Tag: singer/songwriter

WATCH: Bonnie Whitmore, “Time to Shoot”

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Bonnie Whitmore
Hometown: Austin, Texas
Song: “Time to Shoot”
Album: Last Will and Testament
Release Date: October 2, 2020

In Their Words: “When I wrote ‘Time to Shoot,’ it was after the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando. It was the largest death count of any mass shooting and was in the summer of 2016. Remember 2016? That year of a thousand losses that started with David Bowie, Prince, Leonard Cohen on Election Day, and Carrie Fisher (Princess Leia) right at the end? I was reflecting back on the earliest mass shootings that I could recall and I remembered it was Columbine in 1999. It struck me that it has been 20 years, and nothing has changed. Twenty years of making mass shootings normalized. The potential of becoming someone’s target practice is no longer how, but which large gathering.

“I was in high school when Columbine happened and I remember the immediate fear and repression that came afterwards, and for more than half of my life I’ve watched systemic violence being tolerated by my country and its people. I can see a pattern of unaddressed mental health issues and the ease of accessibility to these military-style weapons, and also the toxic masculinity and fear and shame that’s at its core, but each time it happens nothing changes. Nothing but more fear and ‘thoughts and prayers.’ I cannot accept that this is the only way. I know this is not an easy topic to discuss, but it is worth discussing over and over because we have to find a solution. It’s time we collectively shed some light in those dark places and do the work to get through this, because if the desire is to build towards a better future, then there is a lot that’s got to change for the better.” — Bonnie Whitmore

Photo credit: Eryn Brooke; Video: Ryan Doty

LISTEN: Selena Rosanbalm, “Can You Really Be Gone”

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Artist: Selena Rosanbalm
Hometown: Austin, Texas
Song: “Can You Really Be Gone”
Album: Selena Rosanbalm
Release Date: October 9, 2020
Label: The Balm Records

In Their Words: “My ex-boyfriend took his own life four and a half years ago, but I still see him all over the place. I thought I saw him driving a van the other day, thought I saw him in a coffee shop. But I was especially struck when I saw a photograph of his niece some months ago; I could see his face so clearly in hers. ‘Can You Really Be Gone’ is about the suspension of reality people often experience after losing a loved one, when the logical mind knows the person is gone, but the emotional mind doesn’t want to give in to that fact.” — Selena Rosanbalm

Photo credit: Daniel Cavazos

WATCH: Justin Wade Tam, “Paradise”

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Artist: Justin Wade Tam
Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee, via San Diego, California
Song: “Paradise”
Release Date: July 24, 2020
Label: Soundly Music

In Their Words: “I wrote this song with my friend Daniel Ellsworth about the subjectivity of paradise. We often get caught up in staring at idealized photographs on social media and forget that there can be beauty in the everyday, no matter where we are. Maybe paradise is more a state of mind than an actual physical location. So when Luke Harvey (Moss Flower Pictures) and I set out to make the music video, we wanted to convey that people all over the world have their own versions of paradise, and that is lovely: so many people and so many paradises. To help with the concept, friends from Chile, France, Iran, and Russia translated the lyrics into their respective languages. I’ve met each of these friends through music and touring over the years, and it’s wonderful to have their friendship reflected in this project. Luke set the translated subtitles and music to old film vignettes, capturing and challenging our perceptions of paradise.” — Justin Wade Tam

Photo credit: Annelise Loughead

WATCH: Malin Pettersen, “Queen of the Meadow”

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Artist: Malin Pettersen
Hometown: Oslo, Norway
Song: “Queen of the Meadow”
Album: Wild Horse
Release Date: October 16, 2020
Label: Die With Your Boots On Records

In Their Words: “My grandmother, my father’s mother, died a few years ago. She lived on this tiny island and she is buried in the graveyard by the small island church. There is a kind of flower that grows out there called Queen of the Meadow (Mjødurt) and it has the sweetest most distinct smell. It makes me feel a quiet kind of happiness that is so pure and whole. After my grandmother died I tried writing her a song, but I just couldn’t find the words that could express how I felt about her. Words can only express so much — emotions are much more complex and textured. It ended up being a song about my own funeral. I hope I can be buried at the same graveyard, and I hope it’ll all align with the bloom of Mjødurt — because it holds everything I could ever dream of being remembered by.” — Malin Pettersen

Photo credit: Jonathan Vivaas Kise

LISTEN: Chris Smither, “Caveman”

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Artist: Chris Smither
Hometown: Amherst, Massachusetts
Song: “Caveman”
Album: More From the Levee
Release Date: October 2, 2020
Label: Signature Sounds

In Their Words: “This is one of those songs that began very innocently, pretending to be a harmless little ditty… then about halfway through it turned on me and showed its teeth, not so much with a snarl, just a simple expression of hunger and a desire to eat me up. I thought it was going to be easy to write, and it was, as long as I thought it was a ‘four stages of man’ kind of theme. But then THE WALL kept climbing into every verse, and things got heavier. Finally it consumed me. This is one of those ‘surprise hits’ in my repertoire. It’s a frequent request. Maybe I’m the only one who’s surprised.” — Chris Smither

Photo credit: Joanna Chattman

Harmonics with Beth Behrs: Episode 4, Brandi Carlile

Posted on by Shelby Williamson

Harmonics with Beth Behrs is the newest show from the BGS Podcast Network, which delves into the intersection of music and wellness. The podcast’s third week features Brandi Carlile, Americana icon and advocate for the empowerment of women and the LGBTQ+ community.

LISTEN: APPLE • SPOTIFY • STITCHER • AMAZON • POCKET CASTS • MP3


Harmonics host Beth Behrs talks with Carlile about spirituality and wisdom found through horses and nature, performing the album Blue for Joni Mitchell, the joy and connection of live music, anxiety, and singing with Dolly Parton at the Newport Folk Festival.

For many folks, the first time they heard of Brandi Carlile was during her show-stopping performance of “The Joke” at the 2019 Grammy awards. Carlile walked away with three trophies that night for her record, By The Way, I Forgive You (including Best Americana Album). She’s been honing her distinctive voice and building a dedicated audience for over twenty years, all the while staying committed to building a family and community with her band and team.

That commitment has made her a godmother of modern American roots music — as a curator of festival stages, interpreter of the legendary artists who came before, and producer and collaborator for a whole new generation of female artists.

Listen and subscribe to Harmonics through all podcast platforms and follow BGS and Beth Behrs on Instagram for series updates!

LISTEN: Thomas Csorba, “What’s Left of Mine”

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Artist: Thomas Csorba
Hometown: Dallas, Texas
Song: “What’s Left of Mine”
Album: Thomas Csorba
Release Date: September 25, 2020

In Their Words: “When Beau Bedford and I sat down to write this song, we fell into a story of a man at a pivotal moment in his life. The speaker in this song is looking his lover in the eye and saying, ‘I love you, but there’s some living I need to do.’ He’s at a crossroads: Do I spend this precious time with the one I love, or do I go and find myself? The risk there is heavy, and you can hear it in every line he utters. I found a big part of myself in this character. As I’ve stepped into marriage, I’ve been thinking a lot about sacrifice. Wherever I devote my time, my love, my energy, I know that another part of me needs to be sacrificed.” — Thomas Csorba

Photo credit: Austin Leih

WATCH: Handsome Ghost, “Weeds”

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Handsome Ghost
Hometown: Worcester County, Massachusetts
Song: “Weeds”
Album: Some Still Morning
Release Date: September 18, 2020
Label: Photo Finish Records

In Their Words: “‘Weeds’ may be the brightest song on our record. The melody, the production — and the lyrics too. It’s about anticipating the inevitable end of a relationship (sounds sad, I know), but recognizing that you’re both going to move on and find your own way, independent of one another. In the simplest terms, it’s: ‘I’ll be here, you’ll be there — but I’m still going to care about you and I hope you think about me too sometimes.’ The song comes from a good place, a steady state of mind.

Nick Noyes has worked on all of our music videos for Some Still Morning and ‘Weeds’ is his latest creation. Typically the three of us will build up a visual concept together — but ‘Weeds’ is all Nick. He had a vision and we trust him and basically said, ‘Go for it, brother.’ Nick and I didn’t speak about the meaning of the song beforehand — and I’m glad we didn’t — because he interpreted it completely differently. To Nick, the song is about memory. About longing for a moment in time that is no longer there. The visual focuses on that feeling and explores it further…without explicitly referencing memory or flashbacks or anything of the like. I love how the video turned out, I find it very powerful and strange at times. And I mean that as a compliment.

“I also love that listeners, in this case someone extremely close to the band, can interpret a song completely differently than it was intended. That’s the best part about music, in my opinion. Once you put a song out there, it’s any listener’s right to make it their own and define what it means to them.” — Tim Noyes and Eddie Byun, Handsome Ghost

Photo credit: Mitchell Wojcik

LISTEN: Garrett Owen, “Souvenir”

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Artist: Garrett Owen
Location: Fort Worth, Texas
Song: “Souvenir”
Album: Quiet Lives
Release Date: September 18, 2020

In Their Words: “I wrote the opening guitar figure and first verse to ‘Souvenir’ a long time ago. I showed what I had written to a friend — ‘I put our love in a jar and drove it around in my beat-up car….’ He thought it was catchy. I started slowly trying to coax the rest of it out of myself and used it as an opportunity to take some really tricky chord work in the chorus and impose a massive key change for the second chorus. I have a lot of songs inspired by a long-term relationship I was in; the rest of the lyrics are a mix of abstract expressions of pain and emo-dramatic statements about how things with her ended.” — Garrett Owen

Photo credit: Melissa Laree Cunningham

LISTEN: Delta Spirit, “What Is There”

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Artist: Delta Spirit
Hometown: NYC, Brooklyn, Los Angeles, Austin, Montreal
Song: “What Is There”
Album: What Is There
Release Date: September 11, 2020
Label: New West Records

In Their Words: “’What is There’ is an acrostic poem that I wrote for the guys in the band, with each verse directed at a specific person. I wrote the song in the winter of 2018 while living in Oslo. We had just decided to give the band another go and I was feeling sentimental about the journey we had been on since 2005. We were all just kids trying to break into this business. Each of us had been burned by the major label system with other projects. Starting Delta Spirit with my best friends, traveling the world, and playing music that meant the world to us was such an improbable miracle, but then it felt inevitable. There were moments when we lost our way as brothers and as creative collaborators, but since the break, we have found new and better ways to communicate. And that feeling of inevitability is back.” — Matthew Logan Vasquez, Delta Spirit

Photo credit: Alex Kweskin