Tag: Songwriting

BGS 5+5: Giri Peters

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Artist: Giri Peters
Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee
Latest Single: “Fallin'”

Which artist has influenced you the most … and how?

I am inspired by so many amazing musicians, but if I had to choose one it would be John Mayer. It is super inspiring for me to see someone who incorporates a hint of blues and folk music in their style become one of the world’s biggest artists. It is not often where you find people of his caliber carrying on the sounds of authentic music and incorporating it into their own songwriting and musical style. I also love the way he uses his instrumentation in his songwriting, and that is something I aspire to do as well. In my mind, he is one of the greatest guitar players alive. While his songs aren’t all super complex he succeeds at creating hits with simple soulful music. He does just enough to get the point across. I also love watching him blur the genre boundaries within the mainstream music industry, and that is something that I think about often too because I am inspired by so many different musical styles.

What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?

My favorite live performance I have done was a Ted X showcase at the Schermerhorn Symphony Hall here in Nashville. Even though that performance was a couple years ago, and I have improved so much musically since then, it was such a special memory. I had gone to the symphonies ever since I was 2 years old. I remember one time going to the Schermerhorn to watch the symphony perform, and after I got to meet some of the players. I was always in awe of that stage, and I never would’ve imagined getting to play it some day. I had gone to see Punch Brothers and some other amazing acts perform on that stage when I was a little older. For me, when I got on stage I was so nervous just knowing that this was the exact same stage I had idolized since I was around 4. It was an amazing show that I will never forget, and it gave me inspiration to keep going knowing that I was able to make a dream come true.

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

I have been a music lover ever since I was born. I moved to Nashville when I was 4 years old, and I started taking violin lessons as soon as we moved. I then picked up mandolin, and later the guitar. I eventually moved away from classical music and I have been experimenting with different styles ever since. Only recently have I felt like I truly found my sound and style. Most of the music I write is within the folk/Americana genre with influences from other styles and sounds. I was around 4 or 5 when I first started going to concerts and as soon as I watched amazing artists, I knew that I was going to be a musician. My mind to this day has never changed. It was only when I started getting older, and when I began venturing into different styles such as bluegrass that I decided I wanted to be a touring musician. Someday I hope to tour the world with my guitar and my violin, and share my songwriting across the globe.

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

There was one time a few years ago when I was getting down about wanting to be a musician. At the time there were many problems going on within the world, and I wanted to do something about it. I felt like my life would be useless unless I could help the world, and leave a mark somehow. At the time, I was lost regarding how I was going to do that with my music, but right around that same time I discovered songwriting. Ever since that day, I decided I would write about real world problems, and that when I didn’t write directly about world issues, I would use my music as a platform to do my part in making this world a better place. Even though I am still at the beginning of my journey in doing that, I will never lose sight of that vision. My songwriting is also my way of coping with life and the experiences I go through. Often I find that many other people feel the same way or have been through similar experiences. It is so amazing to me how songwriting has the ability to connect everyone no matter who they are, where they live, what they believe, or what they look like; and I believe that it is the greatest tool we can use to help connect human civilization.

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

I love the sun. Light gives me so much inspiration and happiness. There is something so inspirational about watching the sunrise and the sunset everyday. For me it never gets old. Especially while watching the sunset, I have found that I create my best work. It is a small reminder of how beautiful the world is out there, and it is hard to remember that nowadays because most of us have been stuck in our homes for more than a year. I love writing songs during the sunset, and I get the perfect view of it everyday from my room. I always try to get as much writing or recording done while the sunset is happening simply because it brings out the best artist in me.

Photo credit: Uma Peters

BGS 5+5: Noel Paul Stookey

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Noel Paul Stookey
Hometown: Blue Hill, Maine
Latest album: Just Causes
Personal nicknames: Paul of Peter, Paul & Mary

What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?

Standing at the Lincoln Memorial with Peter Yarrow, Mary Travers, and 250,000 others listening to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. deliver his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech at the 1963 March on Washington. As Mary said that day, “…we are watching history.”

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

Was there ever a “first moment?” Music has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember though I never seriously thought I would earn a living as a “professional.” I was attracted to the medium as a form of expression and never as commerce.

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

Now THAT’s an interesting question! I always try to have beer and coffee backstage at a performance, because (borrowing a page from Alice in Wonderland‘s toadstool discipline), I will have a sip of beer if I’m jittery or wound too tight from all the coffee I’ve consumed during soundcheck OR a cup of coffee if the beer I’ve sipped has caused me to relax so much that I’ve lost focus. I suppose it’s a self-medication of sorts.

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

Songwriters deal in metaphors. I don’t “hide” behind a character as much as employ characters to present different perspectives in what is often an invented situation — witness “The Connection,” a song that uses four scenes to reveal a relationship between drug use in the USA and the funding of the Taliban terrorist group, or “Jean Claude,” a story song questioning the meaning of freedom for an 83-year-old French man who, as a teenager, had his best friend taken away to a Nazi concentration camp.

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

I’m a folkie. All it takes is a circumstance; a piece of life revealed in real time to become inspiration for a song. We write for the betterment of the human condition. And, if that occasionally is termed “art,” then so be it.

Photo credit: Kevin Mazur

Tim Stafford Shares Memories of Steve Gulley, Alison Krauss, and Tony Rice

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Tim Stafford could be renowned for any one of his many contributions to bluegrass music over his prolific career, his talents as a musician and writer having been showcased in so many of its important creations. He is perhaps most well-known as a founding member of Blue Highway, one of the most influential and decorated bands in bluegrass. Prior to that, he formed Dusty Miller in the late 1980s, and Alison Krauss hired him in 1990 as part of her band, Union Station, with whom he recorded the Grammy-winning album, Every Time You Say Goodbye.

Stafford is also an accomplished author. In 2010 with Caroline Wright, Stafford issued Still Inside: The Tony Rice Story, the authorized biography of the flatpicking icon and Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame member. As a songwriter, Tim has placed more than 250 cuts and was named IBMA’s Songwriter of the Year in 2014 and 2017. He notably co-wrote IBMA’s 2008 Song of the Year, Blue Highway’s “Through the Window of a Train,” with Steve Gulley. Tim and Steve were frequent collaborators and released a duo album in 2010 called Dogwood. Ten years later, they created another album of co-written material, but Gulley passed away suddenly from cancer soon after it was completed, making the title, Still Here, all the more meaningful.

BGS: How does it feel to release this record? With Steve’s unexpected passing I imagine it must be a more heavy feeling than a typical record release.

TS: Yeah, I’m really glad it’s finally out. Steve was really looking forward to this record coming out. We were both excited about the songs and it ended up being his last recording, which was hard on all of us. And now it’s part of his legacy. After Steve passed, I talked to the label about maybe coming up with a different title besides Still Here, but we decided it was a very appropriate title because his music is still here. He would have been proud of it. I know that for sure.

How long had you known Steve?

I didn’t know him when I was younger, although he was around and playing. He was mainly playing up at Renfro Valley in Kentucky and he didn’t travel much until he joined Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver which would have been in the late ‘90s or around 2000. I was playing a festival somewhere with Blue Highway and he came up to the record table and we started talking like we’d known each other forever because we knew a lot of the same people. We just hit it off. He was the one that first suggested we write and it was either the first or second time we got together we wrote four songs in one day. And all four of them got cut. I felt like at that point we had something special. We seemed to have a wavelength that we could touch off of each other. That’s really rare. You don’t get that with a lot of people.

The subject matter in the songs on this record seems very personal, and often about people you know. I would imagine that it’s sort of therapeutic, maybe in the same way that journaling might be, to write about personal things like that. Is that how you feel about it?

That’s a good way to put it and I did used to journal. Some of them, like “Back When It Was Easy,” are just about general topics that we know about. Whereas “Long Way Around the Mountain” and “She Threw Herself Away” are about things that actually happened that we chronicled about friends. And sometimes they are big stories that you just can’t stay away from. “She Comes Back to Me When We Sing” is a story we’d both seen on Facebook about this guy’s mother who was in advanced stages of Alzheimer’s and didn’t know anybody until she sang with her son. And when that happened, she remembered all the words and she could remember everything. We thought that was a really inspirational story and deserved to be a song.

You’ve been writing for so long that it seems like you’ve been able to build the skill of telling a story through song, rather than narrating a timeline to music.

Yes, that’s where it’s at. That’s where the craft comes in that you only develop by doing it. I really didn’t know how to write a song when I started. But you learn little things along the way through trial and error. It’s like anything but it’s really difficult to learn how to do something like write a song out of a book — although I have a whole collection of them here. I have lots of books about songwriting like Jimmy Webb’s Tunesmith and Sheila Davis’ The Craft of Lyric Writing which is really good. You can learn tips, but you’re not going to learn how to write from a book. So it’s a matter of doing it.

I don’t remember exactly where I heard it, but I think I remember Jimmy Webb talking about writing “Wichita Lineman” and him saying that it was fully fictitious. But that he felt like, as a songwriter, he should be able to write about people he didn’t know. That he should be able to understand people well enough to write a story that was convincing without it having to be true. I could be misremembering that, though.

You may not be. I think that there’s actually a book out about that song, “Wichita Lineman,” that I finished here last year and I believe you’re right and he’s right. I think that being able to tell a story about somebody you don’t know is important. There’s a song that I wrote really early on called “Midwestern Town” that Ronnie Bowman recorded. That song is totally fictional. I didn’t know anybody like the character in that song. But I’ve had a lot of people come up and say that they did know someone like that or that it could have been them and that song made a big difference to them. It was a comforting song. You’ve got to be able to get inside people’s heads and think the way that they would. You have to know what your character might do in any given scenario. I can’t remember all the times I’ve been co-writing and said, “What would this guy do?”

Have you written songs as long as you’ve been playing guitar? When did you started writing songs?

I guess I wrote all the way back when I first started playing guitar, but I wasn’t really serious about it. I had written some songs before I played with Alison in the early ‘90s and we actually recorded one of them, but it never came out which was my fault. She wanted to put an instrumental I’d written called “Canadian Bacon” on Every Time You Say Goodbye, but I talked her out of it. I told her we needed to record “Cluck Old Hen” because we were so psyched about Ron [Block] being in the band and his playing on that. And I don’t regret that though it probably would have meant more money.

You were in Union Station from 1990 to ‘92, right? That was a very cool lineup of that band. How did you feel about it at the time?

I was blown away by it. I loved it and it was really cool that it worked out because the first time she talked to me about playing with her, it was back when I was in a group called The Boys in the Band. We played at SPBGMA and her band was there but her guitar player, Dave Denman, was leaving. She called me a few weeks after that and asked if I’d be interested. At that point, she had only recorded Too Late to Cry and I was really impressed with the songs, with John Pennell’s writing, and her singing. I had already committed to playing with a different group though so I had to decline.

About two or three years later I had started a group called Dusty Miller that she was a fan of. That band had Barry Bales and Adam Steffey in it. The three of us kind of grew up together playing music. We’re all from Kingsport, Tennessee. I actually gave Adam his first mandolin lesson, which is such a joke. [Laughs] Adam didn’t know anything about the instrument at all at the time. I tried to show him some stuff and I just kept thinking, “That guy’s never gonna get it.” And I barely knew how to play myself but I tried to show him “Bluegrass Breakdown” and he just couldn’t get it. He got with a different teacher after that and got real serious about it. The next time I saw him play, I was like, “What happened here?” [Laughs] It was like the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen in my life. I take absolutely no credit for that whatsoever.

Barry Bales was a student of James Alan Shelton. And James and I both taught at the Guitar Shop in Kingsport. That’s where I met Adam and gave him that lesson, and I met Barry down there, too. We all three ended up playing in The Boys in the Band. And then we started Dusty Miller. Alison liked that rhythm section so she offered the job to all three of us at the same time, and we took it. This was early 1990 and we played our first show in May — I think it was at the Station Inn. It was just incredible. We played some amazing places, but it was during the period of the band when we were all traveling in a van and staying in one hotel room.

I was playing with Alison when I met Tony Rice. We ended up playing a lot of shows together because he and Alison had the same agent and were on the same label. I never will forget the first time I really ever talked to Tony much. We were playing right before him at Winterhawk (which is now Grey Fox) and I broke a string on the last song we played. We got a standing ovation so I was backstage digging around, trying to find a string so we could do an encore. And Tony walks over with “the antique” and says, “Hey, man, here, play this.” I had a smile from ear-to-ear and Alison was smiling too.

What was it like getting to put that biography of Tony together? What led to that?

Well, a few years after that, after I left Union Station and started Blue Highway, I was still playing shows with Tony because Blue Highway had signed with Rounder, too. We were at a show with Tony and I said, “Man, have you ever thought about a biography?” And he said, “Well, actually, yeah, I have thought of that. But I’ll tell you what,” he said, “I think you’d be the ideal person to write it.” I said OK and started on it. That was about 2000 and it took 10 years to finish.

Three years into it, Caroline Wright came on board through Pam [Rice, Tony’s wife]. Caroline is a journalist and her mom was a member of the bluegrass community from New York state. Caroline lived in Hawaii at that time and had written a really well-done article about Tony in Listener magazine. I had started Tony’s book, but I was bogged down with it and wasn’t making a lot of progress and Pam suggested that Caroline come on board. We did four or five major, huge interviews with Tony that could have each been a book by themselves. And when we started transcribing them, we realized that Tony was so eloquent that we had to put it in Tony’s words. We couldn’t make it a narrative biography. That’s why it’s laid out the way it is. It’s chronological but in Tony’s words.

I’m really glad that we got to do it. Somebody would have done a book on him eventually, but I’m really glad that it came out before he left us. He’s one of those generational talents. I just don’t know that there’s going to be many people ever come along again who have an impact like that. He’s in the same league as Earl Scruggs, a top talent who created a language on the instrument.

So, it’s been a weird year, obviously. What have you been doing during this time?

I’ve been doing a lot of co-writing over Zoom. The other day I wrote my one-hundred-and-fourteenth song since the pandemic started.

Whoa!

Thomm Jutz and I’ve written 40 or so, just the two of us and, you know, you just get into the habit of doing it every week. I feel like Zoom is going to stick around and be the standard after the pandemic. I think it’s changed the way a lot of people think about co-writing. It makes you more disciplined and more productive. The technology just makes it easy. There’s no reason now for me to make a trip to Nashville, which is like four and a half hours, and get a hotel and all that when I can do all of it from home on my computer.

When you’re writing or doing work, are you the sort of person that has to change into regular people’s clothes to feel productive, or can you stay in your pajamas and be productive?

I think I’ve written at least a hundred of those 114 songs in my pajamas. [Laughs] I’m not going to dress up, I just want to be comfortable.

Photo credit: Ben Bateson

WATCH: Jomo & the Possum Posse, “Self Quarantine”

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Artist: Jomo & the Possum Posse
Hometown: Austin, Texas
Song: “Self Quarantine”
Album: Self Quarantine EP
Release Date: March 26, 2021
Label: Guy on a Buffalo

In Their Words: “I started 2020 with a challenge to myself to write a song every week for a full year. I had no idea the year would give me so much material! ‘Self Quarantine’ was written right at the time of the lockdown, when things were starting to get really crazy. People were hoarding groceries and supplies and generally freaking out. I loved the idea of using that as an excuse/metaphor to break it off with somebody. After more than a year of weekly songs, and the pandemic being such a big part of our lives, we decided to release an EP of some of our favorites.” – Jomo Edwards

Photo credit: Mike Wolfe

LISTEN: Leigh Nash (ft. Ruby Amanfu), “Good Trouble”

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Artists: Leigh Nash (featuring Ruby Amanfu)
Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee
Single: “Good Trouble”
Release Date: February 5, 2021

Editor’s Note: “Good Trouble” was inspired by the words of late Congressman John Lewis, who fought tirelessly for the social justice and racial equality we are still striving for to this day. His famous “Get in good trouble’ quote has become a modern call to action in dismantling an oppressive system and inspires hope for future generations.

In Their Words: “I had always admired Congressman Lewis and the work he did. I was enamored with a speech of his that talked about good and necessary trouble. I wanted to explore the concept more and once I started working with Matt and Ruby, everything just came together effortlessly.” — Leigh Nash

“When Leigh Nash reached out to ask me to join her and Matt Maher in co-writing ‘Good Trouble’ with them, it felt like a hand reaching out to hold mine. Allyship is so important to me and I believe that it is necessary now more than ever. Writing the second verse of ‘Good Trouble’ came as a natural response to what Leigh was singing in the first verse. I wanted to share my perspective, innermost feelings and the struggles I face walking around every day in a body with brown skin. I am reminded of the poem by German Lutheran pastor, Martin Niemöller, ‘First they came…’ Now is the time to identify privilege. It’s the time for being shaken awake. It’s time to speak up boldly as now-saints such as Representative John Lewis, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks and many, many others have paved the way for us to do so. This time of unrest in our country is affecting our generation and many others in a way that we can no longer deny.” — Ruby Amanfu

Photo credit: Allister Ann

Harmonics with Beth Behrs: Episode 9, The Brothers Koren

Posted on by Shelby Williamson

This episode almost didn’t happen. I thought long and hard about taking this step to not only be vulnerable with listeners, but also to put out some music into the world that I never intended to be shared — music that was strictly intended as therapy. But, the reason I started this podcast was to explore how creativity is healing, and also to have creatives be open and honest about the messy bits: everything that forms the human experience. None of us get through life without the messy bits. How could I interview everyone else and hear their open and vulnerable takes on healing and the process of their creativity, and not let you hear the same?


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

I am so grateful to the Brothers Koren. They have an incredible program called the Songwriter’s Journey, where they help folks to reclaim their “Big Voice” — and to reclaim their power, creativity, and truth through that voice. As musicians they’ve toured with the likes of Coldplay, Pink, and Rod Stewart, but they decided that after so many years in the music industry, they wanted to use their voices, their music and their incredible talents to help others. In this special, co-interview episode we discuss our creative process as we worked together for the past year and a half, after they came into my life at one of the most difficult times for me, especially regarding my relationship to art.

We lost my grandmother at the beginning of the pandemic last year, and even though my grandfather is suffering from dementia, at our family’s memorial service (held via Zoom) he once again became the man we all knew and loved — the man who, at a young age, had instilled in me his deep love of nature — who was now soothing and bringing our family together in our grief. I hope you’ll stay tuned to the end of this episode for the premiere of our song “The Moon Will Stay,” which is a collaboration between a poem I wrote for my grandfather and the beautiful music it inspired in Thorald and Isaak Koren. There are incredible studies about the healing power of music, especially for those with Alzheimer’s and dementia, and I’m so glad I was able to write this for my grandfather and for him to have heard it before we someday will inevitably lose him. But not today — because the moon will stay, and we will always have that. — Beth Behrs

More music from Beth Behrs and the Brothers Koren will be available on Bandcamp later this month. All proceeds will benefit mental health-focused charities.

Follow @harmonicspodcast on Instagram for more updates on how you can download this music and support these important causes!

2020: The Year of Dolly Parton

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Dolly Parton kept her promise to bring good into the world in 2020 and beyond. For so many reasons, this is absolutely the Year of Dolly Parton.

Marking her 50th anniversary as an Opry member in October 2019, she told reporters, “This world is just so dark, ugly and awful. I just can’t believe how we just can’t have a little more light and a little more love. So, I’m going to make it my business to try to do songs that are more uplifting — not just all Christian-based songs but songs that are just about better things. Do better and just have a little more love, a little more light and just don’t be so dark and dirty!”

Gosh, where to begin? How about…

 

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A post shared by Dolly Parton (@dollyparton)

Although it seems like a million years ago now, Dolly launched a viral craze on January 21 with a meme that went around the world. Gotta love the acoustic guitar for Instagram!

Also in January, she notched a Top 10 track on Billboard’s Hot Dance/Electronic Songs chart with “Faith,” which basically transformed the John Hiatt classic into an international EDM hit. Co-starring in the video with her musical collaborators, Galantis, Parton camps things up as the world’s best-dressed bus driver.

Later in the month, Parton collected her ninth career Grammy Award, this time in the category of Best Contemporary Christian Music Performance/Song, sharing the honor with For King and Country with “God Only Knows.” Although Parton wasn’t in attendance, the duo’s Joel Smallbone remarked from the podium, “To dear Dolly Parton, who is an incredible human being. It’s one of the great moments of our career to collaborate with her and her team.”

He continued, “I taught two of her managers in Sunday school growing up, so they were kind enough to reach out and play her the song. But she said something on a call. She said, ‘I love this song because it’s reaching to the marginalized, to the depressed, to the suicidal,’ which is all of us at some point. And then she said this, in her Dolly accent: ‘I’m going to take this song from Dollywood to Bollywood to Hollywood.’ And we did it, Dolly, we took it all the way.”

 

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A post shared by Dolly Parton (@dollyparton)

A few months into the pandemic, Parton told Instagram followers, “I think God is in this, I really do. I think he’s trying to hold us up to the light so we can see ourselves and see each other through the eyes of love. I think that when this passes, we’re all gonna be better people.”

She also revealed on social media that she’d donated a million dollars to Vanderbilt University help find a cure for the coronavirus. She wrote, “My longtime friend Dr. Naji Abumrad, who’s been involved in research at Vanderbilt for many years, informed me that they were making some exciting advancements towards research of the coronavirus for a cure. I am making a donation of $1 million to Vanderbilt towards that research and to encourage people that can afford it to make donations.”

Incredibly, when news of the Moderna vaccine emerged in November, Parton’s contribution was duly noted. “Without a doubt in my mind, her funding made the research toward the vaccine go 10 times faster than it would be without it,” Abumrad told the Washington Post.

In April, she kicked off a series of bedtime stories, told online, in order to bring comfort to children who were scared about sheltering in place. “This is something I have been wanting to do for quite a while, but the timing never felt quite right,” she said. “I think it is pretty clear that now is the time to share a story and to share some love. It is an honor for me to share the incredible talent of these authors and illustrators. They make us smile, they make us laugh and they make us think.” Two of the chosen books she wrote herself: Coat of Many Colors and I Am a Rainbow.

In addition, a new line of uplifting greeting cards inspired by Parton appeared in Walmart stores over the summer. Meanwhile, musically, she responded to the pandemic with a beacon of optimism, titled “When Life Is Good Again.” She shared the song in tandem with an interview (while sitting on her porch in her first-ever Zoom call) with the series Time100 Talks: Finding Hope.

Bluegrass fans rejoiced in August as she made a surprise announcement that six of her albums from the early 2000s were finally available on streaming services, so how about adding title tracks of Little Sparrow and Halos & Horns to your Dolly playlists? Overall, 93 once-missing tracks are now available to stream.

Although she’s rarely controversial, Parton’s commentary about Black Lives Matter caused a commotion among its supporters and detractors — and even inspired a mural in East Nashville. She told Billboard in August, “I think that everybody needs to express themselves however they feel they have to. I’m not out here to tell you what to do. I don’t want you to tell me what to do. But I just do what my heart tells me to do, I ask God to direct me and lead me, and if I’ve got his direction, I don’t have to worry too much about anything else. But I do understand people having to make themselves known and felt and seen. And of course Black lives matter. Do we think our little white asses are the only ones that matter? No! Everybody matters.”

In November, she commemorated the 25th anniversary of the Imagination Library – an incredible program she launched in 1995 in order to provide free books every month to preschool children — with a new documentary titled The Library That Dolly Built. Parton stated, “I am so excited that we can finally tell the whole story of the Imagination Library. It is certainly not just about me. Our story is the story of children, of families and communities who all share the dream to inspire kids to love to read and to love to learn. My hope is this documentary will encourage more towns, more states and even more countries to jump onboard. One thing is for sure, I think this is the best investment I have ever made.”

Those who have been fans of Dolly Parton for their whole lives were treated to two magnificent overviews in 2020. The first is a Time Life box set of her career on camera, available in two different configurations. One option for Dolly: The Ultimate Collection clocks in at 11 DVDs, and the other at 19 DVDs. Some of the most interesting footage comes from her variety shows, such as this clip of the superstar singing “Amazing Grace” with Glen Campbell (who, for some reason, has brought along his bagpipes).

The other retrospective is Songteller, a book of lyrics that doubles as a memoir. Compiled by Parton and noted journalist Robert K. Oermann, it portrays Parton as a composer whose catalog goes way deeper (and darker) than “Jolene,” “9 to 5,” and “I Will Always Love You.” Dorian Lynskey, a contributor to the L.A. Times, wrote, “Her shows are carnivals of good-natured inclusivity that unite everyone from LGBTQ millennials to MAGA-hat boomers under one roof. There is room for heartbreak but not deep cuts about suicide and arson. Still, she would not have included so many of these dramas of cruelty and suffering in Songteller if she did not believe that this harsher strain in her life and work was worth remembering. Her optimism stands on the shoulders of pain.”

And if all that isn’t enough, she gifted us with a holiday album and a network special (both titled A Holly Dolly Christmas), a Netflix movie (Christmas on the Square), and even a baking kit at Williams-Sonoma. It may be the only time in history that she’s been affiliated with the words “cookie cutter.”

Right before Thanksgiving, the iconic musician logged her 50th Grammy nomination, this time for “There Was Jesus,” a collaboration with Zach Williams in the Best Contemporary Christian Music Performance/Song category. A week later, former President Barack Obama lamented that he hadn’t given Parton the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Perhaps that will happen in 2021?

Not that she’s short on awards. She picked up the new Hitmaker award from Billboard in December, and told viewers, “Of course, I’m proud of all the wonderful women in show business that write all these wonderful songs. I’d like to acknowledge a few — some of them older, kind of back in my day. Cindy Walker, who wrote some of the greatest songs ever, and of course Loretta Lynn, a wonderful, wonderful songwriter. And this day in time, of course, Taylor Swift, she’s just right up there, probably number one. And of course, Brandi Carlile, there’s just so many that write so many good songs. I think it’s so important that we acknowledge the women that write and sing in country music. And I think it’s also very important that they take control of their own business. I know I’ve had my own publishing company for years. Same with a lot of these women that I mentioned. But anyhow, I’ve just wanted to always say, ‘You go, girls!’ We can do it!” (Like hundreds of others, the trophy will be housed in her museum in Dollywood.)

This year, and in all years, we commend Dolly Parton for her work ethic and for making herself available to her fans. Yes, she knows how to market herself through visibility and personality, but in 2020, when so many of us have stayed in, she’s gone the extra mile to put herself out there, safely.

On November 30, she wound up in New York Times‘ Style magazine in its “Diva” series, alongside Patti LaBelle and Barbra Streisand. One of the most accurate depictions of what it’s like to be around Dolly (and to always wish you had more time to spend together), the article’s author Emily Lordi quotes Dolly talking about her ambition: “I just wanted to do really good work, and I wanted it to make a really big difference in the world … to uplift mankind and glorify God.”

Photo courtesy of Dolly Parton

Harmonics with Beth Behrs: Episode 7, Mary Gauthier

Posted on by Shelby Williamson

Singer, songwriter, activist, and all-around badass Mary Gauthier joins host Beth Behrs on this episode of Harmonics. The two talk about why superheroes are so often adoptees and orphans (and vice versa), the power of songwriting for veterans of the armed forces, her last live show immediately before the shutdown, and so much more.


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

Mary Gauthier’s name is spoken with reverence in songwriter circles. She’s won countless awards from organizations like the Americana Music Association, GLAAD, and Folk Alliance International, and was nominated for Best Folk Album at the 2019 Grammy Awards.

A Louisiana native, Gauthier has been releasing her own music for over twenty years, but her 2019 record Rifles & Rosary Beads brought a whole new level to her art, when she collaborated with the Songwriting With Soldiers project to put wounded veterans’ stories to song. 

 

Sarah Jarosz Looks to Her Texas Hometown for Inspiration (Part 1 of 2)

Posted on by Editor

After years spent living in New York City and traveling the world on tour, Sarah Jarosz has turned to a source of inspiration she’s never mined before: her hometown.

With her fifth album, World on the Ground, the Grammy-winning artist gleaned her own folktales from the everyday rhythms of her life in Wimberley, Texas. Her time away from Friday night football games and the shadows of cypress trees allowed her to look on Wimberley’s details with fresh eyes, from the Ford Escape her parents drove and the dusty trails it kicked up to conversations about out-of-reach dreams with old friends (that she examines on “Maggie,” which came from an actual heart-to-heart she had with an old friend at her high-school reunion).

Jarosz found a breakthrough in the most familiar folds of her memory, but this perspective was also molded by the city that guided her as she retraced her steps through the Texas Hill Country in her lyrics. On “Pay It No Mind,” the single that gives World on the Ground its name, Jarosz alludes to this ability to find meaning and movement at a distance: she sings of the frightening, and often destructive, churn of life in our current moment from the point of view of a “little bird stretching her wings” who takes in the chaos from the seventh floor.

“I think being able to write and make this record mostly about my hometown, in New York, from far away, was an interesting part of the process,” she says. “It’s almost what allowed me to take on the role of the little bird on the seventh floor in a way, because I think it took leaving Wimberley and being away from it for quite awhile to be in a place where I could actually write about it in this way.”

In the first half of our two-part interview, Jarosz walks BGS through the little Texas town that became her muse, how her work with bluegrass supergroup I’m With Her left an impact on her creative process, and more.

For some people, going back to their hometown is a traumatic event, a negative, damaging experience. There’s clearly a lot of compassion for the voices you explore on World on the Ground, which was inspired by your own hometown. If you were to visit Wimberley with fresh eyes, how would you describe it?

Jarosz: One of the things that stands out about it compared to other towns of its size in Texas — and I think this would be obvious, even if you’d never been there and were taking a drive through town — it seems like it’s a little more balanced. It has one high school, and one football team, and a lot of the small town culture does revolve around that, around this sort of Friday Night Lights idea of a small Texas town.

But there’s also this incredible artsy kind of community in Wimberley. One of the big draws of Wimberley is its market days, which I think happens once a month — maybe it’s every weekend in the summer, I can’t remember. Arts and crafts and even the fact that there was a bluegrass jam every Friday night, that was why I fell in love with all this music in the first place. It feels a little more balanced in that way.

I truly feel, probably in a biased way, that it’s a very magical place. A lot of people who drive through it, if they’re driving around the hill country in Texas, would agree that it’s one of the towns that stands out from the rest. It has this kind of shimmery quality to it — that’s the word that comes to mind.

I love the contrast of “Maggie,” then, in which you’re singing from the perspective of a friend of yours from high school who can’t wait to leave the small town behind. I appreciate “Maggie” because it’s a real conversation you could be having with anyone who’s stuck where they are. The location is almost insignificant, because it’s about whatever’s holding you — it doesn’t necessarily have to be the town you’re in.

Exactly. The “football games and processed food” line definitely puts it in a place, but I feel like [the song] could also be anywhere. I purposely tried to make that happen. It was such an eye-opening thing for me to actually have this conversation with this friend — we were really close friends in childhood, then just drifted apart over the years, and ran into each other at my tenth high school reunion. She actually didn’t go to my high school, she went to a different school and that’s why we drifted apart.

She was asking me about my touring and my life and everything, and I think I was probably saying, “I wish I could be in one place more. I wish I had more of a home sense at this point in my life.” She was sort of saying, “All I want is to do what you do, travel and see the world.” It’s funny how sometimes the things that seem so obvious take just a simple moment of someone saying it to your face, and then you realize, “Oh! Duh!” That really happened for me there. That song is all about empathy and compassion for anyone who wants their circumstance to be different than it is and might not necessarily have the means to make that happen, but still having the dreams to hopefully one day change.

“What Do I Do” is a companion song to that, in a way: It’s sung by someone who wants to be home more, who wants to be still for a minute. What inspired that song?

A lot of these songs feel like gifts, in the sense that I generally feel like a very, very slow lyrical writer. The music comes more quickly to me, but that song and a lot of the songs that I wrote with John Leventhal were similar experiences. If he had the music written and sent it to me, the lyrics seemed to come very quickly. “Pay It No Mind” and “Orange and Blue” were two of those.

“What Do I Do” was another one where it almost felt like a dream to write. It’s similar to “Maggie” in the sense that it’s that same sort of longing for wanting something else than what you currently have, but then it’s also a thankfulness and acceptance in that. It almost feels like a mantra-type song where it’s repeated and it goes to a different place — very simple chords in the verses, and then it opens into this washy vibe in the, “What do I do, what do I do?” It was one of those gifts of a song.

You’ve been collaborating with your friends Sara Watkins and Aoife O’Donovan for years. Now that you’ve written albums and toured together, do you hear, or did you feel, the imprint of your time with I’m With Her going into this record in a new way?

I felt it in a creative way, personally. I think all of us were just so positively influenced by that experience [of] touring and putting out that record. What that allowed all of us — I’m speaking for myself, but I’d imagine they probably feel a similar way — was just the chance to step back and take a breath. Not in a busy sense, because we were just constantly working and on tour, but creatively.

I had never been in a band before; I had only ever put out my solo records. I think after Undercurrent, I couldn’t really imagine going straight into another solo record or album push because I just wasn’t inspired to. I had reached a point where I had wanted to experience something new. There was something so rewarding about feeling like I was a part of a team. We were all on each other’s team and carrying the load together. It was just so wonderful and magical. It definitely gave me the creative juice to just be so psyched about making this record.

With Sarah and Sean making their Watkins Family Hour duo project, and Aoife making Bull Frogs Croon, I love those projects so much because [we] all seem so inspired. I think that is because we all allowed ourselves this chance to step back from our own things, be a part of a team and give ourselves the gift of this renewed inspiration, almost. I definitely felt that. I hope they do, too. I’m so grateful for them.

Editor’s Note: Read the second half of our interview with BGS Artist of the Month Sarah Jarosz here.

Photo credit: Josh Wool

Rose Cousins Shares Her Truth More Freely with ‘Bravado’

Posted on by Editor

“I’ve always been interested in human struggle,” Rose Cousins says, musing on “The Fraud,” a song off her latest album Bravado. “I think being a living human being is really hard.”

Bravado listens like a series of object lessons on the contradictions inherent to being human, with Cousins using each song to meditate on themes like pretension and vanity, as well as loneliness, solitude, and the crucial distinction between the two. Across the album, her songwriting is as sharp and clear-eyed as it’s ever been, a feat she attributes to pushing herself to dig deeper and share her truth more freely than she’d done on past efforts. Bravado follows her Grammy-nominated 2017 album Natural Conclusion.

BGS caught up with Cousins in late February, just a week after she released Bravado, speaking by phone as she was at home in Halifax putting together packages for Kickstarter supporters. Much has changed for musicians since then, rendering some bits of our conversation irrelevant (like her tour in support of Bravado, which was canceled due to COVID-19), and other portions — as when Cousins shares her desire to spend more of her energy on practices like walking and meditation — strangely prescient.

BGS: When did you begin work on the album, and when did you feel the project was truly starting to come together?

Cousins: Every year I go on a writing retreat with a group of songwriters from Boston; we’ve been doing it now for 10 years. I wrote two of the songs at the retreat: “Love Comes Back” and “The Fraud.” “The Fraud” was the song that really revealed to me the concept of “bravado.” I thought about the word “bravado” and thought it would be an amazing title, and isn’t that an interesting concept?

I went into the studio to work with some different musicians in Canada I hadn’t worked with before. We had such a great time that I booked some more studio time in May [of 2019] and in between that time wrote “The Benefits of Being Alone.” Once I wrote that song, in March of last year, I was like, “It’s on.” I really wanted to write a song that was coming from my perspective of being a single person, and, while society has different stigmas around [being single], it’s not all bad.

I think people experience loneliness whether they’re in a relationship or not. And aloneness is a really rich thing — spending time by yourself and having your own creative time and energy to devote to yourself and what you want to do. So I was really excited when that song came. I knew after our sessions in May that I was chasing a record.

Back to what you were saying about choosing the word Bravado as your album title, that concept comes up in “The Expert,” too. Can you elaborate on why you felt that idea was so representative of this collection of songs? I always find it interesting when an artist chooses a title for an album that isn’t also the title of a track.

It’s definitely the thread that goes through all the songs. When I was writing “The Fraud,” I was singing, almost in an observational way, about my own self, about presenting yourself one way and feeling another way. And if there is a time in the world that that is happening, it’s right now, where people are presenting versions of themselves that aren’t necessarily true. Maybe it isn’t a complete lie, but we never used to be able to filter photographs. Only people who worked at magazines could do that. Now we are putting versions of ourselves through social media that are depicting the best bits. …

Since my last record, I’ve been thinking a lot about what matters to me, what’s really true, what do I love, what are the things I can let go of? And how can I be more in touch with myself and the ground? It’s really hard. I don’t think there is a single human being who escapes any of that. You can have 75 emotions in one day….

The hardest, deepest, most uncomfortable work — and this is where I’m at in my life — is dealing with your own self. And where you are calling upon bravado. That’s the concept of this whole record. It’s the duality of being a living human being. We present the version of ourselves we want but when we’re in a vulnerable situation, can we live up to the person that we presented? That’s the question for me.

To your point about trying to be more real and truthful in your everyday life, there was a quotation in your bio that stuck with me. You said, “I realized I was chasing a theme and a feeling I had been pondering for months. And it turned into a whole record of perhaps my best writing.” Did that personal digging contribute to your feelings about the finished album?

My last record was definitely some of my most truthful writing. I remember having nervousness about some of the stuff being too dark or that kind of thing. Of course it’s hard to have perspective on your own work, but I historically feel like I elude; I don’t always tell the full story at one time. I elude telling the full story and I allude to things. With this record, it feels closer to an admittance and staring really hard at the way I’ve set my own life up. By being more truthful for my own self, I think that always makes the writing better, and makes the connection to the music better.

Elsewhere in reading about the album creation, I came across a passage where you share that you felt a kind of pressure to be productive, as opposed to going for a walk or enjoying silence. Did making this record alleviate that feeling for you in any way, or offer you a differing perspective?

It did not. It’s funny. So this month, February, I tried to protect all of February as best I could from travel so that I could be home and deal with all the Kickstarter things and all of the press that’s coming in, all of the merch, all the things people don’t see and don’t need to know about. Within that, I dedicated myself to two things that I have been talking to myself about for years: I’ve taken a walk outside every single day and I’ve meditated every single day. Those are two things I’ve wanted to incorporate into my world.

I definitely am a workaholic. I definitely have this thought-circle in my mind of, “If you’re not doing something productive, if you’re not moving forward…” I can’t let myself off the hook… I’ve still been trying to put those desires into motion. There are plenty of days when I don’t want to go for a walk, but once I’m outside I feel better. Why is it so hard? Why is it so hard to get back to the gym, or stop eating garbage? It’s because we’re emotional people and we form habits and you have to make different decisions. Sometimes the psychic pain of change is horrible and also exactly what we need.

That’s a good segue to one of the songs I’ve found myself coming back to a lot, which is “The Time Being (Impending Mortality Awareness Society).” First of all, that is such a fantastic title. I’d love to hear how you wrote that one.

I feel very lucky to have a friend, an older gentleman, who is a fisherman. We were catching up one day and he was talking about coming back from a fishing trip where he had a gentleman with him who was much older than him. He said, in passing, “impending mortality awareness.” I thought it was brilliant and about a month later I found myself sitting at a piano and came up with that first line, “The Impending Mortality Awareness Society meets twice a week / Do or die because time is of the essence.” And I kept running with that…

Of all the stuff we’ve just talked about, isn’t it the hardest to just be present? That’s what going for the walk is. That’s what meditation is. Can you give yourself a moment where you tune in to your own body and your own brain and pause? It is about paying attention to what is important. It’s about telling the people you love that you love them. It’s about checking in with your fears. Because most of them are not real. It’s about acknowledging that time is in motion and you need to get your head out of your ass and be in it.

Photo credit: Lindsay Duncan