t make a record here in this house.” And so a year later, I was back there and it was the same icy, snowy, frozen situation from the last February, and I’d had it in mind the whole time I was writing. … I always had those frozen finger lakes where he lives in mind.

So, when I went back, it was exactly as I’d remembered it. The songs suited the place, they suited the setting and the weather, and then it happened. On the second day, the temperature plummeted to -25º Celsius. So we just stayed in, man. We stayed in the house. We looked out the window and we cut the record in four days. It brings a closeness that you can’t manufacture. You can hear that on the record.

Tell me about where “Candle” came from. This is the track that starts the record off, and I know it’s kind of a heavy topic, right?

It is a bit heavy. It’s a song about admitting that something is very wrong and that you have to deal with it, and you have to try not to burn out. In this case, my father suffers from Alzheimer’s. We chose to completely change our lives to move around him and his condition and look after him, and it’s a song about that. I felt there was no point in dressing it up and trying to speak of it in broader strokes, because I know a lot of folk whose parents are suffering dementia of some kind. So I just decided, let’s be straight up about it.

Obviously, the visual metaphor is a candle burning out. You, as a carer, will burn out. But actually, I think really the song is about putting your hands around the candle and trying to just stay warm, enjoy that light as long as you can. The relationship with somebody who has Alzheimer’s just changes every day.

You chose “The Living Kind” as the title track. Why did you feel that was the best way to describe the record?

I don’t know, actually. It’s a bit of an anomaly because it’s such an upbeat song. The record isn’t all that upbeat. … I guess I thought “The Living Kind” sums it up. Rather than becoming complacent in the face of great difficulty or becoming stunned into inaction, it’s about getting on with it and trying to live life as best you can. I think that is what a lot of the record is about.

What do you hope people take away from this?

I just hope it makes listeners feel good. I think at the end of the day, that’s all I can hope for. I believe Bob Dylan when he said that once you release music, it is not your business what people think of it. I hope it makes ‘em feel good.


Photo Credit: Phil Fisk

BGS 5+5: Louisa Stancioff

Artist: Louisa Stancioff
Hometown: I live in Warren, Maine and I am originally from Chesterville, Maine
Latest Album: When We Were Looking

Which artist has influenced you the most and how?

Regina Spektor keeps coming to mind. I listened to her albums Begin to Hope and Far incessantly when I was young, and I loved her voice, her intricate, thoughtful, creative melodies, her silliness paired with intensity, and her unpredictable song structures. Those albums were two of 10 or so CDs that I had, so I knew every word even when I couldn’t understand or quite grasp the things she was singing about. It’s hard to pinpoint who or what has influenced me, but she definitely opened up a new sonic landscape for me that I’m always still so entertained by whenever one of her songs comes on.

What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?

I was once playing a house show in Paonia, Colorado in someone’s backyard with my old band, Dyado. It was a warm, beautiful night and we were singing this song we had written together that mentioned the wind whipping at the trees and right then there was a very strong gust that whipped the leaves of this huge willow tree and made such a loud whooshing sound. It all felt pretty magical with the perfect timing and everyone was laughing and cheering.

What was the first moment that you knew you wanted to be a musician?

It wasn’t until COVID lockdown times. I’d been playing music my whole life and touring around the country here and there for a few years, but never felt any sort of commitment to it career-wise. Once it was no longer an option to perform and collaborate with people, that’s when I realized how bad I wanted it. I decided I had to truly attempt to build a solid music career or I might regret it for the rest of my life.

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

The folks from the band Darlingside gave us some really nice advice a couple years ago when we were on tour with them. It’s so easy to get caught up in comparing yourself to other peoples’ music careers, but if you take a step back and compare yourself to where you were a year before, it can help you realize how far you’ve come. Now whenever I am feeling down about my career or feel like it’s not moving fast enough, I think about where I was a year before, and it always reminds me how much I have grown.

Which elements of nature do you spend the most time with and how do those impact your work?

I am a water person – I love swimming in lakes and rivers and oceans, canoeing and being on the water in general. A lot of my songs mention water in some way or other, in fact I have an entire song about a canoe race. I was actually in a river canoe race last week and I almost died. I got rescued by a kind firefighter after our boat was completely swamped and swept away. Perhaps I’ll write a song about that, too.


Photo Credit: Matt Gaillet