Tag: Songwriting

BGS 5+5: Kendl Winter

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Kendl Winter
Hometown: Olympia, Washington
Latest album: Stumbler’s Business
Personal nicknames (or rejected band names): Cub, Tindl

Which artist has influenced you the most … and how?

Probably Gillian Welch most honestly. She’s a current songwriter that writes these tunes that feel ageless and they have wings and legs that draw other songwriters to sing them and they end up around campfires and get passed around outside of just the recordings. I love the harmonies that Dave Rawlings brings to the sound and the beautiful dissonance that his solos bring. She’s definitely inspired me to try to write songs that have that kind of agelessness to them. But then again I did mention Two-Buck Chuck and taco trucks in my last record so it’s not a rule, just kind of a wishing…

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

I think it was singing my torah portion at my bat mitzvah in Arkansas and seeing my great uncle cry and thinking, whoa, music is powerful. I want to do that!

What’s the toughest time you ever had writing a song?

Probably now, it’s almost like writing songs is harder now that I’ve written ones that I like or that people have responded to. I think having too much of an expectation about how a song should be makes it much more difficult to try to write one. I like the child’s mind way of trying to approach songwriting, but it’s definitely harder having already written a bunch and trying not to write the same songs over and over.

What rituals do you have, either in the studio or before a show?

Usually I try to do a handstand or something before the show and get some blood to my head. That and a little whiskey…

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

I love being in the woods or up and over mountains or by water, any water. I spend a lot of time trail running, or backpacking and foraging for berries or edible mushrooms and camping with my friends. I feel like the solitude of nature or just the sounds away from the cities is necessary for reflection. I feel the most myself out there.

Photo credit: Erica Keeling

BGS 5+5: Adam Wright

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Adam Wright
Hometown: Newnan, Georgia / Nashville, Tennessee
Latest Album: Dust

What other art forms — literature, film, dance, painting, etc — inform your music?

Whatever I’m reading at the moment usually has some impact on what I’m writing. Especially if it’s a writer that is new to me. If it’s good, it’ll spark a lot of little ideas. They’re not usually directly related to the book, but it will just get the ideas coming. Reading good writing is good for creativity. I don’t feel the same about movies. I enjoy them, but they don’t spark ideas for me the way reading does.

What’s the toughest time you ever had writing a song?

It’s really fun to work hard on a song you know is going to be good. And it’s not hard work to write a bad song that you know is bad. The real drudgery is working on a mediocre song. You have to use all your tools as though you were writing something good, but they don’t work the same and you know the result is going to be lackluster. It’s draining. I try not to get into that situation. I don’t like to settle in to the work unless I think I can land something worthwhile. Sometimes in a co-write you don’t have that luxury. You just have to push on and get it done.

If you had to write a mission statement for your career, what would it be?

I want to have contributed to the elevation of the art of songwriting. I want to entertain people. I want to be the best singer-songwriter I can possibly be. And I also want to make a decent living. Because without the means, you can’t give it everything you’ve got. And being your best means giving it everything you’ve got.

Since food and music go so well together, what is your dream pairing of a meal and a musician?

Mexican food, particularly huevos rancheros, is kind of a hobby of mine. There is a place close to where we live that plays great Mexican music. A lot of ’60s Latin pop. Some Mariachi. It’s always good. You’d have to work pretty hard at it to not feel good when you’re eating that food and hearing that music. We went to a newer Mexican place for my birthday not long ago, and it had marble floors and chandeliers and they were playing the shiniest, slickest, newest, American pop music. The food was good but the vibe was so wrong that it ruined the experience. We all ate as fast as we could and got out.

How often do you hide behind a character in a song or use “you” when it’s actually “me”?

I write quite a bit in character. It’s a lot more fun for me. I’ve never been much of a “confessional” songwriter. I’m much more interested in what someone else might do in a situation. I like to tell stories. I like to drop in on a particular moment in the life of a character and write there. Some of my favorite songwriters do that. And not just folk-song writers. Chuck Berry was a fantastic storyteller. And he made it rock and roll. Even as a kid when I listened to his songs, I didn’t have the impression that he was singing about his life. I had the impression that he was a clever writer and he was entertaining me. “Born To Dream” is probably the only song on the new album that is written from my perspective. And “The Banker,” I guess, but it’s not really about me. Shannon, my wife, says “Born To Dream” is the most Adam song on there.

https://open.spotify.com/user/adamwrightofficial/playlist/4ynVBSEIlt81if2t7sTZ8p?si=uDUH1sE4TcuaB_Ta0Zykww

Photo credit: Bret Pemelton

Dawes’ Taylor Goldsmith, The Over-Sharing Songwriter

Posted on by Editor

Taylor Goldsmith is done trying to be cool.

“I feel like there’s an aversion to sentimentality in 2018,” the Dawes frontman (pictured far right) says from his home in Los Angeles. “And I think for a long time I wanted to try to figure out a way to play by those rules. I would write the songs in a certain way; I would maybe even carry myself onstage in a certain way because I was aware of that fact. There was a coolness that had always been there I guess to varying degrees, but I feel like now more than ever it’s important that if you’re a guy in a band, you have to not mean what you say, not know what it means, you have to kind of keep your ballcap pulled down as far as it can go and just kind of recede into the shadows of coolness. And as time goes on and when I feel most myself, I find that just not who I am, and I’m never gonna be.”

That self-awareness is evident on Passwords, the band’s sixth record. It’s an outward-looking album, one that deals with modern themes ranging from the current political climate to social media’s effect on our lives, but it also sees Goldsmith stretching his wings as a songwriter by both pushing himself out of his comfort zone and leaning in to an emotionality that has always been a part of Dawes’ oeuvre.

Case in point: the lovely “Never Gonna Say Goodbye,” written for his fiancée, the actress Mandy Moore. That song poured out of him one night while he was on tour in Detroit. (“Songs typically don’t come out that fast for me,” he says. “They take a good month or two sometimes.”) It was meant as a private “I miss you,” and Goldsmith never intended for it to be heard by anyone besides Moore until she and his brother Griffin convinced him it belonged on the record.

“The main thing [I struggled with] really was the sort of lover’s language that’s really nobody’s business, like the way anyone speaks to the person they’re with when they’re going to bed at night or waking up in the morning or the way they look at each other,” Goldsmith says. “That is the most sacred, private world that I would never dream of wanting any access to. So for me, I was like, ‘Man, this is a very vulnerable moment for me, to say “I love you and I miss you.”‘ It was just a quick thing and I didn’t really want everyone to be eavesdropping, you know? But that ended up being what I liked about it. Because it was like, ‘Okay, what is art? What is music supposed to be other than sharing these personal attitudes that can resonate with someone else?'”

Producer Jonathan Wilson, who worked with the band on their first two records and reunited with them on Passwords, helped Goldsmith feel that he made the right choice about “Never Gonna Say Goodbye” when they got into the studio to record it.

“I was talking to Jonathan about it, and I was like ‘Is this song a little too…much?'” he explains. “I feel like we would all love it if Willie Nelson recorded it in 1973 maybe, but in 2018 is that acceptable now? And Jonathan was like, ‘That’s exactly why I like this song so much. That’s exactly why this should be on the record, because people don’t have the guts to go to this more vulnerable and intimate and earnest place.’ And so that’s something that I used to be scared of because I wanted to be this sort of obtuse artist that was impenetrable because that’s what I’ve always admired in songwriters, but the reality is I’m never gonna be that. The more I embrace what comes out naturally, the better it all feels.”

That approach helped him unlock the album’s themes; though Passwords is not a concept record, its songs share a commonality that make it feel cohesive and uniquely tethered to life in 2018. Goldsmith credits “Crack the Case,” a call for empathy in a time when our country is more divided than ever, with helping him find a direction for the rest of the album’s tracks.

“Oftentimes I find that the themes and ideas present themselves,” he says. “‘Most People’ and ‘Things Happen’ are pretty much about the same thing, and I think that’s pretty cool. I think that’s indicative of a certain attitude being consistent, or something that was really on my mind. Or when I listen to ‘Born to Run’ and ‘Thunder Road,’ one’s almost a continuation of the other, but it’s something that I love about those two songs and that time in Bruce Springsteen’s career, where ‘there’s a better world out there and get on my motorcycle and I’m gonna take you there.'”

He laughs. “In every Bruce Springsteen song, it becomes the identifying mark. It becomes the fingerprint. So with this album, after writing ‘Crack the Case’ and then all of a sudden writing ‘Living in the Future,’ in a way it’s like these songs are about the same thing. One of them comes from a much more paranoid place, but it’s still in the chorus like ‘we’re living in the future, so shine a little light.’ That line could be in ‘Crack the Case.’ So the way that certain songs would bleed into each other and kind of play different angles of the same conversation, that’s something I didn’t think about until it was all written.”

But his plea for entertaining other perspectives on “Crack the Case” isn’t just directed at others. As he gets older, he has challenged himself to get out of his own head and try writing more through the eyes of others, whether it’s the fear and resignation of “Stay Down” or the weariness of “Feed the Fire,” where he’s “working for attention I’ll eventually resent.” (“The song is in this mode of ‘I,’ it’s in first person, but it’s not representative of how I feel,” he says.)

“I think that as time goes on, like anything, anyone who does anything for a living, there become things where you feel like, ‘Cool, I did that and I don’t want to do it anymore because I know how to do it now. I wanna do something that I don’t know how to do,'” he explains. “And for a long time certain approaches to songwriting or to song structures became what I would go back to because that’s what I wanted to learn how to do, especially like ‘Coming Back to a Man’ or ‘That Western Skyline,’ songs that I’m very proud of but also songs that were sort of building blocks for me to take those concepts and then follow into the way I speak as an adult rather than a young guy looking to be a songwriter. There’s a lot of talk of like sunsets and mountains and rivers on our first few records.”

He laughs before continuing, “It is very songwriterly. And that’s because I was learning the language, and as time has gone on, I’ve been trying to figure out how to find the lyrical, find the song in something that otherwise wouldn’t seem like one, you know? When I wrote ‘From a Window Seat’ I was really excited, I was like, ‘This is a song about the weird, obscure metaphysical fear of flying, and it should be off-limits from a band like Dawes, but here it is.’ And I try to keep chasing that down, finding things that just seem like they’re not lyrical and they’re not up for discussing through song. But then more than that, the thing that’s important to me is trying to explore the difference—like when I listen to early music that I wrote, it’s a lot of just me, me, me.”

He adds, “And that’s still the case, and that’ll always be the case, but at the same time, I want to make sure I’m coming from a place where I can adopt attitudes that I don’t identify with….certain perspectives that are not my own, certain narratives that I’m not even a part of, that stuff I feel like is newer. That’s how my writing’s changed. I feel like it’s all as indicative to how I view the world as it ever has been, but trying to take it beyond ‘I love you and you love me, let’s not lose each other, blah blah blah.’

“Because that’s part of what it is to be in your early 20s, but now I look at these songwriters that have these long, rich careers, and a lot of it is because they know how to tackle concepts that are bigger than relationships, that are bigger than self-reflection. They might involve those qualities, but they reach for more ambitious concepts. And so that’s something that I try not to think about too much, but I know that when I sit down to write a song, if it’s going to motivate me to finish it, I want to feel like it’s terrain that I haven’t covered before.”

Even when he doesn’t necessarily agree with what he’s singing, there’s a certain sincerity at the heart of Goldsmith’s songs—perhaps stemming from his ability to place himself in someone else’s shoes sans judgment—that he’s learning to take pride in, no matter how unhip that makes him.

“There’s this coolness that exists right now, and when we come across people that stand up against it and just say how they feel and they don’t mind being emotionally available and earnest and clear and proud, it’s an inspiring attitude,” he says. “I mean, that can come from a person like Bruce Springsteen or it can come from a person like The Rock. His attitude and his sense of gratitude and the way he presents himself in this world, I think there’s something very deep and enlightened about it. He has transcended coolness, and that’s amazing because he’s not here to pretend like he’s some impenetrable artist. He’s not here to pretend like he doesn’t care. He definitely cares, and he’s definitely grateful, and he’s definitely proud, and if we all took a bit of a tip from that attitude towards life, I think it would actually edify us. It would motivate us.

“And so I think for me as a songwriter, after all this time of not knowing where I stood, like, ‘Well, how do I be the cool guy? How does David Bowie be David Bowie? How does Father John Misty be this kind of enigmatic Father John Misty?’ And the reality is that’s just who those people are. And I am the person talking to you right now; I’m the over-sharer. And me coming to terms with that has been kind of the best feeling I’ve had as a songwriter in a long time, like the more I embrace myself directly corresponds to how true I feel my music is. It should be a simple enough lesson to learn pretty early on, but it’s not. It’s really hard. There are few things harder than getting to know yourself and then committing to it. So if someone heard this new album and felt like ‘I’m more willing to be myself. I’m more willing to be open and earnest and share the way I feel,’ I dunno, it sounds cheesy saying it out loud, but I feel like if that were to be something that someone was left with, that would mean a lot.”


Photo credit: Magdalena Wosinska

Allowing Herself to Be Free: A Conversation with Erin Rae

Posted on by Editor

Quiet may come off as meek, but don’t be fooled; strong doesn’t necessarily present in overly clamorous ways. That’s the central truth Erin Rae unearths on her new album Putting on Airs. Across twelve hushed tracks, her haunting voice depicts the ways in which the past looms over the present, especially how the scenes we witness as children build their own imposing edifices in the psyche. On the title track, she sings with bare-bones honesty, “I never did learn to like myself/ Been chasing down anyone that might could help/ Lure them in with charm, come out stealing.”

Putting on Airs is as much about calling out herself as exploring the circumstances that formed her, but through it all the Nashville-based songwriter’s honesty is manifested through her clear-eyed vocals and deft lyricism. She wants to heal, and her music, functioning like a salve, allows her to do exactly that. For example, on “Bad Mind,” she sings about a lesbian aunt who faced discrimination decades ago in the Alabama court system and how that, and other adolescent experiences, shaped the perception of her own sexuality.

Recorded in Appleton, Wisconsin, during winter’s muted apex, Erin Rae worked with co-producers Jerry Bernhardt and Dan Knobler to make full use of the space—a former Franciscan monastery known as The Refuge. As a result, the production lives, breathes, and echoes, giving her the room to use her voice, both literally and lyrically.

These songs are so tender, and that descriptor strikes me in two ways: Tender like a bruise, and tender as in full of care. When you were writing them, did one apply more than the other?

I think it’s a little bit of both. With “Putting on Airs” in particular, I was like, “Am I just being harsh on myself?” My mom’s Buddhist now, so I’m really [thinking] like, “Is this being kind? Is this causing harm?” It’s been helpful to me to own that behavior and, yeah, it is uncomfortable to feel the reality of that and the consequences of that and how it affects other people and myself. But also, by owning it and saying it, my hope is to continue to get more free from that. It’s a little bit of both: It’s tender temporarily.

How have you seen your songwriting shift on this album?

I guess I’ve always used songwriting to process through my own stuff; it’s been very cathartic for me. My last record was tying my own experience in with that of my parents or close friends. There’s still an element of that, but I feel like this record has become more directly about me. I didn’t really intend for these songs to be that, like “I’m going to call myself out.” “Putting on Airs” is about people-pleasing where it’s harmful to myself and other people, where eventually you just become dishonest in a way.

No kidding. That line, “Lure them in with charm, come out stealing,” got me right in the gut. It almost hurts to hear but it’s so true.

It’s like, “I want you to like me!”

It’s almost like a safety mechanism at first, but it’s interesting how you say it can become self-harming at a point.  

My dad is super outgoing. He’s one of those people who’s never met a stranger. That’s how I am as well, but learning in a way to make sure…especially as far as it goes with relationships. That’s really what I’m focusing on in that song.

Ok, we have to talk about “June Bug.” That transition to the old-timey piano at the two-minute mark is stunning. That riff says so much, and coming after all you’ve confessed, hangs even all the more beautifully.

At the Refuge up there in Appleton, there’s this giant chapel and all these monks’ quarters, 60 little individual bedrooms, and a lounge area on the first floor. It was in the middle of winter, it was still snowing, and the Fox River is right out the back. The room has a wall of windows, so you could see the snow and the bald eagles. There are two hallways, and in the center of that is where we had a lot of tracking stuff set up and the computer and all the gear. Then we ran guitar amps and put the drums in the chapel, so you hear that huge open sound. We tracked vocals in there so we had the room sound.

I have these fond memories of everyone being super sweet to each other. Basically, Jerry played everything. I think he had tracked that piano part and then Dan, when he was mixing everything, surprised Jerry by putting that into the end of the song, because the song otherwise would just be a minute and a half long. We had this beautiful piano track that Jerry had done in this space, and Dan surprised us with the old timey piano outro, and I thought Jerry was going to cry. It was really great.

I’m especially interested in the labels that circulate around Southern women. To that end, “Mississippi Queen” is such a striking song. How have you attempted to battle against the labels about who women should or shouldn’t be?

Nashville is like a blue spot surrounded by red. It’s a town full of creatives. I’ve got a family member that lives in Mississippi and my dad grew up in Missouri, but whenever you go back to more traditional Southern cities, it’s kind of like, “Oh yeah, people more or less adhere to these cultural norms that feel a little outdated to me.” But I’m always drawn to a sense of tradition. The only way I’ve known how to challenge anything is personally, like internally making sure that I’m clear.

That’s what a lot of this record’s about—allowing myself to be free to see what my own personal truth is, so that, hopefully, I’m able to lend that to others and give other people that space. Even in thinking that that’s a way I want to live, it’s still difficult. I empathize with people that have grown up in a more traditional city; I feel like it takes a conscious effort to grow up and be open-minded if it’s not the norm.

Right, if it’s not modeled for you it’s even harder to practice.

My parents are super open-minded and I still grew up in the South and absorbed a lot of the social norms, so I can’t imagine how hard it is for someone else [who didn’t] to feel free enough. With a more conservative or strictly religious background, it’s hard work for everybody to be more open-minded.

The past six months have been fruitful for singer-songwriters wishing to challenge heteronormativity, including projects from H.C. McEntire and Sarah Shook. Why do you think now is such a powerful moment for such visibility?

So much progress that had been made was starting to feel uncertain with this new administration. It kind of worked out to be a timely thing, especially with the song “Bad Mind,” and that story being born out of the state of Alabama. When Roy Moore was almost elected, I was like, “It’s all happening in the same time.” I think it’s so important to keep the conversation going and make opportunities to heal around this stuff, around sexuality, while it’s all being threatened.

It does feel like a backlash, similar to what took place in the ‘80s after women had made significant strides in the ‘70s.

Music helps us process. One image that came to mind while you were talking about a backlash is the Women’s March—the second one that happened recently in Nashville. It ended with a big concert at Bicentennial Mall, and Alanna Royale and Becca Mancari were both performing there. Alanna has always represented real womanhood for me, being a strong and powerful woman. She’s full of life. It was this really beautiful moment to walk with all these people—dads, and little kids, and folks old and young—through Nashville, and then end up at this powerful, beautiful concert with people that I admire in our community. It was such a beautiful way to tie it all together.

Photo credit: Marcus Maddox

BGS 5+5: Skin & Bones

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Skin & Bones
Hometown: Moorpark, California; Greensboro, North Carolina
Latest Album: Shadowboxing
Personal Nickname: Sweet mesquite Pete and the Carolina Heat

(Answers from singer/guitarist Taylor Borsuk)

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

I was living with my girlfriend in Dresden, Germany, in winter. I was 19 years old and was addicted to writing songs. I hardly knew anyone there and couldn’t really speak much of the language. The isolation I experienced was really profound. It provided me with a very rare opportunity to consider what I wanted out of life. I made the decision then to put all my efforts into songs.

How often do you hide behind a character in a song or use “you” when it’s actually “me”?

I tend to do this in most of my songs; however I don’t consider it hiding. I write about my own personal experiences and others around me, but at the same time I want the listener to be able to relate to the songs and stories in their own unique way. I’ve used “you” instead of “me” in an attempt to bridge that gap in the hopes that the song feels as if it could be about anyone. In all honesty, what the songs means to me doesn’t matter that much. I’m more interested in what it means to someone else.

What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?

We were performing at The Deer Lodge in Ojai, California. I guess word had gotten around about our music and when we arrived the place was packed. People were singing along to the songs and it was one of those first ‘wow’ moments we experienced as a band. Great fun and we made a lot of new friends.

Which artist has influenced you the most … and how?

This is such a toughie. I pull from a myriad of influences, but I think the artist that has had the biggest impact on me is Jackson Browne. As a child his music was always playing in my home and subconsciously it laid the foundation for my appreciation of songwriting. His work is timeless. It will be just as relevant in a hundred years from now as it was when he first wrote it. When I heard that he wrote the song “These Days” at age 16 it set the bar for me.

What is your dream pairing of a meal and a musician?

Mexican food paired with the Mariachi radio station in a hole in the wall restaurant and I am a happy camper. Bring on the horns.

Photo courtesy of Skin & Bones

BGS 5+5: Elizabeth and the Catapult​

Posted on by Editor

Artist:​ Elizabeth and the Catapult​
Hometown:​ Brooklyn, NY​
Latest Album:​ Keepsake​
Personal Nickname: EZ (but never Liz or Lizzy!)

What rituals do you have, either in the studio or before a show?

I get very nervous for some reason before every show, no matter how big or small, still to this day​.​ I do this thing in the bathroom before getting on stage where I kind of “shake it all out​.”​ Try to let all my bundled nerves let loose.

If you had to write a mission statement for your career, what would it be?

Work your ass off, but have fun. There’s no point in doing something that doesn’t bring you great joy​. Write your butt off and then, when it’s time to share, remember it’s about sharing, not just showing.

What’s the toughest time you ever had writing a song?

I once wrote a song that took two years to finish. I’d come back to it every couple months and completely rewrite both the lyrics and the music — same theme, same idea, completely different song. It ended up on my latest album (FINALLY). It’s called “Mea Culpa.”

Since food and music go so well together, what would be your dream pairing of a meal and a musician?​ ​

I’d love to have some jambalaya or a giant sushi dinner with Stevie Wonder (two of my favorite meals).

What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?

Favorite memory from being on stage was performing with my band at ​C​arnegie ​Hall as part of a Rufus Wain​w​right festival and taking a picture of the audience in the middle of a song.

Hangin’ & Sangin’: Lilly Hiatt

Posted on by Editor

From the Bluegrass Situation and WMOT Roots Radio, it’s Hangin’ & Sangin’ with your host, BGS editor Kelly McCartney. Every week Hangin’ & Sangin’ offers up casual conversation and acoustic performances by some of your favorite roots artists. From bluegrass to folk, country, blues, and Americana, we stand at the intersection of modern roots music and old time traditions bringing you roots culture — redefined.

With me today at Hillbilly Central, Lilly Hiatt! Welcome!

Thank you!

 

Okay, Trinity Lane, your record, came out last summer. Let’s talk about songwriting, because I feel like this record is songwriting as a way to understand yourself, right? The record’s kind of overflowing with that.

Yes, it is that, definitely. [Laughs]

How much easier is it for you to dissect and process whatever you’re going through with writing versus talking it out or some other form?

Well, I think both are useful, but sometimes with writing — I think because you’re alone, or I’m alone when I write — sometimes things will come out that maybe are a little buried down or you didn’t know were there, and you’re like, “Hmm, alright!” And so that’s kind of the fun part about that. It’s kind of like the guard is really down there.

How often does something come through that you didn’t even necessarily know was there and then, afterward, you’re like, “Oh, huh, okay, that’s how I feel about that!”

Yeah, I mean that happens a lot! It happened the other day, when I was playing around, and sometimes it’s a little startling, but usually it’s really relieving, like “Oh, gosh!” It happens a lot.

I love it, sometimes when I’ve got stuff swirling around — this just happened recently, too — the only way I can think to express it is to just start writing it in a weird free-form poem, whatever kind of thing. The words don’t necessarily even have to make sense if someone else were to read it, but it can express. And then, when you add on a melody, which I don’t do because I’m not a songwriter, then that enhances it that much further because the music can take it in a whole other direction.

Yeah, totally, it’s an exciting thing to do. And I think it’s a useful tool to write things down, for anyone really. Because sometimes you really don’t understand things, when they’re just swirling around in your head, and maybe you don’t understand them on paper, but it’s a document of that moment and how you were perceiving it then. And, if that changes later, it may, but it’s interesting.

Before we started the show we were talking about our mutual friend Amanda Shires. She recently challenged me — she owes me breakfast, by the way — she uses an app called Flowstate, wherein you set a timer for either five or 10 minutes or whatever, and you just write. And if you stop for five seconds before your time ends, it erases everything you did. So you have to keep going!

You just go! That’s cool!

The first time I did it, I had about nine seconds left out of the whole thing, and I saw a typo that I wanted to go back and fix, and [it deleted everything], it was just a blank cursor!

And you just lost it! Well, that’s really cool. I’m a big fan of the let-it-flow method, myself. You can always go back and edit, but sometimes what comes out is what needs to. And Amanda’s a cool writer. She is a true writer, and she disciplines herself even though it comes from her heart, and I think there’s a lot to be said for that, too, you know, just taking the time to freestyle! Whatever!

If you had to define what your job is, as a songwriter, what would you say it is, in terms of the parameters or responsibilities?

That’s a good question, and I’ve heard a couple writers who I admire talk about what they think that responsibility is, and I try not to take it too seriously as in “I have a real something to say that you need to hear!” But, I do think, if you have a way with words and you have a strong suit in one way or another, whether that’s painting a picture or being introspective, then maybe there is a service in that, of connecting with people. The things I write about are really mundane, like breakups and stuff that everyone deals with — pretty simple stuff. But if you can just kind of nuance it in a way that strikes a chord with others, it can be powerful, and it’s powerful for me to share that stuff with other people.

Have you figured out ways for yourself to block out the outside opinions and trends and not let them sway you? Just say, “This is my truth and this is what I’m gonna say and how I’m gonna say it”?

Yeah, I have, and I’ve gotten better as I’ve gotten older and more confident in myself. But I mean, still, of course you care what other people think, but I care more about making music that I feel good about … whatever that means. So it’s not to pander to any one way or another or any group. You know, sometimes you have to tune it out. And nobody really expects that much from you! I think we get more in our heads, it’s like, “Just write stuff!” Whatever! [Laughs]

If it lands, it lands!

Yeah, exactly. It’s fulfilling to write things.

…

Let’s get a little granular on your song “Different, I Guess,” because it’s a fascinating piece to me, for a number of reasons, and Amanda, among others, say it’s one of the best songs they’ve ever heard.

That’s nice.

But structurally on that, it starts out just kind of cruising along, and then it sort of flails a little bit, and then it goes back. On a scale of 1-10, how much do rules matter to you?

They don’t really.

Okay, so on a scale of 0-10 … [Laughs]

I mean, maybe we’ll give them a 1 or 2. Sometimes I’m like, “Hmm, you can’t do that,” but then I’m like, “Oh yes, you can!” And that song was actually kind of the beginning of a foray into … it’s funny because I think somewhere in the back of my head I followed, not one particular structure, but I disciplined myself with getting a good form for a song. And I was like, “You can do whatever you want in that song, say whatever you want!”

You don’t have to have a chorus, you don’t have to have a bridge …

Yeah, exactly! Because I think of some of my favorite songs, and they don’t have those things. They’re not “perfect” — whatever that means. So that one was fun. It just kind of spilled out, and I was like, “I’m not changing anything!” [Laughs]

“Take that, world!” Lyrically, too, it’s so raw and real, but it’s still painted with poetry. I love the line, “I don’t have to have you to know what this is.”

Thank you.

Because, in the end, it’s about how we’re responding to something. It’s often not about “that” — whether it’s a person or a situation or whatever. It’s what’s going on inside of us. So “that” doesn’t even have to be there for the work to be going on [inside of us].

It’s true. I think, when we love things, we want to possess them a lot of the time.

Funny that, eh?

It is funny! Ultimately, it’s not how that works, you know? But I don’t know. [Laughs] Every love is different!

And the other line, “No one’s really been at their best” … One of my life’s mottos for the past few years has been trying to be my best in any given moment so that I don’t have to have remorse or regret, or second-guess myself if I’d made the best choice. And what’s funny is that that is sort of echoed in that, too, even though you say, “No one’s really been at their best,” that sentiment is still in there and that’s fascinating to me.

Thank you. Well, I appreciate your insight into that song. It’s cool hearing people’s take on things, you know? And yeah, “at your best” … I don’t know! [Laughs]

Which at any given moment is [high or low]. [Laughs]

But I know what you mean, where you just want to know you gave it what you had.

Watch all the episodes on YouTube, or download and subscribe to the Hangin’ & Sangin’ podcast and other BGS programs every week via iTunes, Spotify, Podbean, or your favorite podcast platform.

BGS 5+5: Belle Adair

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Matthew Green (of Belle Adair)
Hometown: Muscle Shoals, AL
Latest Album: Tuscumbia
Rejected Band Name: Sorry Saints

If you had to write a mission statement for your career, what would it be?

Trust yourself and your own instincts more than others. Don’t capitulate.

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

I do a lot of trail running and hiking, now that I’m living in Philadelphia. There are some beautiful trails and sights around the Wissahickon Creek. It’s mostly a mechanism to clear my mind and reduce anxiety, but it’s also a good time to think about new songs I’m working on.

If you could spend 10 minutes with John Lennon, Dolly Parton, Hank Williams, Joni Mitchell, Sister Rosetta, or Merle Haggard how would it go?

I’d have to choose Joni. I’d ask her to play “Woodstock” twice and, once she was finished, I’d thank her profusely until our time was up.

How do other art forms — literature, film, dance, painting, etc — inform your music?

My wife is a painter. I wake up to her work every day. Either I’m seeing it or we’re talking about it. I can’t say exactly how it informs my music, but I know that it does. It has to. It’s just too important to me.

What’s the weirdest, hardest, nerdiest, or other superlative thing about songwriting that most non-writers wouldn’t know?

I usually sing nonsense lyrics when I’m first working out the melody to a song. Even though the words make little sense, I can always find some nugget in there that feels right that I can build around. It’s good to let the subconscious play its role.

Dismantling American Myths: A Conversation with Josh Ritter

Posted on by Editor

Josh Ritter is, at his core, a wordsmith. His proclivity for words — for their exactitude, potency, and even magic — comes out in his lyrical prowess. He not only summarizes an experience with perceptive poetic force, but also heightens its impact with clever rhythmic structuring. It’s why when he sings “Our love would live a half-life on the surface” from his apocalyptic love song “The Temptation of Adam” (off 2007’s The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter), the line delivers the linguistic equivalent of a gut punch for anyone who has known the kind of love that cannot survive its own origin story. When choosing the name for his newest album, Gathering, Ritter had storms in mind, but of course the meaning didn’t cease there. The homonym touches on many interrelated themes, but at the album’s crux lies a reckoning. As he enters middle age, Ritter gathers together his many parts in order to see who he is, why certain behaviors from his youth still threaten to explode his world, and what to make of being a man at this present moment.

As Gathering explores these different pieces, Ritter amalgamates an array of musical styles. The opening “Shaker Love Song (Leah)” feels hymnal, but he doesn’t stay in that reverent moment long. Instead, he jumps to “Showboat,” a blues-tinged soul-pop number that juxtaposes the artifice of masculinity with natural imagery. Then there’s the spoken word-influenced “Dreams” (replete with a spine-tingling piano riff), the soothing “When Will I Be Changed” with bard Bob Weir adding his balm-like voice, and the country-leaning “Feels Like Lightning.” Gathering is undoubtedly a hodgepodge, a shattered mirror refracting Ritter’s various and moving parts, all of which still frustrate, still confuse, and still excite him. At an age when conventional wisdom says people are supposed to have it all figured out, he instead throws himself into the act of questioning. Ritter has summoned something with Gathering: an attempt to dismantle those myths — both personal and otherwise — that loom over the horizon.

You begin with “Shaker Love Song” which, in a way, feels like an incantation. What spirit did you hope to invoke for this album?

It’s based on a traditional Shaker hymn. It’s one that’s been in my head since, maybe, 12 or 13. I don’t remember where I first heard it; it was just one of those songs that used to be in the American bloodstream. I think what I wanted to convey, as I go back now and listen to the record, is a real sense of calm. I feel like it’s important to show the moment before, and then things can smash in.

It has a sense of the sublime about it, like watching something really dangerous from a safe distance and being able to witness its beauty.

That’s really interesting. I think of sublime, too, as in right before you go over the waterfall.

Storms played a large thematic part in this project, but in terms of “gathering,” there are so many other meanings. How do you think those definitions wove their way into your songwriting?

It’s always an interesting moment when the record is done and I’m sitting there figuring out what order the songs are going in. I really like that moment, and it’s usually where the title will start to appear. Sometimes with records, the title comes right at once. It’s an idea. Other times, you sort through names and you’re waiting for something. Usually, the title comes out and it blazes into your mind. With Gathering, that’s how it was. I remember somewhere along the way reading and the word lit on fire for me. It’s an old, magical sounding word. It feels ancient: The gathering of storms, or gathering yourself together, or gathering like an anthology, or when they say “daydreaming,” kind of wool-gathering. I loved all those things and they came together with the title.

It makes sense, given your proclivity for writing.

When the title’s right, it’s a great feeling. It feels, for me, like the final moment of a record is when you give it a name.

So you still get light bulb moments from language? That hasn’t been dulled in any way?

I don’t know why this works, but it makes sense to me. It’s the magical side of writing.

Right. I think I’m possibly projecting here in how technology or the constant exposure to language via social media has seemed to strip them of their power, or at least their impact doesn’t feel as potent.

The great thing about writing is, it continues on through all these different modes. It’s such an exciting time that words can still be magic.

Indeed. I think we need it more than ever.

Yeah! And it’s there, and songs are part of an oral culture. It’s beautiful. For me, the songs — not my own, but people whose music I love — I carry with me in a way I can’t carry around a book. Songs are such spells.

If we’re talking spells and myths pertaining to the word “gathering,” what of your own myth-making are you still reckoning with as a songwriter?

I would say that the prevailing myth — the big thing that is always unfolding itself beyond the whole idea of the human condition — is the condition of being American now. What is it to be American and to live in a country with such huge myths of its own, and strange desperate history as we have? I think that is a deep well to draw from and one that I’m always going to. Within the big American idea are so many myths and stories and jokes and sadness. It’s immense.

It is. I could see how it comes out especially on “Showboat.” It’s this fascinating negotiation with masculinity that relies on nature to achieve that façade.

It’s from Shakespeare. I think it’s called the “pathetic fallacy,” when the natural world takes on elements of human emotion: The idea that the eclipse is an omen. I love that stuff.

Do you find yourself navigating different ideas of masculinity within the American myth?

Oh, yeah. Masculinity is something that you’re continually trying to understand. I am tremendously lucky and privileged. Becoming a father and becoming a partner — all these different facets of myself — and, with them, come along the insecurities that I can all too easily see in myself. As much as you claim to never try and write from autobiography, it all comes from me. The big talking and all that stuff is something I can look at with a jaundiced eye, but I understand it all too well. I understand the other side of it. It’s a funny thing.

Did fatherhood, in any way, soften your penchant for speaking so candidly?

I wouldn’t say it softened it. It’s honed it in a lot of ways. Suddenly I have a daughter who will almost be five and, in a way that I wouldn’t when I was 25, I’m looking at the world as one my daughter’s going to have to negotiate. What’s going to be her experience in this world? And what’s my responsibility toward making that a world as positive and good and supportive a place for her as I can? And not just within my family, but within larger culture. That feels very personal to me in a way that things haven’t always. I think that comes out in the songs.

You mentioned, as an artist or public persona, creating a world where there’s space for her. How have you tried to do that?

As important as it is for me to be myself when I write, it’s important for me to stand up for the things that I believe in. As a songwriter, I’ve grown up in the shadow of some huge historical figures, like Bob Dylan. The idea of being a cipher at a time like this, and the idea of not speaking out at a time like this — especially from a point of having something to say and having a platform to say it — it strikes me as you’re kinda missing out on a big part of letting your personality out. This is who I am. I found I have so many strong beliefs these days, things that I would really fight for, ideas that I’m trying to live with. I believe it’s important to speak and act.

Yeah, it’s not a time for weak beliefs anymore.

No, it’s not, and it’s not a time to divorce your ideas from your work. You can only write what you’re gonna write, you know? But it’s not a time to be mysterious when you’re talking about people’s lives, and who people are allowed to love, and how people are allowed to live. It’s a strange moment.

It’s a strange moment, but I think all the more exciting for its potential. Before we end, I have to ask about the Bob Weir collaboration. Did he provide any insight into that central question you pose, “When will I be changed?”

I grew up around hymns. I was raised in a very religious family, but I don’t consider myself to be a conventional believer anymore. I thought, “There’s gotta be a song for that moment when you’re hoping for transcendence or you’re hoping to become the person who’s good enough to find your way back home.” That’s what the song is about, and when I finished recording it and I sat with it for a while, it wasn’t quite done. It lacked something. Working with Bob on all these songs for his record, I so immediately fell in love with his voice and his experience and thought, “If Bob would sing this song, it would give it that emotional depth.” He’s amazing to work with; he’s so much fun. Getting to be there while he’s creating something is incredible. I’m really excited to work with him when we get the chance.

It seems like it’s myth-making for your own personal legacy.

It’s amazing to work with somebody whose music is really in the American water.

Photo credit: Laura Wilson

Art Achieved and Abandoned: Charlie Parr in Conversation with Gina Clowes

Posted on by Editor

Charlie Parr and Gina Clowes both have a thing for banjos and dogs.

Parr’s new album is actually called Dog, and the title track argues that even man’s best friend has a complex inner life: “A soul is a soul is a soul is a soul,” insists the furry one as the Minnesota human picks out an acrobatic acoustic blues riff. Parr is an especially deft and intuitive player who jumps from old-time to bluegrass to blues to folk faster than a greyhound, but Dog is first and foremost a songwriter’s album. Parr inhabits various points of view — a dog, a hobo, another dog, a hoarder — as useful projections of his own depression.

Clowes’ new solo album, titled True Colors, isn’t canine-themed, but it similarly presents her as an exceptionally well-rounded artist. After dominating banjo competitions for 20 years, the Virginia native (perhaps better known under her birth name, Gina Furtado) joined the ace bluegrass outfit Chris Jones & the Nightdrivers last year, so it’s no surprise that her songs would showcase her swift and graceful picking. But songs like “Good Old-Fashioned Heartbreak” and “The Wayward Kite” reveal a graceful singer and an insightful songwriter.

And she has farm animals.

Gina Clowes: I’m battling my frisky little goat. She’s been jumping all over the place and following me around as we talk. Charlie, I think with that song “Dog,” you’re asking the question we all have in our hearts. I grew up with a border collie by my side all the time. Now I have a boxer mix. It’s actually my son’s dog.

Charlie Parr: Reuben is a miniature schnauzer, so she’s not a very big dog, but she’s an enthusiastic walker. One of our cats died, and we ended up getting this little dog, and she’s just an amazing addition to the family. She’s very dedicated to the notion of not taking walks that have much to do with where you, the human, want to go, but with what she’s interested in and the smells she smells. My idea of a walk is very different, and I used to make her take the routes I wanted to take. Suddenly it occurred to me that it’s cruel if the only time you get to go for a walk is when somebody else lets you and then they make you do what they want to do. I felt like, “Oh my God, that’s so terrifying.”

What did you do?

CP: I started following her around town and letting her stop and do whatever she wanted to do. And the walks took on this epic strangeness where I would find myself in parts of town that I had no idea existed. She would take me to these odd places that I’d never seen before. I live on the shore of Lake Superior, and she would take me to new parts of the shore I had never seen before. You think you have a handle on where you live, but you don’t at all. I felt like I owed her a debt of gratitude for reminding me that it’s not about me. It’s not even really about her. It’s about something else. We did this together, not to sound too crunchy about it.

GC: Growing up with my border collie, Maggie, I feel like I came across so many more adventures than I ever would have without her. We spent all of our time out in the woods. She would find these injured animals. She had a very different view of the world that we don’t have.

Is the time you spend with these animals good for writing?

CP: The way I write songs is weird, because I end up writing stories and distilling them into songs. Those walks with Reuben are always good for that. Some weird story will come out of them, and I jot down stuff when I get home. Three-quarters of the time I throw it away, but that last little bit of time, it will turn into something that I think is not too bad.

GC: Part of it, too, is getting away from listening to music. You get out in nature and your brain has a chance to put together whatever influences it’s been absorbing when you’ve been in the car or in the kitchen listening to music. It’s a quiet time, and that’s when I come up with some of my better ideas.

CP: I listen to a lot of music. Obviously you do, too. But I have to spend a certain amount of time each day deliberately not listening to music. When I’m walking with Reuben, I never listen to music, partly because I don’t like things in my ears. When I do long drives, I listen to music. I’m a child of the ‘70s. We’re album-oriented people, so I will listen to a record and then I will stop for about the length of a record. I listen to music and then not listen to music about as much time.

That seems like an interesting idea. It gives you time to absorb and think about what you’ve heard, rather than just cramming even more notes into your ears.

CP: When I was growing up, I had my father in the front of the house. He grew up in the ‘30s, so his primary listening was around songs. He was interested in songs. His record collection was weird and shambolic, and he had a lot of 78s and old LPs from the ‘50s. He wasn’t into album-oriented anything. My sister, on the other hand, was listening to album-oriented rock from the ‘60s and ‘70s. The Grateful Dead and Captain Beefheart were playing in the back of the house. So I got interested in both of those things. But I find it hard to stop listening to an album after I’ve started. I have to let them play through, because you feel like you haven’t finished it somehow.

GC. It’s like an opera. You miss part of the story. I’m the same way. I’m just behind the times, and I would rather just pop in a CD rather than listen to Spotify.

CP: I’m part of that generation that was not raised with that technology. We had just enough technology to be spoiled, but not enough to be weird about it. I hate to be that way. I end up being that way around my son a lot, starting a lot of sentences with, “In my day …”

GC: So, Charlie, I noticed you’re using a slide on your left hand. Are you doing that with the banjo, too?

CP: Sometimes I do. I play a fretless banjo, so it can be hard to tell. But I do like using a slide. When I started playing, I had an interest in slide guitar, so the very first thing I did, when I was eight years old, was try to play slide guitar. I’m completely self-taught, so I’m doing everything upside-down and backwards. The slide adds something like two tones to every fret space, so it becomes really interesting. I’ve played a lot of slide on the banjo. Lately I haven’t been playing much banjo, but I’m trying to get back into it.

GC: I love the slide on the banjo. You don’t hear it very often, but one of my favorite players, Tony Furtado, does that sometimes. Last week, I went to the music store to pick up something really small, just a button for the guitar strap. When I tried to pay, they said, “Sorry, we can only accept a credit card if it’s over five bucks.” So I grabbed one of the bottle slides because it was sitting on the counter there. Might as well. Somehow that makes me more inspired to give it a try.

CP: It’s a unique sound. Banjos are a lot like resonator guitars: The attack isreal swift and the delay is real swift. So you have to do some stuff to keep your tones going, and bottleneck is a really an answer to that. I borrowed a friend of mine’s banjo that had a magnetic pickup installed in it. I wasn’t really into the sound of the pickup, but what I was into was the fact that I could take an E-bow and play it on the banjo. It works on the magnetic pickup, and the tones I got out of that were otherworldly. I was completely fascinated. I really like a lot of experimental music. Paul Metzger plays a 23-string banjo and used a lot of electric manipulations with it.

GC: I feel like the banjo has been boxed in, maybe because it’s relatively new to be doing it three-finger style.

CP: I think you’re right. It has been boxed in. People have decided that there’s only one tuning that’s associated with the banjo. I asked Dock Boggs about that. He would re-tune his banjo for almost every song, and I asked him about it. He said something to the effect of, “The song comes out of the tuning.” I thought that was fascinating.

GC: Yes. If you listen to a lot of old-time banjo playing, they change their tuning so much more, and it really does open up the spectrum of moods you can get out of it.

CP: I use a lot of open C, except I end up pitching the D string all the way up to E. I really like that a lot. It’s a little tight, but it’s a cool chord.

GC: Just make sure you point it away from your eyeball when you tune that one!

Is that something you’re actively pursuing? Are you always looking for new ways to play this instrument?

GC: For me, it’s not so much about trying to find a new sound. It’s more about just trying to find a better way to evoke a particular feeling. I like Scruggs-style banjo playing. Earl was awesome and he created this super-cool style that was him expressing something. It works out as a great template for players to use now, but I’m looking more at trying to figure out different methods of explaining the mood that I’m going for. There are many more ways to do that.

CP: It’s a bit of a mixture, sometimes, between manipulating the mechanics of the instrument and manipulating the technique. In 2006, I developed a brain disorder called focal dystonia, which completely destroyed my picking hand. I had to re-learn everything from scratch because I could only use my index finger. I used to use my middle finger a lot, but now it’s like a trigger finger — it just sucks up into my palm. I spent about a year looking at players like the Reverend Gary Davis and Elizabeth Cotton and Roscoe Holcomb to get some inspiration for how to do everything with just thumb and index finger. I had never had to do anything like that in my whole life, but at the end of the day, it turned into … well, it had to turn into a good thing or it was going to turn into a truly bad thing. It forced me really rapidly to change things about the way I played, even the way I sit and the way I hold the instrument. I found some places that I didn’t think I would ever find, and I had a little more power in my picking than I had before. Some of the frilly stuff had to go away, but I found other things to replace it and developed some self-confidence I didn’t have before.

GC: I can’t even imagine going through that. Is it physical or psychological?

CP: It’s repetitive stress syndrome in your brain. That’s what I’ve been told. I started playing guitar when I was eight and became very quickly obsessed with it. I tried to play all the time, but I didn’t have any lessons. No one every told me, “Don’t do that or you’ll end up with a problem in your future.” I did everything wrong for a long, long time. Now I’m 50 years old and I’m playing a little catch-up to get things to sound right. But it’s made me develop some different ways to look at things. When I want to get certain sounds, I have to work within the parameters of what I have. Sometimes that means manipulating instruments. I’ve added strings to guitars or taken strings away. I’ve put snares on the banjo head to get that buzzy sustain out of it. I try to do whatever I think needs to happen to get where I want to go. Half the time, I don’t even know what I want, and then something will come out that I like and I’ll amplify that a little bit more.

You’re both playing in traditions that can be very conservative, very restrictive. But on these new records, it sounds like you’re very consciously trying to find new ways to play.

GC: I love bluegrass. I was raised on it. I’ll always love it. But it does put you in a small box. There’s a specific form to every song — two A parts and two B parts and so on. That’s part of what makes it so great. It’s easy to get up on stage and jam. There’s a big repertoire that everybody knows, so you can all play together. But I don’t like the idea of genre, because it’s always going to be too small for all the ideas you want to use. You can’t use them all, if you’re trying to stick them all into a very small box.

CP: Musicians didn’t make up genres, anyway. It was record companies and radio stations and furniture stores that decided what the genres were. I don’t like them, either. All of the most exciting music that I’ve heard — including bluegrass music — has come from that weird in-between space where somebody did something slightly different, like Bill Monroe or Captain Beefheart. It’s happening now with a lot of groups, like Megafaun, for example. They blended a lot of electronic sounds with accordion and clawhammer banjo and came up with a couple of brilliant records before they stopped. It’s hard to say what genre they’re in because they’ve added so much stuff. I think that’s brilliant.

It gets back to an idea we were discussing earlier of how you listen to music. You don’t just listen to one style of music. You listen to a lot of different stuff. So why would you play just one narrow kind of music.

GC: Something I latched onto early: When I was learning to play the banjo, I was told I should imitate my banjo heroes. But someone else told me, “Why don’t you imitate other instruments? Why not imitate the guitar or the saxophone or whatever? Try different forms of imitation.” That opened the door for me to try new ideas and come up with new things.

CP: I had a conversation with Dakota Dave Hull, a player in Minneapolis who told me, “Don’t listen to so much guitar music. Listen to piano music. Listen to horns. Listen to jazz. Listen to a lot of different stuff.” You end up taking those voices back to the instrument you’re playing, and it adds a lot. I was also inspired by Spider John Koerner, who was constantly messing with his own songs and with other people’s songs. At one point, I was talking to him about an older song, and he pointed out that we wouldn’t be talking about that song if people had messed it and forced it through that folk process. Without that, it would have died. We’re only talking about it because people loved it enough to screw with it.

GC: Everything I put on True Colors turned out to be so very personal that it was a little uncomfortable. I had this idea that I could blame it on a friend: “Oh, a friend of mine went through that experience, not me!” But those songs are based on real feelings that I had, real experiences, and it was therapeutic for me to write about them. It helps to process everything that I go through. It’s what we talked about earlier — spending some time in quiet and working things out. Last summer, when I was writing everything for the album and getting ready to record, I stopped writing in my journal and I stopped listening to music. I just stopped cold turkey. My husband was worried, but I was just processing things and writing about them. And there they are now.

CP: That sounds familiar. I had a lot of bad internal stuff that kept getting recycled and regurgitated and, after a while, I needed to write the songs and get them away from me. I only really broke loose of them when I got other people involved. I was going to make this a completely solo record, but then I thought that would be devastating. The songs are already horrifying and way too personal, so I need to bring in other people and let them become an influence on the music. It changed stuff a little, but it also didn’t sound so dark anymore, I guess.

GC: I know what you mean about bringing people in. I was nervous showing my songs to people, but they came in and they’re happy and they played the living daylights out of the songs. Everybody just got the mood. It helps to get out of that space in your mind.

CP: There’s a certain amount of lightness that’s created by playing with other people. I’ve played mostly by myself, but when I play with friends, it’s a massive relief, just the amount of joy it creates. It’s hard to explain that kind of lightness that comes into even the darkest music, when you have other people there.

You both talk about getting these songs out of you and away from you, but then you record them and take them out on tour. You have to live with them every night. Is that difficult?

CP: I don’t ever regard songs as being finished. I’m not writing a book or painting a picture. I’m creating something new every time I sit down to play a song. In a weird way, I’m rewriting the song, which is now influenced by the audience and their energy. It’s not the same song as it was when I first came up with it. Now it’s something different. It’s not a song about A or B. It’s a song that includes something else. It becomes easier to deal with, because it’s no longer my burden alone. I’m sharing it with a lot of people who have all these different interpretations.

GC: That hits the nail on the head, Charlie. I write to distance myself from something. I write to let it be free and do whatever it will, so it doesn’t feel very personal when I share the song with somebody. It doesn’t have the same sense of being a deep, dark secret anymore. Now it’s out in the world. I’m free from it.

CP: Exactly. For me, it’s all about process. When a song feels finished, I just quit playing it. It’s not interesting to me anymore. You can’t work on it anymore. It reminds me of Simon Rodia, a folk artist from Los Angeles. He created the Watts Towers out of cement and junk, broken pieces of porcelain. He took 34 years to build them. He would come home every day from his job and he would cement little bits of pottery on these weird sculptures. Then, one day, he came home and there was no more room to add anything else. So he went next door to his neighbors and gave them the keys to his house and then he left and never came back. You can go and visit those towers, and there’s a sign out front that reads, “Art achieved and abandoned.” His art was all in the process. It’s not the finished product. That’s what the song is. It’s a process. When a song is finished, I have a tendency to just leave them behind. Even if I’m just learning a song, I usually won’t ever play it again because the process of learning is over.

Charlie Parr photo credit: Nate Ryan