Quite possibly the most talented guest we’ve had on Only Vans so far, Kristi Grider is a good friend of mine from the New Braunfels, Texas, area and we dig into topics like playing and teaching piano, being a substitute player, singing harmony, high-profile gigs, The Finishing School, therapizing your friends, and the benefits of walking.
This is such interesting timing, having my friend Kristi Grider join me this week on the podcast. We recorded this episode right before the devastating floods in Kerrville, Texas, which happens to be Kristi’s hometown. Her heart is so big for her community, and she has encouraged everyone to go to CommunityFoundation.net to donate to this unimaginable tragedy.
Kristi is married to fellow Las Crucen (that’s where I’m from!) Josh Grider and we have gotten really close in recent years living in the same city here in Texas. In addition to her own writing, recording, and solo shows, she performs in cream-of-the-crop cover bands, plays shows with Josh, teaches piano lessons, and is a great mom. I’m so glad that she clarified that Josh is really supportive of her career; it’s the perfect example of how people can make incorrect assumptions from the outside. Kristi talks about being in my songwriting accountability group – where you force yourself to write a song every two weeks – which I stole from my producer Rachel Loy, who we give a lot of well-deserved love to on this episode.
Give Kristi a follow on Instagram and be sure to stream her new EP, All Right – and all her music – wherever you listen. She’s as beautiful as she is talented, so my joke about her being ugly is… a joke.
You may recognize the voice, face, and vibe of wonderful human being Tony Kamel from his acclaimed bluegrass group, Wood & Wire. But Tony is on Basic Folk to talk about his wonderful solo albums, including his latest, We’re All Gonna Live. The project, which just came out, is a realist-optimist’s guide to navigating a complex and often heartbreaking world. There’s something remarkably encouraging about the songs, which are so humane and so empathetic. The music is rooted in bluegrass, but I found it to be really well-rounded contemporary country-folk with great singing and songwriting. It’s actually a super fun album even though it deals with some heavy topics.
One of the most though-provoking parts of the interview was talking to Tony about the differences between being in a band and being a solo artist. When he got into bluegrass, he really just wanted to be able to gel with and collaborate with other musicians. He claimed that they let him hang out because he was a great singer and then he started really figuring out the guitar. There’s a culture in bluegrass where people want to master being a picker and Tony didn’t wanna show up and not have the goods. He had his voice to get his foot in the door, then he just got to work and honing all of his skills. While he says he’s still not a good guitarist, I really enjoyed his playing on this album.
He might be a renowned lyricist and self-proclaimed songwriter-singer (not singer-songwriter). His typical sound may simmer with a supremely chill mix of country, blues, and soul. But Brent Cobb got his start with the crunchy thunder of guitar-driven rock ‘n’ roll and his seventh album takes him back.
Tapping the raw rage of garage rock, the distorted domination of ‘70s proto-metal, and more, Ain’t Rocked In a While finds this GRAMMY-nominated master of phrase returning to a world where the guitar riff is king – his first love as a musician. Co-produced with Oran Thornton and recorded live, 10 songs combine Cobb’s laid-back style with the immortal edge of bands like Black Sabbath, Metallica, and heavier inspirations still. But while old metalheads do tend to get rusty, this project is razor sharp.
Speaking with Good Country, Cobb explains the change of pace, as well as his abiding love for the rock ‘n’ roll spirit and new appreciation for classic-rock lyrics. Plus, the long-haired country boy explains how Ain’t Rocked In a While could fairly be considered “dad rock.”
I want to get the story behind this record. Ain’t Rocked in While is one of those projects that really seems to do what it say it’s going to do. How much of a creative release was this for you?
Brent Cobb: Well, this project was cool because I was focused more on riff and just really digging back into the foundation of what I grew up on. My first band was a rock band with my best friend Justin, who played guitar. He was real into Pink Floyd and AC/DC and Black Sabbath, and had me learning all those songs to sing. So when I was writing riffs and lyrics for this album, I sort of went back and was rediscovering those songs that I grew up learning.
Back then, even though I was learning the lyrics, I was just learning them to sing it. I wasn’t really paying attention to what they were saying and I didn’t think of those songs as very lyrical songs. I just enjoyed the groove. With this go ‘round, it really took all the pressure off of trying to write a lyrical song – which in turn made the lyrics come way easier. It also made me aware of just how lyrical those old classic rock songs were.
Oh, right!
I didn’t notice it or I didn’t appreciate it, but I don’t guess you would as a teenager. So that was the whole process – I was just trying to write a riff album and wanted to rock a little and show the audience a reference for a live show when they came, but wound up writing lyrical songs anyway.
I guess you just can’t help it. You’ve always been known as a storyteller and a songwriter first, and you even did a gospel record just a few cycles ago. Where does hard rock fit into your listening habits?
It all has always coexisted in my little world. My mom’s from Cleveland, Ohio, and my uncles – her brothers – they were all rockers into Led Zeppelin, The Beatles, and just the classic stuff. But then here, my dad was in a band with his brother – my other uncle – and my dad would cover the early ‘50s and ‘60s rock ‘n’ roll and my uncle would do classic country. So I grew up around that, but if you looked at any of my playlists, it’s just always been real eclectic that way for sure. For this album, Master of Reality [by] Black Sabbath was probably the biggest influence and the one that I would keep returning to for inspiration. And not just in riffs, but in the way that they structured that album to ebb and flow.
This might be a hard question to answer, but how heavy do your tastes get? What do you think would be the hardest hitting band in your collection?
Oh man. Well, [for] modern [artists], I’d probably say the band Sleep. Have you ever listened to much of them?
I don’t think so. I’m going to have to check that out right after this.
It’s like stoner metal. That’s probably the hardest stuff that I’ll listen to right now. But I don’t know – I mean, Sabbath is so hard still to this day. Those first five albums are unreal. … With Sleep, that’s some heavy stoner metal.
Yeah, I’m looking on Spotify right now. They’ve got songs like “Marijuanauts’s Theme.” [Laughs] That’s an awesome title.
Dude, I know! But that stuff is like, you can go find sections of old Sabbath songs and it’s kind of like [Sleep] built a whole sound on little sections of Sabbath songs. But then if you go further, it’s all blues – that’s all it is.
For any true rock record, the recording itself is so important – trying to capture the energy. I know you recorded live-to-tape and that seems like the rock ‘n’ roll dream, right? Was that experience different from digital recording?
Well, honestly, each of my albums have always been recorded to tape except Keep ‘Em On They Toes. But with that said, it is a modern world and we still record to tape and then dump all that into Pro Tools to where it’s easier to edit, then take that and dump it all back to tape. You get the original physical, sonic difference that is recording to tape when each tape is completely different, because the needle’s hitting different, the amp was hotter, or whatever. But then we fast forward to the modern world to where we can just really be quicker and more efficient.
I think we had 10 days blocked off to record, and then I got sick on the first two days. And then Oran [Thornton], my co-producer and head engineer, he got sick for two days. And so we wound up recording in seven or eight days.
That is a plus of the modern age for sure. In any case, it came out sounding really tight – you recorded as a band, right?
That’s right. It’s the touring band [The Fixin’s] I’ve had for a while now. … The studio we recorded at in Springfield, Missouri, was this little bitty, almost broom-closet size live room, and they were all in the main live room together. I did want to isolate myself, so I was in an even smaller little isolation booth with a window where we could still see each other. … I obviously am not as experienced in singing those type songs and playing those type riffs at the same time, so I knew I was going to screw up some lyric phrasings and I didn’t want to mess everything else up. So I was the only thing I isolated.
Where’d that title track come from? “Ain’t Rocked In a While” – this definitely has that Black Sabbath feel, stretching out to five minutes.
Straight up. It started because I had bought my son a little drum kit for his fourth birthday a couple years ago. He just loves the drums … and then I would set my amp up and get my guitar out and we’d just be jamming in his room. One day he was like, “Dad, play some rock ‘n’ roll guitar.” And I’d hit a little lick and he’s like, “No, no, rock ‘n’ roll.” I’d play another little lick. And he said, “No, dad, like Mattman” – which is [the Fixin’s guitar player] Matt [McDaniel]. I was doing the best I could, really just trying to prove to him that daddy could rock.
That’s funny!
So I came up with that “Ain’t Rocked In a While” riff and then it turned into me proving to my son, “I have rocked before, boy. It just ain’t been a while.” I thought it would be funny, but I also thought, “Well, all of us are sort of that way.” I’m nearly 40 and a father of two, so you could definitely consider this album Dad Rock, but all our kids don’t know. We all had some rock eras, whether that be in life or musically or whatever it is.
Well, you still got the hair, so I think it’s easier to make that case.
[Laughs] Hell yeah. It’s funny you say that. My mama just yesterday, she used to be a hairdresser and had her own business, and she was like, “You need to let me cut your hair.” And I was like, “Look, I’m going to keep it growing until it don’t grow no more.” I’m barely gray and I ain’t thinning too much yet. Until that happens, I’m going to keep rocking the long hair.
A little earlier you mentioned how [hard rock is] all blues at the bottom, right? I think that really comes through in a song like “Do It All the Time.”
Man, I’m going to have to give my son some co-writing credit on this album, I guess. That riff did come out very Skynyrd-esque, but … I was actually trying to do my best James Gang feel with the riff, the melody, and the double vocals on that chorus. That early James Gang stuff is so badass – but I think Skynyrd also was probably trying to do their best James Gang on some of their stuff.
Anyway, the idea of that song is from when [my son] Tuck was even younger, we’d be like “Oh man. Look dude, you ate all your food!” And he would say, “I did it, and I do it all the time.” So I always had that. I started saying “I do it all the time!” And then I don’t know how much I should say, but sometimes when you’re parents, you and your other half may not be on the same page. … You’re just both sleep-deprived and sometimes it’s hard to see. And so I think we were having a little moment of that and I was going, “I tried then and I try now and I try all the time. I did it and I do it all the time, babe!” So that’s where it came from.
Okay, one more thing here. For fans who come out and see you live, do you think this is going to change the shows? Are you guys going to rock out more or what?
I mean the only way that we’ll rock out more is we just have more songs to rock out to. But no, in every album that I’ve ever put out all the way back to 2006 with No Place Left to Leave, there’ve always been rock leaning songs in my catalog – including songs that others have recorded; some of the Whiskey Myers stuff, or The Steel Woods stuff. For a little bit there seemed like a disconnect, because I don’t think [people at my shows] were aware of that rock stuff, but it’s just a funner show to me and for us especially.
Now we just have more to pull from, and for people who show up, it’s the same show. I try to do songs from every album and I’ll take requests, too. I don’t turn those down. But now, I think people will show up and they won’t be taken by surprise at all if it does drop.
On this episode of Basic Folk, Kora Feder talks about her new album, Some Kind of Truth, and reflects on the incredible changes and growth she’s experienced since we last spoke in February 2020. One of the impacts of the pandemic on her music career was the necessity of exploring other artistic ventures – like crafting hats and lino-cutting. She relocated from Philly to California, finally settling in Detroit. Daughter of songwriter Rita Hosking, Kora went slightly viral during the height of COVID lockdowns thanks to her song “In a Young Person’s Body.” In the poignant composition she pays tribute to John Prine and old friends she hasn’t spoken to in years – and somehow still captured incredibly well.
Elsewhere in our conversation, Kora discusses the passing of her grandparents, who she moved back to California to be with before they died. Their lives and deaths deeply influenced the new record. She opens up about the nuances of her gender identity, the importance of historical friendships that allow for unfiltered creativity, and her approach to writing both personal and political songs. We go through many of the tracks on the new project, including what I think is the best breakup song I’ve ever heard, “Paragraphs.” Kora Feder is a really incredible leave-you-breathless songwriter, particularly with her political writing. Here’s hoping that she doesn’t wait five more years to release a record, because we’re gonna need her.
Ismay travels from Texas to Mississippi to visit the studio where Lucinda Williams made her first record. There, Ismay interviews Wolf Stephenson, who was the engineer that day in 1978, to learn about what happened during the session and whether Lucinda was confident through that initial challenge of recording. They discuss what results when artists get rejected and what keeps certain artists moving forward in spite of various roadblocks. Stephenson oversaw the development of Malaco Records, which produced R&B, soul, and gospel hits. Elsewhere in the episode, Ismay also takes time to visit the stretch of country between Austin, Texas, and Jackson, Mississippi, in order to understand the landscape that informed Lucinda’s work.
Produced in partnership with BGS and distributed through the BGS Podcast Network, Finding Lucinda expands on the themes of Ismay’s eponymous documentary film, exploring artistic influence, creative resilience, and the impact of Williams’ music. New episodes are released twice a month. Listen right here on BGS or wherever you get podcasts.
Finding Lucinda, the documentary film that inspired and instigated the podcast, is slated for release in the fall. Both the film and podcast showcase never-before-heard archival material, intimate conversations, and a visual journey through the literal and figurative landscapes that molded Lucinda’s songwriting.
Credits: Produced and mixed by Avery Hellman for Neanderthal Records, LLC. Music by Ismay. Artwork by Avery Hellman. Jackson, MS Recording: Recorded at Malaco Studios. Sound Recordist: Rodrigo Nino Producer: Liz McBee Director: Joel Fendelman Co-Director & Cinematographer: Rose Bush Special thanks to: Mick Hellman, Chuck Prophet, Don Fierro, Jacqueline Sabec, Rosemary Carroll, Lucinda Williams, & Tom Overby.
Find more information on Finding Lucinda here. Find our full Finding Lucinda episode archive here.
In recent years, Tami Neilson has been learning to carry both great joy and great sorrow simultaneously. The New Zealand-based, Canada-born powerhouse’s new album, Neon Cowgirl, is named after the towering electric figure on a sign that’s overlooked Broadway in Nashville watching over Tami’s career since she was 16 years old. The songs were born from a five-month family road trip combined with a major musical tour that would allow Tami the once-in-a-lifetime chance to really give it her all with her career. It was the chance for her children to experience what her life was like at their age, when she toured the country with her family’s band, led by her eccentric and wildly lovable dreamer-father, Ron Neilson. Before she got the chance to hit the road for that trip, Tami landed in the ICU with sepsis and nearly lost her life. She blessedly recovered, but found that all her priorities centered around trip/tour had changed.
In our Basic Folk conversation, we talk about the songs on Neon Cowgirl, her dear friendship and collaborations with Willie Nelson, and Tami’s exciting performances at the Grand Ole Opry. One of the songs on Neon Cowgirl, “Keep On,” was inspired by a cosmic conversation she had with Wynonna Judd. Judd, to her surprise, quoted the same exact phrase – “Keep on, keep on, keep on” – that Tami’s late father had written in one of her most cherished letters.We also talk a lot about her brother, Jay Neilson. For all of her career and life, Jay has been by her side as her guitarist, co-writer, and musical partner. Last July, Jay suffered a rare and debilitating brain injury that he is still recovering from. Tami and Jay have not been able to perform together since that injury. She shares what it’s been like to be without Jay and how it’s been for him to be so public about his condition.
Tami Neilson and I first connected during the pandemic. She was a guest on the podcast after she released her 2020 album, Chickaboom!and again after she released her fifth album, Kingmaker, in 2022. Since those chats, I have loved following her career, listening to her new music, and experiencing her highs and lows with her. She’s one of my favorite guests and I’m thrilled to welcome Tami back to talk about her wonderful new record.
Dallas Ugly is not a country band. Except that they are?
More than a decade ago now, college classmates Eli Broxham, Owen Burton, and Libby Weitnauer began playing together as a new acoustic band, bluegrass and old-time chops combined with jazz and jammy virtuosity. Eventually, via COVID pandemic cloistering together, they crafted a collective identity as Dallas Ugly, a vibey and tight alt-country group built around original songs that made a splash with their 2022 debut, Watch Me Learn.
On that album you can hear bluegrass grit, the tenderness of folk and indie songwriting, influences of Southern rock and pop, and dashes of Texas twang – perhaps supplied by confirmation bias thanks to their moniker. On their latest album, See Me Now (released in April), the trio are abandoning any and all claims to Americana and country. But this collection – one of the best roots albums of the year – still listens like so many classic artists and albums at the intersection of indie, country, and the vast musical horizon.
When you ask the Nashville-based band how they’ve landed in this new, borderless, agnostic genre territory, they seem as surprised by their own chosen style markers and aesthetic vocabulary as their audiences. “It’s an accident,” says Weitnauer – with delight. “We don’t know why we sound this way. We’ve been able to loosen up more, build on the experience we’ve gotten just as musicians. … With this iteration, I feel like it shows a full development of our sound.”
In truth, however See Me Now and Dallas Ugly strike your ears, it’s quite a straightforward task to trace their journey through genres. (Though it’s not the most straightforward to discuss!) The trio simply follows each song down their own individual creative rabbit holes, trusting the music and each other to find or carve out sounds that encapsulate the feelings, textures, and stories that they craft together. They don’t lead the songs, the songs lead them. As a result, Dallas Ugly alchemically transform barn burning old-time fiddle, endless country twang, deep honky-tonkin’ pocket, earnest, sentimental songwriting, and pop-informed sweet tooths into smooth, artful, endlessly interesting indie rock.
Dallas Ugly’s brand of roots music – if you can call it that – is downright beautiful. We spoke to the group via phone between tours in May about making the album, claiming genre (or not), and the sometimes passive, sometimes overwrought process of shepherding these songs into the world.
I wanted to start with getting the genre conversation out of the way, as it were. Y’all have been very forward with communicating that this isn’t really a country album; that you don’t really see yourselves as a country band. You call it indie, indie-pop-rock. I hear you as decidedly Americana and country, personally. Obviously you have those indie-pop touches – plus, we know you have string band bones as well – but can you talk a little bit about your relationship to genre and how you intentionally stepped into this much more free, borderless sonic space with this project?
Libby Weitnauer: It’s funny, because as I’ve had more conversations with people since the album’s come out I’m like, we definitely marketed it wrong. [Laughs] The other way we could’ve gone – everyone is like, “Do you ever listen to Sunbelt?” “Do you ever listen to Wilco?” “What about like The Breeders?”
But you asked what were the intentional steps that we made – and I would say there have been no intentional steps towards any genre. Which is why we are having trouble pinning it down, because I think we decided to market it the indie route. Honestly, the Americana world seemingly wants to have nothing to do with our music. [Laughs] So we were like, “Okay, then, I guess it’s not Americana, I guess it’s not country.” Every time we bring it to those people they turn it away.
I would say our relationship with genre is very passive. When we’re making decisions and writing songs, genre isn’t a consideration. It’s always been that way. When we started playing together as the very goofy band that we were before this band, that was a sort of attempt at new acoustic music. It was the same thing, we just make decisions [based on] things that we like, or think we’re supposed to do sometimes, or sound good. Then it comes through this Dallas Ugly Eli-Libby-Owen filter, no matter what.
We’ve honestly tried so hard to fit into a genre. Where we’re like, “Okay! We’ve done it this time. You guys, we made a song that sounds like something else that exists.” Which is a funny thing to aspire to. Just trying to create stuff that we like and then it’s, “Oh, nope, nevermind. There it is. Just as weird as ever.”
Do you feel like the songs are what’s guiding you in that passive way? That you’re just trying to give the songs the treatment they each want or are asking for or deserve? Do you feel like it’s taste? Or is it just how it ends up is how it ends up? What do you think is the process for how it ends up being borderless and amorphous and not quite any one thing?
Owen Burton: Yeah, I think those are all in there. I think it isn’t as if we’re striving when we’re writing, it’s not like we’re intentionally pointing to a specific genre. There’s just things that we don’t realize are so genre-coded that are kind of inescapable about our musical voices. When we are asking how to start a song it’s, “Let’s do a fiddle kick.” It’s not, “Let’s do a country thing.” It’s just, “I feel like a fiddle kick would make sense.” And then, on the other end of that is people being like, “This is a country record now!”
It’s fair enough. But I think with this record, too, [as] I’ve learned with our first album – which we were like, this is a country record – I feel like we learned, in how it was received, how actually regimented the Americana style is. And how we weren’t within certain signifiers that are pretty regimented. Indie rock is way more broad, in terms of what it tolerates stylistically.
So the next one, this one, certainly can fit in that big tent. Now, the way it’s been perceived that way too, [I’ve realized] indie rock’s pretty regimented in ways that I didn’t understand, too. Mostly about singing. I think just none of us sing like indie boys. [Laughs]
LW: Or country voice. That’s the thing, I think what it comes down to is if different people were singing our songs, maybe it would be clearer. But I think, especially Owen and I, we have acquired taste, stinky cheese voices. [Laughs] It’s definitely not for everybody. Eli, obviously he doesn’t sing quite as much, but weirdly I would say Eli has the most familiar voice.
I happen to love stinky cheese.
LW: Exactly! Me too.
How does Justin Francis play into the genre paradigm here as your producer, as somebody who effortlessly walks between those sonic worlds? Can you talk a little bit about working with him and having him in the control room?
OB: He understood what we were going for. When we started, we intentionally controlled less variables going into the studio for this one. It’s not as if we had a strategy meeting about what kind of album this was gonna be before we started, making creative decisions on it. The songs were vaguely written before we went into the studio, but not arranged and not figured out like across the band ahead of time.
I feel like even just that process– I guess that’s a bit of a question, is that more of an Americana process or more of an indie rock process? I see that as more of a rock process; I feel like rock bands often go into the studio with songs not even written and they just write it in the studio. With [Justin] on board, he had all kinds of ideas when we were writing in the studio, little bits of studio vocab that we don’t have ourselves. [He] pushed and pulled in different genre directions, for sure.
LW: Part of the reason that we worked with him is we did these two singles with him, “Big Signs” and “Born Crying” just to try working with another producer and see what happens. I don’t even know that we were really [thinking] we could make an album with him, because honestly, he’s the real deal! We were like, “He’s famous, so he probably won’t make an album with us, but let’s just see what these things will sound like.” It was so effortless and he let us do our thing on those two. I feel like those [songs] are just as unhinged as anything else that we’ve made and he was right there with us with the ideas.
I would say, generally, working with him was really effortless. That’s the word I would use. The whole time, even the pre-production meetings.
Let’s talk about some of the music. My favorite is “Bad Feeling.” I know the lyric may say, “It’s a bad feeling, I don’t like it at all…” but I do like it. I like “Bad Feeling” a lot. I heard you guys play this song live a bunch before the album, too, but can you talk about the origin of it, its writing, how it came together in the studio?
LW: That’s the one song I think on the whole album that we had been performing [before recording]. Maybe “You Can Leave,” but it changed a lot. “Bad Feeling” we had been performing pretty much as it is, for the most part. I’m glad that you like it, because that was the song I was like… not disappointed in, but I had so much trouble breaking out of the live arrangement that we had. We had played it so much that I felt like the track suffered a little bit from how attached we were to the live arrangement.
But the making and the writing of that song, I feel like I wrote it [because] I’d been listening to a lot of Judee Sill. I guess I was inspired by that and was trying to capture how some of her songs, the chords move with the lyrics a lot. I didn’t end up really sounding like her at all, but some of the original harmonies we had for that song, played [off of] some of the harmonies in her music.
I feel like that song is like the epitome of my writing style, which is pretty autobiographical. Every time I try to write like feathery stuff, it sounds really goofy. And so with lyrics, I just try to find the most straightforward way I can say something. Usually that ends up being the most poetic, from my voice.
How do you know when you have a hook or you have the bit of the song that’s gonna be what everybody shouts along with? To me, it doesn’t feel like any of you are writing songs because you think they’re gonna be a hit. But at the same time, when I hear a really hooky song or a really catchy song – like basically this whole album – whether it’s “Bad Feeling” or “Sugar Crash” or “Circumstances” or “See Me Now,” I can picture a “light bulb moment” when you find that hook or line that ends up being the sing along.
LW: When I’m writing, I don’t really consciously think about hooks like this. That being said, a lot of my songs start with either a phrase or a melody. I’ll be on a walk or doing something in the kitchen just singing little thing. Like “Circumstances” – “I put a letter in the mail…” – that just happened in my brain when I was doing something. Then usually I’ll grab onto that and write the song around whatever little melody piece comes to me. I guess what ends up being the hook, a lot of the time, is what comes to me. And then I find myself singing it and I let it take off and do what it’s gonna do.
Eli Broxham: I feel like something that comes up, a question we end up asking ourselves that I’ve heard Libby ask a bunch of times is, “Is this super cheesy?” [All laugh] Which, we definitely ride the line of cheesiness, but at some point, you have to just be like, “I don’t know. I like it. And that’s good enough.” If it’s borderline to me, maybe it’ll be over the line for somebody else, but clearly, within bounds for another listener.
At some point, trust your instincts and be like, “It might be cheesy, but that’s okay.” And yeah, I think melodically is where I have my surest footing [writing hooks]. I still feel as a songwriter, if I hit the mark, it’s maybe by chance or something.
I also want to talk about “See Me Now,” because it’s the title track, because it’s a great song, but also because I feel like it epitomizes the journey y’all have been on, from Watch Me Learn to this album. Not just musically and creatively, but also genre, and also politically and socially. This song is “of the moment” in a really interesting way, because you can listen to it down and it’s a love song and it’s a song about seeing and being seen, but it’s also about perception and, “Is my existence valid?”
All of that is really deeply resonant, but if you zoom out and view the song in the context of the band, it changes its meaning. If you zoom out yet again and you view it in the context of y’all really coming together during COVID to do this project as Dallas Ugly, being friends for more than a decade, it changes the meaning of the song again. It’s a tesseract of a track where you guys are writing in four dimensions – it’s not too intellectual or conceptual, but it has endless depth. How!?
OB: I actually wrote that very quickly, because Elise Leavy was having like a songwriting circle. I hadn’t written a song terribly recently, so I was just gonna write something real quick for this. That was the song I wrote and at the time – this is years ago – I was very into that Kacey Musgraves album, Golden Hour, and the lead track, [“Slow Burn”]. That acoustic intro thing, I was messing around with that, because the chords are really simple, but the voicings are so interesting.
Those two things – “hurry up and write a song” and the somewhat new vocab I had just learned – came together. That first draft of it was soft, crummy – plus those lyrics, it’s hard to say what they’re about, because I wrote them very quick. Sometimes this spiel I give on stage is:
It’s three people meeting each other after some kind of apocalypse. In the universe of the apocalypse, because nobody has anything anymore, it’s very hard to [determine] what status anyone was before the apocalypse. It’s three different kinds of people with different former social status, wishing that people they interacted with could tell what status they used to have. People are very comfortable in their status, I feel like whether it’s high status or low status, people find comfort in both. Personal comfort in your own status and the comfort in feeling like you know how to treat people once you derive their status.
I feel like audiences never understand that spiel and it’s maybe too heady to be worth anything. [Laughs] Maybe that’s also why it feels like there’s so many different reads you could have of that song.
I think the most interesting thing about it – and maybe I’m projecting y’all – is the sentiment, “Can’t you see me now? I want you to see me.” Maybe that’s just the millennial condition. All of us having nostalgia for something that never existed, generationally, and being like, “I need you to see me. I need you to perceive me. But also I’d rather you perceive me from the golden era, from the before times. From when things were right.”
Also the “Can you hear me now?” reference of it all feels very millennial, very of the 2000s in a great way. Again, is this cheesy? No, of course not. Listen to it! But also, yes it is.
OB: Yeah, that’s where we live.
LW: That’s where we live! And I would say, before this, before the version that’s on the album, it had a very different flavor. I can’t even remember how it sounded exactly, but it was definitely more country – almost like country rock – and that was over the line. I’m glad we found [this style] and Justin helped us find that. Just pulling it back to the other side a little bit, because yeah, lyrically and melodically, it’s so solid and awesome. But we had to go to the drawing board a few times to get the setting right for it.
EB: That one is like the musical ideas are blocks that are put in place. I remember when we were doing this – after some of the drawing board stuff that Libby was talking about – but I was listening to that Mac Miller album, Circles – which I think is maybe the best Mac Miller album. I was listening to how the elements didn’t change, they just turned on and off to make the song, which I feel like is pretty common in pop and rap production. But often, especially in this band or in Americana and rock, things tend to sneak in and out and evolve.
But for that song in particular, the bass line just turns on, then turns off for a little part. It turns on and turns off. There’s different parts of different sections, but they are like binary, which I think is an interesting approach – and a first for us, in that sense. Somehow, that takes it out of the realm of cheesy country and accentuates the lyrics in a nice way. Even that final chorus, where it’s just a big pause and then the chorus turns on.
LW: That’s interesting that you say that, ’cause I feel like for my fiddling, that was the approach I took on this whole album. Honestly, until we got to the pre-production meetings I was like, “I don’t even think I’m gonna play fiddle on this album.”
I took more of [an approach like] I’m a sample of a thing, rather than being a fiddle in a band. Like even on “You Can Leave,” which is the more fiddle-y of the tracks, in the verses I’m not doing traditional fills. I’m doing this one rhythmic hook every time this comes around and that’s what I’m playing on this song.
It was the idea of turning things on and off rather than trying to be part of the whole song. And I let myself punctuate things and not feel like I need to play the whole time.
Jesse Daniel is carrying on a family tradition with his fifth studio album, Son of the San Lorenzo. As a kid growing up in Northern California, specifically in the San Lorenzo Valley, Daniel spent hours upon hours in his dad’s truck, listening to the songs that defined ‘70s rock and country radio. When the opportunity arose to create a new album inspired by those sounds, Daniel booked the Bomb Shelter studio in Nashville, recorded live with his band, and enlisted harmonica player (and Country Music Hall of Fame inductee) Charlie McCoy to add an unmistakable flourish to the new recordings.
Just as country fans have come to know their favorite singers as the Coal Miner’s Daughter, the Possum, or the Storyteller, Daniel’s hometown is enthusiastically embracing his alter ego: the Son of the San Lorenzo. Daniel dialed up Good Country to talk about how bluegrass music played a role in his musical development, the silver lining of his checkered past, and what he’s looking for in his fellow musicians when it’s time to hit the road.
For this album, you wanted to go back to the music you grew up on, which is ‘70s country and rock. How did you get introduced to that era of music?
Jesse Daniel: My dad was – and still is – a musician. Growing up, he was playing in bands and always just raised me with a guitar in my hand. Whenever we’d go on road trips, or we’d drive up to Oregon to go see family, we would be listening to Led Zeppelin or the Eagles, bands like that. There was a classic rhythm & blues influence on rock and roll, but a lot of that stuff had a very country influence, too, from Creedence Clearwater Revival to the Eagles. A lot of the bands were California bands, also.
I just heard that music growing up. That’s what was played by my dad’s band, and at birthday parties, events, and school gatherings. That was just good-time music, aside from what we were listening to as kids, when we were getting into metal and punk rock. But I guess that’s what all our dads were listening to, and the older people. So I went back to that, now that I’m in my 30s. That music has such a spot in my soul for that nostalgia, and it’s just so good.
Can you describe the experience of having Charlie McCoy on these sessions?
That was incredible. He showed up on his day to cut some harmonica and he was a very humble, unassuming dude. He told us the coolest stories about old Nashville, all the stuff he’s cut on, and all the people’s personalities back in the day that he used to know. I asked him all kinds of questions, soaking it all in. From the moment he blew on that harp and played some licks, Andrija [Tokic, the studio engineer] and I looked at each other like, “Yep! That’s the sound right there.” He just nailed it.
When I listened to “Child is Born,” the first track, I sensed you’re making a statement with this record. It’s a powerful way to open it. What was on your mind as that song was taking shape?
That song is about generational traumas or generational patterns within families and raising children. I pretty much wrote it from the perspective of trying to give some advice on how to raise a child, almost like a template. Throughout the verses, it talks about the pitfalls and what will happen if you focus on yourself and don’t raise your children right. That’s happened in my family and to so many other people. These fathers and mothers aren’t there for their kids, and when it ends up being their time to be taken care of, when they’re elderly, nobody’s there for them because they weren’t there in return. It becomes this vicious cycle that’s perpetuated. That’s where I was at with writing that one. It was an emotional one. It’s an emotional type of record in general, but I just wanted to start it off with that, for sure. A good, heavy starting place.
One of my favorites is “Son of the San Lorenzo.” I think you have had that title for a while.
Yeah, that one is a special one, too. I wrote that song in 2019 and I included it as the last song on my Rollin’ On record. I decided to re-cut it for this one and name the record after it, because since I wrote and released that song, it’s become a fan favorite all over the place, but especially where I grew up in the San Lorenzo Valley.
Whenever I would go back home for hometown shows, people would call me “the Son of the San Lorenzo” after that song. They would always sing that song. That became my nickname over the past five or so years. I thought, what better title for the record than that? With this record going back to my upbringing, to where I’m from, and identity and all that.
You’ve got references on this album to Highway 9, the Sierra pines, and the redwoods. You’re skilled at setting the scene in your songwriting. Why is it important to bring Northern California into these songs?
With my identity as a songwriter and an artist, it shaped a huge, huge amount of that. I always do things through the lens of being from Northern California. Going back to that sound, so much of the music I grew up on was from that exact area – bands like The Doobie Brothers, Larry Hosford, guys like that, who were making this country-rock and roll-blues stuff that really influenced me a lot.
Painting a picture of where you’re from, and of these things that are important to me and my music – I feel like that’s something that’s lost in music nowadays. People don’t do that as much, or if they do, it’s pretty well dominated by Appalachia or Texas. They have a lot of identity and pride in their musical heritage there and I just feel like it’s missing from California in general. And it shouldn’t be. It’s an amazing place, an amazing landscape, an amazing musical history. I see it as my cross to bear to try to carry on that legacy as best as I can.
Has bluegrass been an influence on you?
It definitely has. When I was in high school, I had a teacher for a short period of time who had a bunch of burned bluegrass mix CDs. She was the person that turned me on to bluegrass. I remember listening to that Tony Rice and Norman Blake song, “Eight More Miles to Louisville,” and I was like, “This is incredible!” The songwriting, the picking, the tempo. That made me fall in love with bluegrass. I’d been playing guitar for quite a while at that point, but that’s when I started learning the banjo rolls and trying to emulate some of those bluegrass things I’d heard and adding them into my chord progressions. Even though I don’t explicitly do bluegrass, I always have a bluegrass song on my records, or something that’s at least along those lines. For this record, it’s “Mountain Home” It’s got the banjo and fiddle and a little bit more bluegrass texturing. It’s a big part of my influence.
I was listening to “One’s Too Many (And a Thousand Ain’t Enough)” on Spotify and I couldn’t help but notice your mug shot from Santa Cruz County [as the Spotify Canvas] in the player. How did that come to be?
Yeah, that’s my mug shot from one of the times I went to jail. During that period of my life from 18 through my early twenties, I was a heroin addict, a methamphetamine addict. I was in a vicious cycle of addiction I had gotten into in high school. Once I was out of high school, it accelerated and I became a full-blown junkie, a full-blown drug addict. So that took me on frequent trips to jail for a week here, a week there. I never did any serious time, thank God. I should have, but I didn’t. I was constantly in and out of jail or rehab programs.
That mug shot is a reminder of that past and of that period of my life I wrote about in that song. That song is comprised of all the advice I had gotten from older people who had gotten their stuff together over the years, including some of my own family members who have been sober. They would tell me all these little bits of wisdom and try to help me, and I was just too deep in it to really see. But that song is basically the advice I’d give to somebody now, made up of all the advice I got back then when I was in that position.
Do people who know your story approach you for advice when you’re out on tour?
Quite a bit. There’s a cool, cathartic element to it for me, because I get to put my story and struggles into these songs and they help me. Then it becomes that for other people. I had a woman come up to me at a show, and she told me that my song “Gray” helped her mother get clean. She sent this song to her mother and it broke her down so much that her daughter was sending it to her, saying, “Hey, listen to the lyrics of this song. I care about you and I want you to get help.” And she did. She’s been clean for a couple years now and she says it’s because of that song.
I’ve had a lot of people reach out with similar stories, that they’ve gotten their stuff together after hearing my story or listening to my music. That’s the ultimate form of redemption for me, that I could take my destructive past and turn it into something constructive in helping people. That’s my whole mission. Aside from making the music I love, that’s my mission in my contribution to music.
That’s interesting to hear your mission statement, because you’re the head of your own organization now. I don’t know if you think of yourself that way, but you’re a businessman.
Yeah, more recently I’ve started to think of it that way. And it’s true, especially doing it independently like we have for so long. We’re just now starting to work with a bigger booking agency, a bigger management. We’re stepping things up. But my fiancée Jodi and I really built this together ourselves, brick by brick.
I’ve often heard you shouldn’t get in a relationship with someone until you know you travel well together. What do you remember about those early years with Jodi on the road?
In the early years, even before we started touring in a band together, I would play regionally and Jodi and I would go on road trips together, camping trips, whatever. We just wanted to keep going. That was always part of our relationship. We traveled really well together. We had similar interests. We’d just listen to music and talk and go pull off at roadside swimming holes up in the mountains. We loved that sense of adventure and going places. It was one of the main things that drew me to her when we first got together. She had just as big of a sense of adventure as I did.
So, in the music aspect of it, that’s really helped because we both have that wanderlust and we’re just down to be on the road and to go play new places. When one of us gets tired and burnt out, or maybe sick of being on the road, or something’s not going right, we have the other one to put it in perspective and help balance things out. You lean on that person, which not a lot of people have. A lot of times, your wife or your husband or whoever is at home and you’re out there, alone, missing them. So, I do have the luxury of being with my person out there.
What did Jodi think about the song “Jodi” when you played it for her?
She loves the song. Just like I say in that first line, “To write a love song for you was not an easy thing to do.” It really was a hard subject to tackle, because it’s so vulnerable and true. I had to sit with that one and try to make it as meaningful as possible, so it didn’t come off as a corny love song or too cryptic. I wanted it to be straightforward, but really meaningful.
What do you look for in musicians as you start to put together a band for a tour?
First off, they’ve got to be a great musician. That’s number one. They’ve got to understand the styles and the stylings that I like to go for with my music. I know it’s not for everybody. Sometimes the guitar style is a little bit outside of their bubble, so the playing has to be there.
On top of that, personality-wise, it helps to have people with good attitudes. That’s a huge one I’ve learned over the years. If somebody isn’t there for the right reason, or if they’re halfway in, halfway out, or maybe they’re partying a whole bunch on the road. I’m clean and sober on the road, I don’t do anything, but my guys will go out and have a beer or whatever. That’s totally fine. But if guys are going out and doing drugs or drinking and having it affect their performance or attitude… That is something that happened in the past, so I have a pretty strict policy with that. If you’re going to be in my band, you don’t have to be a teetotaler, but just try to keep it pretty mellow. It’s about the music. That’s what the focus is.
When you listen to Son of the San Lorenzo front to finish now, what goes through your mind?
I see a pretty complete body of work. Sometimes I’ll listen to some of my earlier records and I’ll look back and think, “Oh, I’d change this,” or “I’d do this a little different,” or “Maybe I would have put this song here…” I think that’s easy to do, to pick things apart, especially when you’ve grown as an artist and a songwriter. But when I listen to this record, I put so much time into the song arrangement and into each lyric and each part of the production. I wrote all the guitar licks. Well, ninety percent of the ones you hear on here are ones that I wrote, and then I showed them to the guitar player and he played them better than I was able to play them. [Laughs] All these little things, I put so much effort into this record that I listen back and I’m just really proud of it.
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From their earliest days as a duo, Gillian Welch & David Rawlings have crafted utterly timeless old-time, bluegrass, and American roots music of the highest order. Their lyrics and melodies sound as though they could have been plucked from any/every golden era of folk music on this continent, while at the same time being effortlessly forward-looking and grounded in the present. Perhaps that timelessness is why it feels so surprising that Welch & Rawlings have entered their own new era, as sceptered elders in their chosen genres and communities. The surprise being, of course, the realization that… have they not always been roots music elders?!
Last week, NPR Music unveiled a brand new Tiny Desk Concert by Welch & Rawlings, 15 years since their last appearance at the internet’s biggest smallest stage. In the roughly 20-minute performance, the pickers, singers, songwriters, and life partners perform three songs from their most recent album, 2024’s Woodland, as well as revisiting one of their all-time classics, “Revelator” – from 2001’s Time (The Revelator). Viewing 2025’s Tiny Desk Concert alongside their 2010 performance (watch both sets below), the circuitous journey they’ve taken to sage old-time veterans is obvious, apparent. But it’s still no less mystifying that two artists and creators so adept at musical time traveling have landed in this new phase of their careers right under our noses. With silver hair, wizened voices, a lifetime’s supply of grit, and a tenderness that’s begun to eclipse their fiery, razor’s edge aggression, Welch & Rawlings continue to be their generation’s epitome of modern folk troubadour-ship.
And aren’t they suited for it! “Empty Trainload of Sky,” a song inspired by their titular recording studio Woodland’s propensity for landing in the middle of catastrophic tornado tracks, hits just as hard in this context, their Tiny Desk performance released mere days before tragic and fatal natural disasters and flooding hit multiple states across the U.S. Their songs constantly bend time like this, finding resonance in specificity and universality, both. “Lawman” and “Hashtag” sound like numbers that could’ve been sourced from wax cylinder recordings – or from 9:16 short form videos ripe for virality and topically delicious. “Revelator,” then, reminds that Welch & Rawlings know that they operate from within and outside of the constructs of time, at least as far as music goes. They are perfectly at home in this wormholed medium.
Fifteen years feels like a mere instant, a split-second, in the grand scheme – and, certainly, when you consider the ubiquity and staying power of Welch & Rawling’s body of work over the decades of their career. Still, you can see and hear the age, the miles traveled, the hardships overcome, and the joys celebrated on their faces, in their voices, and in the pluck of their strings. Gillian Welch & David Rawlings, with each and every note they utter, invite each of us to step outside of time. It’s no wonder that they’re thriving, at the highest of heights they’ve reached yet, as they enter their latest golden age, as roots music heroes and elders who’ve touched countless scores of us with their art.
Gillian Welch & David Rawlings continue on tour now through the fall. More info here.
Artist:Caitlin Canty Hometown: Danby, Vermont Song: “Bird Dog” Featuring Matt Lorenz Album:Night Owl Envies the Mourning Dove Release Date: June 26, 2025 (single); October 2, 2025 (album)
In Their Words: “‘Bird Dog’ is the most recent single from my new record, Night Owl Envies the Mourning Dove, and features the intrepid Matt Lorenz as my duet partner. It is pure joy to sing with Matt (you likely know him best as The Suitcase Junket). Matt and I first met at Club Passim’s Campfire open mic years ago, and he sang backing vocals on my Reckless Skyline way back in 2015. We were long past due making music again, and his fiery vocals are an essential thread in my new record coming this October.
“Brian Carroll, who filmed and edited this video, has been such a steadfast creative partner behind the lens and microphone. I first got to know his work when he shot some gorgeous live videos in lightning fast sessions at Green Mountain Bluegrass and Roots and I’m thrilled to be working with him on some live video versions of songs from Night Owl Envies the Mourning Dove.
“I wrote the chorus of ‘Bird Dog’ a few years back when I lived in Nashville and then finished it at our new home in the mountains in Southern Vermont. Our dog Bell sparked the song with her barking and carried on through much of the writing process. I suppose that makes her my muse?” – Caitlin Canty
Video Credits: Caitlin Canty – Vocals, guitar Matt Lorenz – Vocals, guitar Filmed and edited by Brian Carroll. Mixed by Dave Sinko.
Photo Credit: Lead image by Brian Carroll; alternate image by Laura Partain.
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