Tag: Songwriting

The Working Songwriter: Ray Fulcher

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Welcome to The Working Songwriter, the show where today’s best songwriters come to talk shop. Each episode we host a distinguished guest and we ask them to go deep on their inspiration, their process, and the general ups and downs of making a life in music. Whether you’re a grizzled veteran picking out custom chrome trim for your tour bus or a scrappy upstart, trying to determine whether your Toyota Tercel can make it through a three thousand mile tour, this is your show. Because, ultimately, it is what every writer seeks most. An ironclad excuse to put off actually writing.

Our guest this week hails from Harlem, Georgia. Ray Fulcher is one of Nashville’s most sought-after modern country songwriters. He first broke through co-writing a string of chart-topping hits for Luke Combs – including the multi-platinum “When It Rains It Pours” – before stepping into the spotlight with his own recordings on his 2022 debut album, Spray Painted Line.

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Fulcher has toured extensively, sharing stages with Luke Combs, Ashley McBryde, and Matt Stell, and his songs have been streamed hundreds of millions of times across platforms. He has written for artists like Riley Green and Cody Johnson, including Johnson’s recent hit “The Fall.” Billboard highlights his “unmistakable narrative grit,” while Holler celebrates his “clean-cut melodies and lived-in honesty.” Taste of Country notes his “ability to turn small-town details into widescreen emotion.” I caught up with him recently on The Working Songwriter to hear about his musical journey so far.

 

The Working Songwriter: Hayes Carll

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Welcome to The Working Songwriter, the show where today’s best songwriters come to talk shop. Each episode we host a distinguished guest and we ask them to go deep on their inspiration, their process, and the general ups and downs of making a life in music. Whether you’re a grizzled veteran picking out custom chrome trim for your tour bus or a scrappy upstart, trying to determine whether your Toyota Tercel can make it through a three thousand mile tour, this is your show. Because, ultimately, it is what every writer seeks most. An ironclad excuse to put off actually writing.

Our guest this week on The Working Songwriter hails from The Woodlands, Texas. Hayes Carll is a singer, songwriter, and storyteller whose sharp wit and plainspoken poetry first broke through with his 2002 debut, Flowers & Liquor. That was followed by 2008’s Trouble in Mind, which delivered the hit “She Left Me for Jesus” and cemented his place among the genre’s most distinctive voices.

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Carll has toured with artists like Old Crow Medicine Show, Todd Snider, and Alison Krauss and his songs have been covered by Miranda Lambert, Lee Ann Womack, and Kenny Chesney. He’s recorded for Lost Highway, Dualtone, and Thirty Tigers and he’s performed on stages from Newport Folk Festival to Austin City Limits and the Grand Ole Opry.

Rolling Stone praises his work for its “razor-sharp wit and lived-in warmth,” while NPR notes his “keen eye for the human condition wrapped in disarming charm.” American Songwriter calls him “one of Americana’s most reliable truth-tellers.”

Photo courtesy of the artist.

The Mighty Résumés of
Dan Penn and Spooner Oldham

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

The duo of Dan Penn and Spooner Oldham have amassed an astonishing set of credentials, not only as exceptional soul, pop, rock, and country songwriters, but also as vocalists, producer (Penn), and session musician/sideman (Oldham). Both Alabama natives, they’ve maintained a successful professional relationship and close personal friendship since meeting in the late ’50s as teens. They’ve always characterized themselves as “country boys who love Black music.”

Penn initially viewed himself primarily as a singer. He was the lead vocalist for two local Alabama bands, the R&B group the Mark V Combo and a later one, Dan Penn and the Pallbearers. But he began to shift his focus in 1960, after his tune “Is A Bluebird Blue?” became an early hit for Conway Twitty. That song also reflected the joint musical influences that have always permeated the tunes co-written by Penn and Oldham. It’s country’s powerful storytelling edge combined with soul’s passionate energy and quest for personal salvation. Once the Twitty tune made it big, things changed in Penn’s mind. “That’s when I first decided that maybe this songwriting thing might work out,” he added. “After I saw some of the checks that were coming in, I decided to just keep going with it.”

Penn had already been working at SPAR Music studio, a place co-founded by Rick Hall and Billy Sherrill above a drugstore in Florence, Alabama. When Hall decided to open his own studio titled FAME (Florence Alabama Music Enterprises), Penn became their first resident songwriter. He and Oldham began writing together at FAME, and both say they had a chemistry from the very beginning.

“Back in those days, co-writing wasn’t quite what it is today,” Penn continued. “But just from hanging out with Spooner and getting to know him, we had real good rapport from the beginning. I got to know and like him, and then things just kind of took off from there.”

“What Dan says is pretty much how it happened,” Oldham added. “We got a rhythm going and it’s never been one of those things where we’ve had any problems or issues.”

Interestingly, Oldham views himself as a musician first, then a songwriter. A prolific organist and keyboardist, he got his start playing in a traditional jazz band while in high school. The extensive list of top musicians he’s played with over the years includes Arlo Guthrie, Jim Croce, Gram Parsons, The Everly Brothers, Jackson Browne, Linda Ronstadt, Gene Clark, Ry Cooder, The Flying Burrito Brothers, Delaney and Bonnie Bramlett, Bob Seger, Maria Muldaur, Rita Coolidge, Bobby Womack, Albert King, Helen Reddy, Harry Nilsson, Stephen Stills, J.J. Cale, and Neil Young. But in his earlier days, he also made his way to the FAME studios and had the first of many collaborations with Penn. Among their notable FAME triumphs were Percy Sledge’s “It Tears Me Up,” James and Bobby Purify’s “I’m Your Puppet,” and Joe Simon’s “Let’s Do It Over.”

But Penn wanted to produce as well as write and he left FAME for Memphis in the late ’60s, moving to Chips Moman’s American Studios. Oldham would later follow him there. Penn and Moman would craft their own set of soul classics, notably “Dark End of the Street” for James Carr, and “Do Right Woman, Do Right Man” for Aretha Franklin. Penn got his first major production opportunity in 1967, with the Box Tops and then 16-year-old lead vocalist Alex Chilton. Penn produced their number one hit “The Letter,” then joined forces with Oldham to co-write the group’s second smash “Cry Like A Baby,” and the Sweet Inspirations’ “Sweet Inspiration.”

Oldham would eventually depart for Los Angeles and a prolific career as a session musician and sideman. He played keyboards on Young’s 1978 album Comes a Time, and continued to work with him on such other albums as Old Ways, Harvest Moon, Silver & Gold, and Prairie Wind. Oldham joined Bob Dylan during his Christian era, contributing to Dylan’s Saved album, the Saved Tour and the Shot of Love Tour. With Dylan, he played 79 shows, appeared on Saturday Night Live, and on the GRAMMY Awards telecast. Oldham also partnered with John Prine for the 1984 album Aimless Love and appeared on the 1994 release, A John Prine Christmas.

When Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young reunited for their Freedom of Speech Tour, Oldham played keyboards. He also worked as a sideman and collaborated with Steve Wariner through the ’80s. They teamed on the song “Lonely Women Make Good Lovers.” During the ’90s, Oldham was featured on Jewel’s album Pieces of You, which produced the hit “Who Will Save Your Soul.” In the 2000s, he appeared on a pair of Frank Black albums, joined the Drive-By Truckers for their 2007 The Dirt Underneath tour, and played with Amos Lee, Aaron Neville, Bettye LaVette and Cat Power in 2008. He contributed to Keith Richards’ 2015 album Crosseyed Heart and Sheryl Crow’s Threads in 2019, as well as the Mountain Goats Dark In Here in 2021.

Penn established his own Memphis studio, then subsequently relocated to Nashville in the ’70s. He would have some country success with songs written for Ronnie Milsap and Johnny Rodriguez, and he’d also produce a pair of Milsap LPs – his debut album Ronnie Milsap, and co-producing A Rose By Any Other Name with Moman. He contributed the song “A Woman Left Lonely” to Janis Joplin’s album Pearl (later covered by Charlie Rich) and he’d cut an acclaimed solo album, Nobody’s Fool.

Penn and Oldham had another reunion in 1991 at New York’s Bottom Line, appearing in the songwriter series “In Their Own Words.” They also contributed to Arthur Alexander’s 1993 album Lonely Just Like Me. Later the duo made an acoustic tour throughout parts of the U.S., Europe, Australia, and Japan. It yielded the live album, Moments From This Theater, that was released in 1999. Penn also made another critically praised solo LP, Do Right Man, in 1994. Both Penn and Oldham are members of the Alabama Music Hall of Fame. Oldham is also in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a sideman, as well as the Musicians Hall of Fame in Nashville and the Birmingham Record Collectors Hall of Fame.

Both men currently remain busy. Penn’s Christmas tune “One Blue Light” was released last November and it was a message of “remembrance and hope” to highlight the holiday season. It’s the first single from Penn’s upcoming album, Smoke Filled Room, which is scheduled for release later this year. “There’s a song on there that I worked on for 20 years and I finally got it right this time,” he said in discussing the upcoming album. “Billy Lawson mixed it and we finally got it sounding the way that we wanted.”

Smoke Filled Room was recorded at Penn’s home studio and will be available on various streaming sites. “When I started out as a singer in the studios I’d always pay attention to what they were doing on the boards, the engineering, mixing, all of it,” Penn added. “So it wasn’t that much of a shift for me to go to production.”

Besides playing dates last year with Neil Young, Oldham also played with the Scottish band Texas on the 2024 release The Muscle Shoals Sessions, a collection of soul covers that the group recorded at FAME studios. He will be playing on an upcoming Robert Cray LP, with the sessions set to begin the week after our interview. Together, Penn and Oldham are doing some select dates this year in both the United States and United Kingdom.

Unfortunately, Oldham suffered an injury early in his recent appearances with Young. “The first week out I fell playing basketball and just tore myself up,” Oldham said. “But I’ve moved from a wheelchair to a walker to a cane, so I’m doing alright.”

Neither man will commit to claiming any one of their classics as their favorite, nor will they cite any one artist as the greatest that has covered their songs. But Penn mentions some names he was particularly happy he worked with as either a producer or songwriter. “Alex Chilton, Aretha Franklin, Joe Simon – so many I can’t really name them all.”

“I’ll just say I’m grateful to all the wonderful singers that did our songs,” Oldham added. “I really saw myself starting out – and still do – as a musician first, and I approached songwriting from that perspective. Dan would work on getting the words right, if there was a problem, and I’d work on fixing the music if anything went wrong on that end.”

Penn added the name of one singer who’s not recorded one of his songs that he’d enjoy having cut one: “Tom Jones,” Penn said. “I doubt if that’s ever going to happen, but I’d love for him to do one of them. He’s got a hell of a voice.”

Their opinions on the phenomenon of streaming aren’t as tinged with anger as some of their contemporaries, though they acknowledge that the compensation end has its problems. “Well, this generation has really gotten accustomed to getting its music that way, and you’ve got to be willing to adjust to that reality,” Penn said. “I don’t really have anything against it, but really, as a songwriter, [you] aren’t going to make a lot of money off it.”

“They definitely need to address the payment side of it,” Oldham said. “It’s definitely a way to get the music out to the public, but the musicians themselves aren’t really getting the benefits from it. That’s the area that they need to address.”

The exploits of Dan Penn and Spooner Oldham are chronicled as part of the “Muscle Shoals: Low Rhythm Rising” exhibit at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville. They will be appearing in concert at City Winery Nashville on January 18, 2026.

Photo Credit: Richard G. Mann

The Working Songwriter: Evan Bartels

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Welcome to The Working Songwriter, the show where today’s best songwriters come to talk shop. Each episode we host a distinguished guest and we ask them to go deep on their inspiration, their process, and the general ups and downs of making a life in music. Whether you’re a grizzled veteran picking out custom chrome trim for your tour bus or a scrappy upstart, trying to determine whether your Toyota Tercel can make it through a three thousand mile tour, this is your show. Because, ultimately, it is what every writer seeks most. An ironclad excuse to put off actually writing.

Our guest this week on The Working Songwriter hails from Tobias, Nebraska, a town of about 100 people. Evan Bartels is a singer-songwriter who with his 2017 debut, The Devil, God & Me, burst onto the national scene. More recently, Bartels has expanded his audience with the release of his EP, To Make You Cry, recorded after relocating to Nashville and reflecting on a period of personal upheaval and renewal.

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Bartels has toured with American Aquarium, The White Buffalo, and John Moreland; he records for MCA/Universal; and he’s performed at Mile of Music, Americanafest, and the C2C Festival. No Depression calls him “a haunting new presence in Americana,” while Americana Highways praises his “unvarnished, soul-bearing songwriting.” Glide Magazine notes his “ability to turn bruised experience into stark, resonant beauty.”

I caught up with Evan Bartels a few months ago for The Working Songwriter to hear about his musical journey so far.

 

Joe Pug’s The Working Songwriter Joins BGS Podcast Network

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

The BGS Podcast Network is proud to announce our first addition of a new (to us) show in 2026, bringing artist and singer-songwriter Joe Pug‘s hit podcast, The Working Songwriter, on board. Beginning January 9, the Working Songwriter will be distributed exclusively through BGS and available wherever you stream podcasts.

“After ten years and over three hundred episode of doing this podcast independently, we’ve decided to go pro!” Pug says. “[BGS] is the perfect home for our show. They focus on American roots music, but ultimately they celebrate any kind of songwriting as long as it’s of a very high quality. I think that’s pretty similar to the ethos of The Working Songwriter.”

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Over a decade of work and hundreds of episodes, Pug has explored songwriting, music-making, artfulness, and creative practices with some of the most thoughtful and entrancing voices in Americana, country, roots music, and songwriting as a whole. Over the years, guests have included such luminaries as Jerry Douglas, Charlie Peacock, John Hiatt, ERNEST, Chuck Prophet, Kim Richey, Bonny Light Horseman, Hunter Hayes, Iris Dement, Del McCoury, Keb’ Mo’, Darrell Scott, and countless others. Alongside these songcraft heavy-hitters are just as many fresh discoveries, newcomers, and essential-yet-underrated voices in the space, too.

The overlap between our rootsy BGS purview and Pug’s roster of guests is vast and varied, illustrating how perfect a fit the show will be for the BGS Podcast Network. “With their network,” Pug continues, “we’re gonna be able to get guests that we’ve never had before. We’re gonna be able to produce more content and we’re gonna be able to lean into video quite a bit more. I’d like to thank Cindy Howes and Amy Reitnouer Jacobs for believing in our show and helping to shepherd it to the next level.”

“The Working Songwriter has set the standard for long-form interviews with our favorite songwriters in the roots music world and beyond,” responded Cindy Howes, director of the BGS Podcast Network. “Joe’s ability to open up his guests in relaxing conversations on the craft of writing is endlessly impressive. The fact that a podcast of this caliber that legitimizes the best working songwriters is joining our roster is an honor. We are beyond excited to work with Joe and his team on this wonderful show.”

The latest season of the Working Songwriter will premiere this Friday, January 9, with guest Evan Bartels. Bartels, a singer-songwriter, burst onto the national scene with his 2017 debut, The Devil, God & Me. He has toured with American Aquarium, The White Buffalo, and John Moreland; he records for MCA/Universal; and he’s performed at Mile of Music, Americanafest, and the C2C Festival. We’re looking forward to beginning this new era for The Working Songwriter with Joe Pug, Evan Bartels, and all of you, right here on BGS.

To celebrate the announcement and the upcoming season premiere, listeners can subscribe to the Working Songwriter wherever they listen to podcasts. While you do, revisit and enjoy all past episodes of The Working Songwriter – including these five of our favorite selections below, chosen from over 10 years of superlative work.

Remembering Todd Snider (March 2020, rereleased November 2025)

Joe originally sat down with The Bard of East Nashville back in March of 2020, but after his untimely passing in November 2025 at the age of 59, TWS reissued this beautiful episode in his honor.

Jerry Douglas (June 2025)

An artist who needs little introduction to BGS audiences, GRAMMY-award winner Jerry Douglas is considered the contemporary master of the Dobro. Joe talks to Jerry about his long and storied career, playing alongside everyone from Ray Charles to Billy Strings.

Ashe (September 2024)

TWS covers songwriters of all backgrounds and genres, as demonstrated in this 2024 episode with Ashe.  The Berklee College of Music grad discusses her years writing songs for other artists such as Demi Lovato, only to find her own distinct voice (and a legion of obsessive fans, including the late Diane Keaton) in the last five years.

The Swell Season (October 2025)

The Oscar-winning and decades-spanning musical partnership of Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglová has captivated worldwide audiences, but this conversation with Joe from 2025 celebrated their first album together since 2009 (Forward), and showed their connection and chemistry was as deep as ever.

Bonny Light Horseman (February 2023)

Each member of the folk supergroup trio of Anaïs Mitchell (Hadestown), Eric D. Johnson (Fruit Bats), and Josh Kaufman (The National, Bob Weir, Josh Ritter) could easily deserve their own deep-dive episodes, but put together it’s clear that they are greater than the sum of their parts. Joe digs in with the three GRAMMY nominees to peek behind their magical music-making curtain.

Lead image courtesy of New Frontier Touring.

BGS 5+5: Liam Kazar

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Artist: Liam Kazar
Hometown: Chicago, Illinois
Latest Album: Pilot Light (out November 7, 2025)

What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?

Recently I was on the Outlaw Country Tour with Waxahatchee. Sheryl Crow had invited us all to join her on stage for the last night. Her production folks started passing out little percussion instruments, I think I traded the tambourine with Spencer (drummer) for something reasonable I could play. We all stepped up on the drum riser, me with a drumstick and a cowbell. Then Sheryl turned around and took her guitar off in one smooth motion. She passed it to me and whispered, “D.” Once I made it through the first chorus and got the nod from her guitar player that I was hearing the right chords, I knew this would be the peak of my entire life.

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

The next one. Not to be cliché, but it’s true. I’m constantly in fear of having written my last song. I always start from a place of “how the hell do you do this?” I’m on tour right now and I’ve been working on a song whenever I have a guitar in my hands. I oscillate between knowing exactly what I think should happen next and feeling like starting over. Both can be the right answer and that’s pretty par for the course. But every once in a while they fall out of you like a dime from your pocket. Wish I knew how to make that happen every time.

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

Flaubert said, “Madame Bovary, c’est moi.”

It’s all me and none of it’s true. I don’t think I could avoid myself if I tried, but I also pull little visions and observations from the people around me all the time. I think you have to be curious about people to be a good writer.

What is a genre, album, artist, musician, or song that you adore that would surprise people?

I would say 50% of the music I listen to is instrumental. Jazz from the ’40s and ’50s in particular. Hard bop and big band music is a constant. Duke Ellington is my favorite American artist. Endlessly inspiring and a huge influence on my melodic sensibility.

Although, recently I have been listening to a lot of Romantic symphonies. Beautiful and mind-altering!

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

I think Woody Guthrie might have said it better than I ever could: take it easy, but take it.

Photo Credit: Alexa Viscius

Singer-Songwriter Madi Diaz is Metal as Hell

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Hitting play on singer-songwriter Madi Diaz’s latest album, Fatal Optimist, one wouldn’t automatically identify her close-to-the-mic, chunky strums and anxious, confident vocals as “metal.” But keep listening and trust.

Fatal Optimist is heavy on numerous elements of metal – fantasy, humor, darkness, anger. For much of its runtime, it feels like the inside of a clenched fist, slowly but surely letting go. With songs that are, this time, centered around her solo voice and acoustic guitar, Diaz turns her liminal songwriting further inward than ever. This is saying a lot for an artist who’s no stranger to personal narrative. While her prior album, 2023’s Weird Faith, brushed up against hopeful optimism, this follow-up proves that earned optimism is perhaps the better version.

After all, Diaz chose to open the disc with the wordplay stunner “Hope Less,” a stiff shot of reality that reorients us to a heart at least as full of darkness as light. If the LP’s vibe is “clenched fist,” its songs play like spokes in a wheel rolling us toward the jubilant title track – a progression Diaz admitted in our recent BGS interview was equal parts intentional and inevitable.

This album starts out very quiet. It feels very close and very intimate, then it slowly opens up. Was that the intentional vibe and arc of the album for you?

Madi Diaz: It definitely ended up being a much more lean-in [kind of] record. The further I got down the road, the more it felt very obvious that was just what the song content needed. It’s kind of heavy stuff, I think. It was a lot of mining of the self, which I did a lot privately. So I felt like I wanted the songs to match that [vibe], in the end.

I was listening to it this morning, thinking about your song “Everything Almost” from the last record. Like, how optimistic and full of hope that song is and then this album starts off with a line like “hope less.” Obviously, when you’re writing about personal events in your own life, it’s easy to see connection in the rearview. But I’m wondering if there’s something more to what feels, to me, like a connection between that song and this project.

That’s funny. I was just talking about this. I do feel like a lot of the songs in the last record … are about following that gut intuition. That gut feeling. So a lot of the songs on Weird Faith are absolutely going like, “I think this is it. I think this is gonna work. I think we’re really gonna get there.”

There was a really funny moment I had recently. I was practicing for this tour and putting [together] the set list. I wrote this song called “This Is How a Woman Leaves” for my friend Maren Morris, her last record that she put out [Dreamsicle, 2025]. I am planning on releasing a version … at some point down the road a little bit. But I was practicing “Everything Almost” and then I wanted to go into “This Is How” because in “Everything Almost,” I’m packing the boxes and moving in. In “This Is How” I’m fucking moving out.

Like, “How it started, how it’s going.”

It’s the “fuck around and find out” journey right there, in a nutshell.

Nice. I was reading that you went to an island when you were writing the album. Can I ask what island you went to? And did you know that’s what you were going to do when you started your trip to that island, planning, like, “I’m gonna get it together.” Or was it just kind of like how life happens?

There were, actually, many islands. Physically, mentally. … I started off coming off of this European tour. We finished this tour in Italy, so I went to an island off the coast of Italy and was there by myself. I did a lot of journaling and walking – so much walking. I’m a big processor by walking and talking, so I would kind of record myself as I was processing things out loud. I really wanted to be in a space where I felt safe to do that. It felt like the safest thing was to just take myself away from everybody, so as to not barrage people with [my feelings].

I started off in Ischia and then I ended up, really wonderfully, being asked to be a part of this [songwriters’] colony in Nantucket. So I did that. I ended up going to Long Island with my dad, to Noyack, and just [did] a lot of journaling there.

Also, [I was] feeling very much like I couldn’t tell whether I was the island or the island was the island. It was just this very unescapable lonerism. Solo mission, you know. Like in a spacesuit, kind of feeling. I just couldn’t shake it, so I just took it with me everywhere I went.

Can you talk a little bit about the process of songwriting? Your songs are so personal, almost uncomfortably so. I wonder if that’s the result of writing in an actual journal on paper and if that’s a different kind of creative experience for you than voice memos on your phone, which so many people do now instead of journaling.

I definitely rely on journaling still. A lot. Sometimes, if I’m in a pinch, I’ll text myself an idea. Or, I have [the] Notes app open. A lot of Fatal Optimist was pulled from about a year’s worth of pretty serious journaling and going back over certain words that kind of stuck out. I love journaling. I think it’s like a life scrapbook, you know? There’s a funny thing that happens. Sometimes I’ll open a journal and I don’t even know what year it’s from, because some of the issues [are] so consistent. … But it’s kind of like a sweet reminder, of survival, I guess.

Totally. Do you remember writing the couplet at the beginning of “Lone Wolf”? “Lamb’s gotta lamb, god planned it/ Wolf’s gotta wolf, goddamn it.” It’s such a perfect little song, but it doesn’t feel trope-y. It feels, really, like a strike of inspiration.

Well, I remember it was dead of winter. I was sitting on my couch with Stephen Wilson Jr. and I was going through my journal. I was talking about what was on my heart that felt so difficult, about reaching this person who chose to be a loner. I mean, he literally said to me, “I’m a loner. I’m a lone wolf kind of guy.” And I [thought,] “You just said that. That’s ridiculous.” Like, have you not seen the Pee-wee Herman movie where he’s like, “I’m a loner, Dottie. A rebel!”

But it was this thing, you know, that I almost didn’t take seriously, because it was such a crazy thing to say. And I should have [believed him], obviously, because here we are. I was talking to Stephen about it and we were laughing about this wolf character and the lines just fell out. In the aftermath of it, it’s funny.

You know, when you push somebody that wants to be alone away, they tend to want to be less alone. They feel very confronted. I mean, I’ve been there. All of a sudden, you’re confronted with your loneliness and wishing that you actually had that connection. So, when I pushed him away initially, he would just kind of show up and stick around. I really wanted him to leave me alone. Damn it. “Goddamn it” definitely came from that.

The lyric on that song is so simple. You don’t go into a lot of poetry, you don’t go into a lot of storytelling. The wolf keeps showing back up, looking good, trying to get back in. Can you talk a little bit about trusting yourself to keep it so simple? Does that come from editing or did it just feel like that’s what the song was?

I try to say it in a way like we were just talking about it sitting in the bar. I’m trying to not be misunderstood. I’m trying not to feel misunderstood even to myself. So I think I try to keep it clear and cutting, and [the way] it comes out. If it’s possible to get even closer to it, I’ll edit, but I don’t really edit a lot.

Oh wow. So it just comes out that way. That’s impressive.

Sometimes it does just come out that way. Not all the time, but sometimes it mostly does.

The other line on this album that I really wanted to unpack is in “Heavy Metal.” The line is, “In some religions, repetition is spiritual.” I wanted to unpack it a little bit, because music is often a place where people will repeat words or phrases, for a whole bunch of reasons.

But that line made me really listen to the words and phrases you were repeating elsewhere on this album: “Whose move is it to move on.” “I always love you.” “God knows how long.” “Ambivalence.” Can you tell me a little bit about how you decide what to repeat? Is it a conscious choice or just part of the process?

I think when I’m repeating something, it’s because it feels different on every lap. I’ll repeat something when the feeling is lingering in a way that– maybe if I say it enough, some magic spell will break and I’ll be released by this thing. Sometimes I feel like the repetition of it comes from a bit of a desperate [place] like, “Just get it out of me.” Maybe if I do this ten times, I’ll never have to do this ever again, which is why the [line,] “In some religions, repetition is spiritual.” …

You’re always going to carry it with you. You can learn how to hold this. I can learn how to learn from it differently every time, you know.

I guess that’s why repeating “ambivalence” is really interesting to me, because it seems like repeating that particular word is a contradiction.

I guess that’s true. Ambivalence means “caught in the middle.” Feeling in so many different directions. For me, ambivalence feels like a very desperate feeling. It almost feels like it should come with a bit of an alarm bell. Like, “Oh God. I’m feeling all of the feelings at the same time and I don’t know which one to choose.”

That makes sense. The other thing in the song “Heavy Metal” – I wanted to ask about your mom. I feel like you have mentioned your parents in other songs on other albums. But this made me wonder about your relationship with your parents. Somehow, I don’t think people talk about their parents much in music. I can’t figure out why. Do you have any thoughts on that?

I think it’s scary. It’s so scary. When I know a song is about me, I definitely tend to listen with a microscope. No one is trying to hurt anyone, but we’re all really trying our best to process love, pain, joy. I don’t know. Our effect on each other. What’s mine, what’s yours. So yeah, it’s not an easy thing to write about. …

I feel like I’ve felt the most loved and I’ve felt the most hurt by both of my parents. I think that that’s pretty normal. Or maybe not? Maybe it’s not normal.

I think it’s pretty universal.

It always kind of ends up that way. The people closest to you hurt you the most, which is why you really have to trust the people closest to you. So that when they do hurt you, you can [heal].

I think “Heavy Metal” felt right to start you talking about my mom, because she’s kind of a badass and kind of a hardass. In all the best ways and all of the hardest ways. There are some things about being tough and resilient that I wouldn’t trade for the world. It helps me survive in so many corners of my life. But also, I’ve had to really undo some of the damage that being tough does. You start to weaponize that toughness against yourself and others in a way that I didn’t even know I was doing for a long time.

Then [again,] you just don’t want to piss them off because you also want to be able to go home for Thanksgiving and stuff.

Right. That’s what makes it such a metal move, you know, to comment on your mother in this way. I’m assuming she’s still alive. Has she heard the song? Does she have any feedback for you?

I haven’t heard [feedback] yet. I really don’t know. But I’m so grateful to my mom for raising me the way that she did and giving me and my brother the lives that she gave us. I feel so lucky that she’s my mom. It’s hard to have a song like this. … But that’s just fucking art, man. It’s so hard, at the end of the day. You know, we can make it as personal as it is or as just-about-me as it is.

The last thing I want to ask about is the song “Fatal Optimist,” which is sort of a sonic departure from the rest of the album even though it’s obviously very on-topic. As a listener, it feels like we just went on this long, arduous, emotional journey, and now we’re suddenly above the tree line and the drums are here and everybody’s in the room. Not to get too nerdy about sequencing and stuff, but was there any world in which that song could have been anywhere else on the album?

It would have been a nice break, wouldn’t it have been? I just couldn’t do that. I couldn’t interrupt the intensity of this record.

I do know that optimism is a soothing balm. When it hits you, it just hits you. There’s no explanation for it. And I knew that, for me, I want a reason to listen to a record again. … This whole record feels like one step after the other. It’s like my attempt at a gift or something [for] going through it. Hopefully, these [songs] can all be like little lights on the path that lead the way to this finish line of fatal optimism. Then we can run it all back again.

Photo Credit: Allister Ann

Finding Lucinda: Episode 12

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

After the conclusion of their journey, Ismay tours the nation with screenings of Finding Lucinda, inviting local artists to play Lucinda Williams songs in the round. Following a show at Chico Women’s Club in California, Ismay interviews Chuck Prophet, a celebrated musician who co-produced the film. The pair discuss the origins of the project, what surprised them about making this documentary, and how Lucinda has influenced their songwriting and careers. They also discuss Chuck’s time opening for Lucinda in the early 2000s.

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Produced in partnership with BGS and distributed through the BGS Podcast Network, Finding Lucinda expands on the themes of Ismay’s eponymous documentary film, exploring artistic influence, creative resilience, and the impact of Williams’ music. New episodes are released twice a month. Listen right here on BGS or wherever you get podcasts.

Finding Lucinda, the documentary film that inspired and instigated the podcast, is now available to purchase, rent, or stream via video on demand. (Watch the film, listen to the soundtrack, or find a screening near you here.) Both the film and podcast showcase never-before-heard archival material, intimate conversations, and a visual journey through the literal and figurative landscapes that molded Lucinda’s songwriting.

Credits:
Produced, recorded, and mixed by Avery Hellman for Neanderthal Records, LLC.
Special thanks to: Rick Anderson, Gavin Jones, Joel Fendelman, Rose Bush, Liz McBee, Mick Hellman, Chuck Prophet, Jonathan McHugh, Sydney Lane, Jacqueline Sabec, Rosemary Carroll, Lucinda Williams & Tom Overby.

Photo Credit: Peter Dervin

Find more information on Finding Lucinda here. Find our full Finding Lucinda episode archive here.

Watch Finding Lucinda, listen to the soundtrack, or find a screening near you here.

Tending to Fires,
Getting to Truth

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

New days and clean slates keep coming for singer-songwriter Caitlin Canty. She is sharpening her skills, raising a family, and continuing to build a body of work that reflects resilience, quiet strength, and resolute honesty. Her new record, Night Owl Envies the Mourning Dove, is a testament to her evolving artistry – an album that turns natural solitude, domestic change, and hard-earned wisdom into a collection of songs that sound both grounded in the earth and untethered from time.

Canty was born in Proctor, Vermont, in 1982 and grew up surrounded by rural landscapes and the gentle rhythms of small-town life. Raised by a schoolteacher mother and a housepainter father, she found song in ordinary moments – singing in chorus and playing trombone in school before receiving her first guitar and VHS-tape lessons at age 17. After earning a biology degree from Williams College she moved to New York City, where she worked for the Emmy-nominated series Live from the Artists Den while pursuing music on her own terms.

Her early releases – including Golden Hour (2012) and the breakout Reckless Skyline (2015) – drew acclaim for her “casually devastating voice” and “hauntingly urgent” Americana ballads. She won the Telluride Troubadour songwriting competition in 2015 and began touring extensively across the U.S. and Europe, collaborating with artists like Peter Bradley Adams and Jamey Johnson, and earning praise from Rolling Stone, NPR, and No Depression for her gritty lyricism and radiant poise.

In recent years, she and her husband, musician Noam Pikelny, moved back to Vermont, settling on a mountaintop near her childhood home. There, Canty continues to record, tour, and write – with the same battered 1939 Recording King guitar that has accompanied her throughout her career.

One of the album’s most tender tracks, “Don’t Worry About Nothing,” carries the voice of a mother consoling and encouraging against the endless churn of small anxieties. It is at once lullaby, sermon, and reminder: that one bad thing does not mean the whole world has collapsed.

“There is a mom’s voice and perspective to focus and worry about the things that do matter,” Canty explained. “But also how little worries and little jealousies can work against us… Tornadoes, awful things, [they] remind you how short life is and what’s actually important.”

The song’s origins stretch back to a small mishap – her young son’s toy castle tumbling down – but its weight comes from deeper, darker places. In March 2020, a tornado tore through her East Nashville neighborhood, missing her home by mere yards. Not long after, the pandemic upended the world. The castle was a metaphor, she realized, for the way everything can crash at once, yet perspective offers a way forward.

For Canty, who released Reckless Skyline a decade ago, the test of time has reshaped her relationship to both music and ambition. “My real goal is to be writing more and better songs,” she said. “My real goal is to be connecting with more people through those songs, playing with musicians that I adore, and getting on good stages. Not worrying about courting people, but to do right by the music.”

Doing right by the music has meant widening her scope. Night Owl Envies the Mourning Dove reaches for longevity, not trends. It sits comfortably in a lineage of songwriters who, like Canty, trust the songs to outlive themselves. “I look to musicians who have had longer careers, like Dolly Parton,” she said. “She is singing songs that she wrote in her 20s. There are so many who have a gorgeous output of songs that are their lifelong friends. It’s not about when they were written or how people liked them then.”

Canty doesn’t wait around for the muse. To her, waiting for inspiration is “a fool’s errand.” She compares songs to photographs – fleeting impressions that must be captured before they fade. “You take a picture and you remember it as notable and beautiful and there is something about it that makes you want to share it. That type of inspiration sparks a song. It happens countless times a day.”

But the challenge, she says, is to honor the purity of that first flash. “You are lucky if you have the time from start to finish to complete the song and make the world go away. The fewer co-writers the better, including myself. If you open it up again in two weeks, or a year, you have different eyes… and that brings too many people and opinions into the room rather than one solid voice.”

Some of her most recent songs arrived in just such a spark – like during a violent rainstorm in Vermont. Alone in her cabin as thunder cracked over the mountains, Canty felt a song arrive like lightning. Hungry, shivering, and unable to leave, she turned to the page. “That’s when it is about honoring your craft and keeping your calluses hard,” she said. “Writing songs and tending to those fires.”

Much of the new album reflects Canty’s sense of place. After years of calling Nashville home, in Vermont the woods, weather, and solitude shape her work. Songs like “Electric Guitar” hum with what she calls “domestic noise” – the sound of home life creeping into the music. “Examining what home means is another strong thread in a lot of these songs,” she said. “There is a lot of domestic noise in ‘Electric Guitar’ of a life settled and tied to the home front.”

The landscape also plays a role. Birds, trees, and storms become metaphors for transformation and survival, grounding her reflections on motherhood and the passage of time.

Every songwriter brings along artists who came before them and for Canty, one such artist is Lucinda William and her landmark album, Car Wheels on a Gravel Road. Canty first heard it in college while working as a server to make ends meet. Living in a big house with wide kitchen windows, she found herself singing along to those raw, unvarnished songs. “The sound, the songwriting, the singing – it all was a high-water mark for me,” Canty recalled. “It had the mystery of how something so simple could be so powerful. Why is this message of another person hitting my heart and staying embedded? How do I do that?”

Since Reckless Skyline, Canty has been described as gentle, quiet, restrained. But she resists those labels. “I don’t think that that is what this record is,” she said. “There might be fingerpicked and more solitary numbers, but a lot of the songs are more electric and grittier, and closer maybe to Reckless Skyline or Car Wheels in that regard.”

There’s grit beneath the quiet, steel beneath the lull. That mix – of softness and resolve – has become her artistic fingerprint. At the core of her music lies a devotion to truth.

“I could never act,” Canty admitted. “As a kid, I loved band and singing. Music is getting to truth and getting yourself out of the way of a song. If it’s the truth, then I feel comfortable singing it.”

That truth may be wrapped in storms or in stillness, in the clatter of home or in the electric hum of a live stage. But it is always there – steady, unpretentious, and deeply human.

With Night Owl Envies the Mourning Dove, Caitlin Canty has crafted more than an album – it is a meditation on resilience, a love letter to songwriting itself, and a statement of intent. She is not chasing spotlights or trends, but tending her fires, shaping her craft, and writing songs that might someday be her lifelong friends.

“My real goal,” she repeats, “is to be writing more and better songs… to do right by the music.”

For Canty, that’s enough. And for those who listen, it is everything.

Photo Credit: Noah Altshuler

Basic Folk: David Wilcox

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Asheville, North Carolina-based songwriter David Wilcox has been through some s-h-i-t. A difficult childhood in Northeast Ohio sent him seeking answers – mostly on his bicycle – in an attempt to get away. He has spent his lifetime leaning into his problems and digging into their roots at the source: his own heart. He decided to see what lessons his heart had been trying to teach him and, at 67 years old, he’s still listening and learning. He claims to have the answer of how to heal your heart and how to do it in two minutes; he lays it out in our conversation.

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We also talk about his new album, The Way I Tell the Story. Our conversation continues his exploratory journey, through the lens of his wife’s Parkinson’s diagnosis, retelling the story of his childhood, and staying calm in an emergency and in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, which devastated his community. We discuss how David was able to walk the line of acknowledging his talents without getting too caught up in the hot-and-fast success he experienced at the start of his career. He explains when it’s best to feel the depths of sorrow versus disassociating, and he talks about his lifelong love of cycling and how it continues to be a meditation and a life-saver. David is full of gems and wisdom – I think I’ll be listening back to this edition of Basic Folk many times over.

Photo Credit: Lynne Harty