Tag: songwriter podcast

The Show On The Road – Leo Nocentelli (The Meters)

Posted on by Shelby Williamson

This week, we dial into New Orleans for a fascinating talk with master funk-guitarist and songwriter Leo Nocentelli. Discerning listeners may known him as the chief groove-creator behind the legendary group The Meters with Art Neville on keyboard, George Porter Jr. on bass, Zigaboo Modeliste on drums. There is no mistaking his soulful dagger-sharp signature sound leading often-sampled treasures like “Sissy Strut” and “Hey Pocky A-Way” (The Beastie Boys were big fans) — or even his slinky masterful backing of Dr. John’s classic Right Place, Wrong Time. But a new generation are learning of Nocentelli from last year’s surprise release of his first and only solo record, the acoustic folk-driven Another Side, which was resurrected and marketed by Light In The Attic Records nearly fifty years after Leo first recorded it.

 

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You don’t usually put your first record out when you’re zooming past your 75th birthday. The story of how Another Side still even exists is quite a yarn (one that Leo goes into great good-humored detail about in the taping) from the master tapes being lost in damage caused by Hurricane Katrina, to a master-copy being found almost impossibly after a storage-unit got foreclosed and the music was traded at a local swap-meet. Hearing him tell it, finding these songs from his younger days, was like finding an essential, lost piece of his soul. The record isn’t polished, but the sense of youthful exploration shines through. He’s searching for his voice in real time.

You wouldn’t think a rock-funk maven like Nocentelli would be inspired by songwriters like James Taylor or Elton John — but in many ways, it was the softer, more yearning, poetic side of rock-n-roll in the early 1970s that intrigued him most when he began writing songs like “Thinking of the Day” in 1972, wondering if his place in the world, his “tomorrow would ever come.” Other standouts like “Riverfront” told the stories he couldn’t tell while penning the Meters’ funky (but often instrumental) dance anthems. With his Meters mates chugging beside him in the studio, he can tell darker, more personal tales about his hard-working friends, like Aaron Neville (who he grew up with in the 7th Ward), and how he used to haul bananas off the boats in New Orleans to get by.

Nocentelli has had his share of ups and downs as a lifer who has rode the tempests of the ever-evolving music industry. It’s a “brutal brutal business” he says at one point — and Leo shares that he had to sell some of his favorite guitars to keep going through the years. The song “Getting Nowhere” leans into the sense of helplessness and frustration many talented session players and touring side-men like him went through when royalties and fame and fortune passed them by as others rose to prominence.

Some things really haven’t changed in fifty years. But only a generational talent like Nocentelli could create sparkling guitar backdrops for artists as diverse as Dr. John, Otis Redding and even Jimmy Buffett, and keep his passion long enough to see new crowds packing houses on tours in 2022. It must be quite the feeling to finally be able to perform his own solo work — a half century after the songs first emerged and were almost lost forever.

The Show On The Road – American Aquarium

Posted on by Shelby Williamson

This week, we’re back for the fall season with the first face-to-face taping in nearly two years. I was able to catch up with the fearless deep-voiced frontman BJ Barham of North Carolina roots-rock favorites American Aquarium, in the front bar of The Troubadour in LA as his tour was passing through.

 

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American Aquarium’s rawly personal new LP Chicamacomico dropped earlier this year and focuses on the twin losses of BJ’s mother and grandmother — as well as a dark point in his own marriage when he and his wife lost a child. He was already building a room for the little one during the pregnancy when everything changed. While fans have been following the band as a roaring country-tinged rock outfit since they formed in Raleigh around 2006 (the masterful Jason Isbell-produced Burn.Flicker.Die put them on the map right as they thought they would quit), it’s with Barham’s more poetic, stripped down offerings like 2020’s Lamentations and his searing solo work Rockingham that he is breaking new ground. Barham isn’t shy about processing his adoration for The Boss as the preeminent living rock-n-roll intellectual king, and there are cuts off the new LP like “The Things We Lost Along the Way” that feel like they could have been recorded in that haunted place alongside Nebraska or Darkness on the Edge of Town.

As a new dad myself who just experienced my wife going through a terrifying birth, BJ’s songs hit me a little harder these days. I can’t think of a country artist today with as big a following from North Carolina to Texas who would center the title track of his record around the unspoken tragedy of a late miscarriage, but Barham pulls it off with a remarkable sensitivity. Like Isbell, Barham notes that his career really began when he got sober and could finally examine the dark corners of his history, his relationships and the fractured history of the South he grew up in.

Though hard to say, naming a record about working through deep loss Chicamacomico makes all the sense in the world. It’s a real place of course, a life-saving station built in 1874 on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, and a beach area where BJ and his wife tried to go to blow off steam and forget their sorrows. Now a proud dad to a little daughter (see the cheerful country banger “Little Things”) Barham has learned that in the end, being a father and husband first doesn’t make him less of a hard-working, deep-thinking artist. In fact, it’s finding that balance that has allowed him to write the most powerful songs of his career.

The Show On The Road – The Cactus Blossoms

Posted on by Shelby Williamson

On this new episode, maybe we need something soft to counter the hard news many Americans have witnessed this week: so why not dive into the crystalline brother harmonies of Minneapolis duo The Cactus Blossoms, who just put out a lush new record, One Day?

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Sure, you could write off what Jack Torrey and Page Burkum are creating as simply a loving homage to roots pop pioneers like the Everly or Louvin Brothers with an acerbic modern twist. But with allies like David Lynch (who inserted them into his rebooted Twin Peaks universe) and Jenny Lewis in their corner (she joins them on the bouncy tear-jerker, “Everyday”) there is something a bit more biting under the sweet-as-candy close harmonies and hushed acoustic guitars, Wurlitzer and pedal steel.

With a song like “I Could Almost Cry,” you have to dive beneath the aching minor country chords and Hank Williams-adjacent lyrics to find a Beatles Rubber Soul fury roiling underneath. As the soft-spoken mention in this freewheeling talk – what lurks inside many of the songs on One Day isn’t just the story of a broken love affair – but maybe of our slowly-breaking country which Jack and Page see out on the road and try and make sense of anew.

The Show On The Road – Mary Gauthier

Posted on by Shelby Williamson

This week, the show dials into the Nashville studio of one of the most gifted songwriters and empathic storytellers of her generation: Mary Gauthier. While Mary has become known for her darkly honest tales of overcoming addiction and seeking truth and joy after overcoming her troubled upbringing in Louisiana, she was nominated for a Grammy for her devastating record Rifles & Rosary Beads (co-written with U.S. veterans and their loved-ones), and her new record may be her most surprising and moving collection yet.

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Dark Enough to See the Stars, which drops June 3 on Thirty Tigers, is in many ways an unabashed romance album — celebrating, in her own sardonic John Prine-meets-Anthony Bourdain style, how lovely it can be to find true love and creative joy at long last.

During the pandemic she began performing a weekly stream called Sundays With Mary with her amor — the talented songwriter Jaimee Harris — and while Gauthier has now returned to the road, the cathartic weekly song sharing show has continued, too. Harris helped write the swoon-worthy traveling song “Amsterdam” on the newest LP.

Gauthier’s road to stability and creative contentment was a long one. As she gamely explains in this intense conversation, she made the leap to leave the relentless life of being a cook and restaurant owner (and partaker in too many illegal substances) and devoted herself to songwriting after getting arrested at thirty. Was she an instant hit on folk stages in her then base of Boston? Not exactly. In fact, she couldn’t step on any stage without shaking. But she kept at it and the stories flowed. Early tours with Prine gave her confidence. Her breakout record Mercy Now (2005) chronicles her technicolor debauched early years with the clear-eyed grace of the newly sober, trying to give forgiveness to her troubled family and to herself for making it through. Being an openly gay songwriter, she took early inspiration from her heroes the Indigo Girls who showed her there was a place for a new kind of empowered songwriting — not just for women, but for anyone who wanted to look deeper into what women are experiencing behind closed doors.

If Gauthier has one superpower as a songwriter it’s her ability to empathize with everyone around her — even the troubled soldiers who she teamed up with on Rifles & Rosary Beads. We have way more in common with each other than many may think, and overcoming trauma is pretty damn universal. Her book Saved by a Song: The Art and Healing Power of Songwriting is her most powerful collection of stories, and may explain best how her art has evolved in the last two decades, plus on the road.

Photo Credit: Alexa King Stone

The Show On The Road – Buffalo Nichols

Posted on by Shelby Williamson

This week on the show, we talk to a startling new talent placing a gut-punch into the folk and blues scene, the Milwaukee-raised and now Austin-based singer-songwriter Buffalo Nichols.

 

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Growing up learning on his sister’s dreadnought guitar and then traveling widely through West Africa after high school drinking up the sounds of the kora and percussion players in Senegal, Carl Nichols began finding his voice and playing style in the haunting open and minor tunings first heard from bluesmen like Skip James, who he covers in his remarkable self-titled debut collection. Buffalo Nichols, which came in 2021, is a stark departure from what Carl would call the cheery “opinionless beer commercial blues” that has come to dominate the genre. Nichols’ work is often sparse and direct – just a man with his guitar and a microphone. The stories told in standout songs like “Another Man” and “Living Hell” don’t flinch from comparing how the experience of his elders a hundred years ago in the South may not look much different from men like George Floyd dying on that Minneapolis pavement. Is there catharsis or hope in the songs? Are they a call to action? Maybe that’s up to us to decide.

Carl will admit that it can be tricky trying play his songs like the searing album opener “Lost And Lonesome” in loud bars where people may just want to have a good time and not dive into the backroad history of racial injustice and institutionalized police violence. Thankfully his writing doesn’t hide behind niceties and the recordings aren’t veiled by sonic artifice – Nichols speaks directly to the isolation and danger of being a young Black man in America, and trying to navigate the unease of bringing his stories to an often mostly white Americana-adjacent audience. Even more upbeat numbers like “Back On Top” call to mind the ominous juke-joint growl of John Lee Hooker, bringing us into dimly lit scenes where even late-night pleasure may have its next-morning consequences.

If there’s one thing we learned during this taping, it’s that Carl doesn’t want to just “write songs to make people feel good” – but he does want to tell stories that make the isolated and lost feel less so. Maybe that is the most important function of music truly steeped in the blues tradition: the ability to transform pain into progress. The messages may not be what people always want to hear, but the groundswell rising behind Carl’s stark timeless tales is indeed growing. With recent appearances on Late Night With Stephen Colbert, NPR’s Tiny Desk Concerts and big time dates like Lollapalooza on the books for the summer, folks will be hearing a lot more from Buffalo Nichols.

Photo Credit: Merrick Ales

The Show on the Road – AHI

Posted on by Shelby Williamson

To finish out the season, we bring you a talk from Toronto with rising roots singer-songwriter and folk philosopher AHI (pronounced “eye”), who celebrated the release of his acclaimed third full-length album Prospect in November.

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Born in Brampton, Ontario, to Jamaican and Trinidadian immigrant parents, AHI (short for Ahkinoah Habah Izarh) didn’t initially plan to pursue music — and scared his large family of teachers and educators by jumping ship from college and traveling wildly instead with just his guitar by his side. Stints seeing the remote villages in Ethiopia and Trinidad as well as backpacking all across his native Canada filled his songwriting inkwell to bursting. He also began building his family (he has four children who often appear in playful videos), and he isn’t shy about saying his wife is his muse and number one supporter. His forceful We Made It Through The Fire came in 2017, with the catchy and tender tune “Ole’ Sweet Day” being streamed nearly 20 million times since.

Becoming a traveler again, this time as a storyteller sharing his ever-growing catalogue (the hooky and politically-charged In Our Time came in 2018) forced AHI to be away from his family for months at a time — and as the pandemic arrived, his priorities began to shift. Prospect is his most heartfelt and introspective work yet, diving into where he stands as a Black man raising Black boys in a dangerous but increasingly hopeful world. Using booming gospel backing vocals and sweeping church-like reverb behind his warm acoustic guitar and silky voice, a standout like “Coldest Fire” feels like a post-George Floyd reckoning piece as well as a pure poetic pop jam.

Stick around to the end of the talk to hear AHI discuss how he would make vegan nachos for Jesus, Martin Luther King Jr. and Dave Chapelle — and he ends the show with an acoustic rendition of the sexy “Until You.”

Photo courtesy of Shore Fire

The Show on the Road – Brandy Clark

Posted on by Shelby Williamson

This week, we bring you a conversation with one of Nashville’s supreme songwriters: Brandy Clark.

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Born in a logging town in Washington state, Clark started playing guitar at age 9 before setting it aside and getting a scholarship for basketball. Music kept tugging her back in though. Like a modern Patsy Cline, she has a knack for nailing a heartbreaker. Reba recorded two of her songs in (“Cry,” “The Day She Got Divorced”) and Brandy soon found a valuable mentor in Marty Stuart, who helped her make her Opry debut in 2012.

While you may just be learning about Clark’s stellar solo work, which mixes old school and witty new school country with some of the tightest pop hooks in the game, Clark has been co-writing for some of country and rock’s leading ladies for years, like Miranda Lambert, Kacey Musgraves, LeAnn Rimes and Sheryl Crow to name a few. But it was with her lyrically masterful, lushly-orchestrated 2020 LP Your Life Is A Record that doors started opening in a whole new way. 2021 saw an extended deluxe version drop.

In this unearthed conversation (blame a faulty hard-drive), we go through her darkest breakup songs, hear about her tastiest kiss-offs and discuss her unique perspective of Nashville’s Music Row Boys’ Club.

Don’t miss the end of the taping when Brandy discusses teaming up with her songwriting hero Randy Newman on the cheeky tune “Bigger Boat” and she plays an exclusive acoustic performance.

This episode of The Show On The Road is brought to you by WYLD Gallery: an Austin, Texas-based art gallery that exclusively features works by Native American artists. Find unique gifts for your loved ones this holiday season and support Indigenous artists at the same time. Pieces at all price points are available at wyld.gallery.

The Show on the Road – Asleep at the Wheel (Ray Benson)

Posted on by Shelby Williamson

This week on The Show On The Road, we bring you a talk with the half-century-spanning, Grammy-winning ringleader of one of American roots music’s most durable and iconic bands, Ray Benson of Asleep at the Wheel. The episode is a celebration of their fifty years of diligent song collecting, Western swing camaraderie, and epic genre-spanning collaboration — and features first listens of their new record, Half a Hundred Years, which drops on October 1. The record covers old classics and tells new stories, with spritely cameos from fellow Texans Lyle Lovett and Willie Nelson.

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Aligning behind Benson’s commanding, deep voice and impeccable song-historian’s taste, Asleep at the Wheel has managed what few bands in country music — or any genre — have: Keeping a talented, rotating band of mostly-acoustic players together from 1972 on, with little break from the road. Willie Nelson and others have long championed their work, and indeed the band has had fans in even higher places: on September 11, 2001, the group was set to perform at The White House.

Asleep at the Wheel’s story is really one of perseverance and transformation. How did a Jewish kid from the the Philly suburbs end up as a Texas cowboy music icon who toured with Bob Dylan and George Strait (just ask Bob about changing identities), wrote songs and acted in movies with Dolly Parton and Blondie, and became the foremost interpreter of the rollicking music of Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys? Only in America, you could say, but Benson would just tell you that he loves the music deep in his bones, and it’s what he wakes up every day to create and save.

One of the most forward-thinking things Benson did from the very beginning was share the mic with a myriad of talented female vocalists, which maybe confused some radio programmers (“Who is leader of this outfit?”), but made their road shows eternally entertaining and unique. That tradition continues. Also featured on the new record are lovely collabs with Lee Ann Womack and Emmylou Harris.

Photo credit: Mike Shore

The Show On The Road – Hiss Golden Messenger

Posted on by Shelby Williamson

This week on The Show On The Road, we dial into North Carolina for a comprehensive conversation with Grammy-nominated songwriter MC Taylor, who for the last decade and a half has created heart-wrenchingly personal and subtly political music fronting the acclaimed roots group Hiss Golden Messenger.

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With his newest release Quietly Blowing It, Taylor continues to tell stories that are at turns hopeful and devastating — as if deeply examining his own faults and features as a father, husband, citizen and artist can help us understand our own struggles during this deeply strange time. Despite the often delicate delivery of his vocal performances, it isn’t a shock to see that Taylor, who grew up in California before heading to the south, did start in the hardcore and punk worlds before he became one of the faces of the Americana resurgence. While a song like “Hardlytown” feels like a jangly, lost Basement Tapes take from The Band, Taylor mines his own confusion about how broken our once-ambitious country has become. Why can’t we come together to address climate change, gun violence, or systemic poverty? Is he doing enough? While Taylor has been open about examining his own depression and doubt over the last few years, it’s through these songs that we can see a light forming at the end of a dark tunnel.

Maybe it’s the personal acceptance of the confusion and helplessness that makes Quietly Blowing It pack such a quiet punch and seem somehow sonically uplifting. During our conversation, Taylor would be the first to tell you that while folky, slow-burn songs like “Way Back In The Way Back” seem to exalt the healing power of nature while questioning the broken bureaucracies that govern our unique American way of life (“up with the mountains, down with the system!”) he isn’t trying to make a statement. One thing that we all learned to do during our ongoing lockdowns in 2020 and beyond is to think smaller. We don’t have to change everything from the moment we wake up. Maybe it’s about going within and seeing the world just from the scope of your own neighborhood, your own family, your own green, growing, hissing backyard. A song doesn’t have to solve it all in one go.

Gathering confidence from previous standout records Heart Like A Levee (2016), Hallelujah Anyhow (2017) and the Grammy-nominated Terms Of Surrender (2019), it’s clear that while the last few years haven’t been easy for Taylor, he’s reaching new heights creatively. Quietly Blowing It may seem like a defeatist message — but actually its more like laying all the cards on the table. Honesty is freeing. Taylor will be embarking on a rare solo tour coming up, which would be an amazing way to see his intimate brand of songwriting up close.

Photo credit: Chris Frisina

The Show on the Road – Menahan Street Band (The Daptone Sound)

Posted on by Shelby Williamson

This week, The Show On The Road brings you a rare conversation with Thomas Brenneck and Homer Steinweiss, the braintrust behind brass-forward instrumental supergroup the Menahan Street Band. If Tarantino and Scorsese ever needed a custom-made, 1970’s greasy-soul soundtrack, MSB might be the perfect choice. While the timeless Daptone Records sound has gone worldwide thanks to breakout stars like the late Sharon Jones and Charles Bradley, most don’t know the bandleaders and songwriters behind their intricately arranged works.

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Guitarist/producer Thomas Brenneck has been the secret sauce in helping hitmaker Mark Ronson create vintage backdrops for crossover stars like Amy Winehouse, while Homer Steinweiss’ slinky drumming can be heard across the Daptone universe, including on Jones, Winehouse, and Lee Fields and The Expressions records, not to mention his work with Lady Gaga, St. Vincent, and Bruno Mars. For the first time in a decade, MSB — which includes Dave Guy (The Roots), Leon Michaels (The Black Keys) and Nick Movshon (The Expressions) — have reconvened the troops to create their most effortlessly cinematic collection yet: the cheekily titled The Exciting Sounds Of The Menahan Street Band. The album art alone signifies a sensual, intimate evening is ahead to whoever listens. Is the design NSFW? Maybe.

Brenneck called into the episode taping from outside L.A. and Steinweiss from his studio in New York City. The conservation jumped back to how they formed the group in 2007, how they convinced Bradley to join them in making new music (he had been doing James Brown impression work), and how they find that out-of-body, improvisational zen zone which creates their aural moods of mystery and intrigue — showcased best in the reverb-y Bond-like jam “Starchaser.”

A favorite surreal moment that Brenneck mentioned was driving through Brooklyn hearing their song sampled by Jay-Z. For a moment, their horns were blaring from every car radio in the city. While hip-hop legends often find their beats and backdrops from classic soul and R&B vinyl, notables like Eminem, Kendrick Lamar, Travis Scott and 50 Cent have mined the funky MSB catalog for years. Sir Paul McCartney also used their services. If you need an instant vibe, they’ve got you. Even in sparkling trumpet-led themes like “Glovebox Pistol,” which clocks in at a minute and eight seconds long, you can see a velvet-boothed, smoke-filled scene unfolding, bringing to mind the lush scores of The Godfather or The Score.

Only recently have star backing-bands like The Wrecking Crew, The Swampers, and the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section come to be appreciated for creating some of the most beloved songs in the American pop canon, from The Beach Boys and Aretha Franklin to Paul Simon, Bob Dylan, and The Staples Singers. It can be argued that in the 21st century, Brenneck and Steinweiss (and the work of The Menahan Street Band) deserve to be included in that conversation. With one listen of The Exciting Sounds Of The Menahan Street Band, you are transported — exactly where is up to you.

Photo credit: Shervin Lainez