Tag: tennessee

Finding Inspiration in Creation, Ellie Holcomb Moves Forward in Love

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As a consequence of growing up in the music industry and singing background vocals on albums since she was 8, Ellie Holcomb opted not to seek a future as a professional singer.

“I actually decided that I didn’t want to be a part of it at an early age, which is hilarious,” says Holcomb, who today has a thriving career as a Christian music singer and also records and performs with her husband, Drew Holcomb. It amounts to two separate careers, with her solo music tending towards inspirational anthems and the duo producing a more intimate Americana sound. Ellie’s powerful voice is equally adept at belting out a dramatic ballad or giving a more tender, reserved performance.

Ellie’s father is producer Brown Bannister, who produced albums by Amy Grant and many other Christian singers. He now runs the music school at Lipscomb University in Nashville.

“I was around a lot of people who did this for their work,” she says. “I’m so grateful because I saw from a really young age the power of music to encourage, to bring hope and to help people feel less alone. But I also saw the cost of doing music, like you have to leave. It’s often really hard on families.”

For our Artist of the Month interview, Ellie fielded questions from BGS as she and Drew drove to Chattanooga for a performance. (Read our Artist of the Month interview with Drew.)

BGS: You’ve got a powerful voice. When did you first realize that?

Oh, thank you. I guess from a pretty young age. I was singing in studios with my dad. When the budget ran out, I would come and be the background singer on whatever project he was working on.

What a great way to get experience.

I’ve kind of learned from the best in terms of how to become a singer. But I think even on this last record (Canyon, 2021), there were parts of my voice that I didn’t really know were there. As I’ve gotten older, there’s been this other realm that I’ve tapped into. It feels like painting with more colors. That’s been really fun, to realize I have this whole other set of tones and colors and textures that I didn’t realize in my voice.

Who are some of the artists you worked with as a child?

I sang on (Amy Grant’s) Home for Christmas as a little 8-year-old girl. It’s kind of hard to imagine artists in the Christian world that I haven’t sung with. I’ve done Sandi Patty back in the day, Steven Curtis Chapman, Matthew West, Charlie Peacock, Mercy Me, Bart Millard. It’s hilarious because there will be songs I’m hearing and I’m like, “Oh, it’s me. I forgot I sang on that.”

How do you and Drew differ in your music tastes?

It’s interesting. We have a lot of overlap in what we love. He grew up listening to Bob Dylan and Van Morrison. When I grew up, my dad was making records with Amy Grant. I love Sara Groves. Then we both love Carole King. He leans a little more into the rock land, and I lean more singer-songwriter.

You have young children (Emmylou, 9; Huck, 6; and Rivers, 3). Is touring difficult for you and Drew because of that?

I feel like we found a really beautiful way to kind of blend all that together. We bring the kids on the road a lot and we tour together and apart. So we kind of have a crazy schedule. But thankfully, Drew is a logistical ninja. He’s really good at keeping tabs on where everybody is and childcare. We’ve got a village of people that have come around us. We just keep getting family members and nannies (to help). It just feels like when they have to move on, we have another aunt in the arsenal. So we have been very blessed to have family and friends and incredible nannies come alongside of us as we do this crazy music life.

You quit your husband’s band (Drew Holcomb and the Neighbors) after seven years in 2012, and then pursued a solo career. What brought that about?

I’d actually quit Drew’s band to be a stay-at-home mom. Our daughter was in a car seat for over eight hours a day. By the time she was six months, she’d been to 32 states and Canada. And I’m like, “I don’t think I can keep her in a car seat for seven hours a day, poor thing.” So I quit to do the mom thing.

How did that morph into launching a solo career?

It was hilarious. I kept trying to write songs for his band. But often when I would sit down to write a song, I would say, “Drew, I’m so sorry, I accidentally wrote another song about God.” I didn’t mean to, but I’m just a spiritual person. I don’t fully understand everything, and I feel really comfortable in a lot of the mystery, but that is something that my heart has always been drawn to. And so I loved what Drew’s response was. He was like, “Hey, write what’s in you. Let those songs out.”

When he said that, it lit a fire within me. I don’t know that I needed permission from him, but all of a sudden I just felt this freedom to sing what was in my heart. That’s usually me saying, “I believe, but help my unbelief.” I’m usually wrestling my faith to the ground. I’m working my faith out through song. I guess the songs were helping me find some semblance of peace and comfort and solace. So I thought, “Man, maybe they’d help somebody else. That’d be cool.”

Does the divisiveness going on now in the U.S. tempt you to write political songs?

I don’t know that it does. I feel called to move forward in love, and I guess sometimes that will intersect, politically speaking, in terms of using your voice to speak up on behalf of those who maybe don’t have a voice. That can look political at times. But I think for me, I’m less motivated by politics and more motivated by love and peacemaking. But sometimes to make peace, you’ve got to tell the truth.

Many of your solo videos are filmed with spectacular nature backgrounds. Why do you return to that approach so often?

It’s very intentional because creation itself is one of the ways that I experience God most. I feel like the story of love beating death is written all over creation. When the (coronavirus) numbers were low, we did a trip where we went down into the Grand Canyon, rafted the Colorado River, spent the night on the riverbanks and then rafted out. While we were down there, a guide was telling us that in the Grand Canyon, the walls really tell a story. It’s actually a story of disaster upon disaster: landslide, mudslide, volcano, earthquake, flood, drought. Then there’s this great divide split wide open by a river, and I thought, this just looks like a picture of literally all of our hearts, especially after the last two years. There is a current of love that runs deeper than our deepest ache, pain or longing that will carry us back to a place where we can know that we’re beloved, no matter how broken we are. I’m like, “All right, let’s get in a place where I’m reminded of that. Maybe it’ll remind other people of that.”

You’ve spoken on stage about seeking help for depression and anxiety. Why did you decide to do that?

I want everybody to know how precious they are. I want to remember it myself and I want kids to know that. So it’s been a joy to speak openly about depression and anxiety and worry and fear and division and to say, these are all real things in a broken world. But we’re invited to be hope-people and bridge-building people and people who are about reconciliation and love. I really love getting to come stumbling and tripping and broken and full of doubt and fear sometimes into the presence of love. And I will happily hobble my way into that presence over and over again and invite others to come along with me.

Photo Credit: Ashtin Paige

Artist of the Month: Drew & Ellie Holcomb

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Drew & Ellie Holcomb are about to hit the highways to promote Coming Home: A Collection of Songs, a new compilation album that represents their life together as a couple. Alongside a batch of familiar songs from their catalog that reflect their life as a couple, the Holcombs also put their own spin on Willie Nelson’s “On the Road Again” and even update one of their best-known works, “Hung the Moon.”

Upon releasing the new version of that crowd favorite, Ellie explained, “I wrote ‘Hung the Moon’ after a long season of listening to a lot of Lucinda Williams. It’s always been a song that’s felt like home to me. Drew was playing these chords around the kitchen one day, and I promptly stole them and wrote a love song about him. It’s been an honor to see ‘Hung the Moon’ be included in so many people’s weddings over the years and I LOVE this new take on an older song of ours. I hope y’all enjoy it as much as we enjoyed re-recording it!”

Drew and Ellie met as students at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, and they married in 2006, a year after Drew Holcomb & the Neighbors began carving out a spot among the independent music landscape. Ellie ventured into solo territory in 2012, making significant inroads in Christian music. Meanwhile, Drew Holcomb & the Neighbors have forged on, with Drew tacking a couple of side projects like a vinyl subscription service, a top-draw music festival, and premium Tennessee whiskey. Next month, Drew & Ellie Holcomb will launch the You & Me Tour in Florida, with dates running coast to coast through March.

To celebrate our first Artist of the Month of 2022, look for individual exclusive interviews with Drew & Ellie Holcomb later this month, and enjoy a sampler of their career so far with our BGS Essentials Playlist.

Photo Credit: Ashtin Paige

Retiring From the Road, Doyle Lawson Looks Back on 59 Years in Bluegrass

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On a Friday afternoon, bluegrass legend Doyle Lawson sits in the second-story conference room of the Ole Smoky distillery in downtown Gatlinburg, Tennessee. Down below is a madhouse of people, places and things. Curious faces from across America rolling into this corner of the Great Smoky Mountains for the fall foliage. That, and wandering into the distillery for endless samples of high-octane legal moonshine, only to ready themselves for Lawson and his band Quicksilver to take the patio stage later that evening.

The inundation of blinking lights, loud noises and mass consumerism at the heart of Gatlinburg is a far cry from the Lawson’s humble beginnings in the rural countryside, in a small town outside of Kingsport just to the northeast. It’s also a long way from the starting line of when and where he first stepped into the music industry as a professional. February 1963. At just 18 years old, Lawson boarded a bus in his hometown and headed for Nashville to play banjo for Jimmy Martin & The Sunny Mountain Boys.

Martin, who grew up just down the road from Lawson in Sneedville, Tennessee, liked what he heard from Lawson and hired him to play banjo. From there, Lawson not only transitioned from Martin to J.D. Crowe & The Kentucky Mountain Boys a few years later, he eventually switched to guitar and then to mandolin — the latter instrument at the heart of Lawson’s signature look and tone.

By the early 1970s, Lawson joined The Country Gentleman, one of the biggest string acts of that period. By the end of the decade, Lawson left that group and formed his own outfit, Quicksilver. Some 42 years down the line, Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver remains a pillar of bluegrass music, headlining major festivals coast to coast, all while picking up several honors — including induction into the Bluegrass Hall of Fame (2012) and countless IBMA awards.

And yet, at age 77, Lawson has decided to hang it up, to walk away from the spotlight — on his own terms, and in his own way. There are only a handful of remaining shows left on the schedule, with Lawson making his final rounds through well-worn stomping grounds in East Tennessee, Western North Carolina and Southwestern Virginia.

Once those final notes are played and 2021 comes to a close, Lawson will say goodbye to the stage, to his bandmates, and to the audience that, over the decades, turned a young Southern Appalachian boy into an elder statesman of the “high, lonesome sound.”

BGS: Playing devil’s advocate here, if COVID hadn’t happened, would you have kept going a little longer?

Lawson: Probably, yeah. I would have gone at least through 2022, or maybe even have gone to making it an even 60 years. But I didn’t. Well, it’s kind of bittersweet. You know, at times, I’m sad to see it come to the end because I love touring. I love the travel part and all that. At the same time, there has been a huge sense of relief and a load taken off my shoulders. Because you’ve got a band and, even in the good times, you had to work hard to keep the band working, sometimes you work for everybody but yourself.

You don’t seem like someone that would drift too far from this. I mean, it’s so much a part of you and your DNA.

The touring is what I’m getting away from. I plan on doing whatever comes along that tweaks my interest. I enjoy producing other people and I’ve done some of that for the last several years. If something came along and I decide to go out and do a little pickin’ [then that’s fine]. What I don’t want to do is if [someone said], “Hey, we’re going to give you all this money if you’ll come over here and pick with so-and-so.” Well, it’s not about the money. If it doesn’t feed me musically, [I won’t do it]. It has to be structured. You know me, I like things cohesive and rehearsed. It’s not about money. Money is a necessity, but the reason I play music, first and has always been, for the love of music. And knowing that if I worked hard, we’d probably do all right monetarily.

When you look back at those early days of being a touring musician, what sticks out the most?

Quite honestly, in the early days, for most of us, we lived [two lives] because, by and large, we all had to work a day job and play music. Sometimes it entailed traveling. Sometimes it didn’t allow you to travel. But, in order to survive, you worked a day job. Of course, back then, primarily we worked clubs three or four nights a week, worked five and a half days a week in a day job. Our feet were in both worlds. But we all longed and yearned and hoped for the day that we could devote all of our energy to the music, rather than having to divide it up. I’m thankful that I was able to do that.

I think about when I’ve talked to Del McCoury, with him telling me about the days he wasn’t on the road playing music, where he was a logger and worked in construction, building nuclear power plants in Pennsylvania.

Yep, he was. I did everything. The last full-time job I had, as far a day laborer, J.D. Crowe and I worked together. He was actually my boss. We worked in the shipping department for a place in Lexington, Kentucky. The orders would come down from the office and we’d fill the order, box them up and ship them out. I’d moved down [to Lexington] from Louisville, where I was working five and a half days in a machine shop, running saws, drill presses and sanders.

Several years ago, you mentioned to me about you and J.D. playing the lounge at the Holiday Inn in Lexington.

[In Lexington], we were playing and still working the day job. We’d play in a club called Martin’s Tavern every Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. Sometimes, the horse ranch people and thoroughbred farms would have a little party and we’d do those. But, a fella that owned a chain of Holiday Inns, his daughter was going to the University of Kentucky. Well, the little place we’d play, the kids would come over from the university. They’d pack it out every night. I mean, you couldn’t get in. So, this fella who owned the chain of Holiday Inns, his daughter saw us, told her dad, “You need to go see this group,” told him how the kids would come out. As it happened, he was looking for somebody that would put some bodies in his lounge because it was dead. So, he came down and talked to J.D. He watched us and was just knocked off his feet.

So, this was J.D. Crowe & The Kentucky Mountain Boys?

Yeah. That was late 1967 to early 1968. So, we took that on. Started working six nights a week. It didn’t take long before I looked at Crowe and said, “Man, I can’t work five and a half days a week and work six nights a week here. So, I’m going for it.” I quit [my day job]. I already had one foot out the door. And Crowe quit, too. That’s when we both gave up trying to work both. I’m going to play music, make it go and lock into something [real].

That’s a big decision.

It was a big decision. Go for it. I followed my heart, as [Crowe] did, too. When I worked for Jimmy [Martin], of course we toured. But it was a different level, Jimmy was in Nashville. In truth, the reason I had to leave Jimmy was because we didn’t work enough. Making what he was paying me, I couldn’t make enough money to stay, you know? That’s why we always had to work a day job. In Nashville, in the early 1960s, if you went to try to get a part-time job, if they found out you played music, most of the time they wouldn’t hire you because they knew you were going to quit or would come in trying to get time off for a show. [The day job] got to me. It was like punching the clock, which I didn’t like doing.

When I think about Bill Monroe and Jimmy Martin as bandleaders, they were like a captain of a team, this hub you went through to find your own path. What did you learn from Jimmy that you applied to being a bandleader?

Well, the one thread that would run from Bill through Jimmy to me would be — do it the way you hear it, it’s your band. The band must do what you want. That’s why Bill was such a force with his mandolin. Sometimes you could hear it when he felt like the band was not quite locked in with him, he’d bear down and you could feel him. Jimmy was the same way. I’m often asked how I’ve maintained that certain sound. Well, it’s easy. They change for me, I don’t change for them. If I was a chameleon, I wouldn’t know what I was. As far as sound-wise, it was a formula I wanted to keep, and did keep. If I kept changing every time I hired somebody for the last 42 years, I likely wouldn’t be around today talking to you.

Whether you realize it or not, you’ve always had one leg in the neo-traditional camp and one in the progressive camp. I think that comes down to the fact that you’ve always believed the most important thing is to serve the song.

It is. I’ve always believed it doesn’t matter where that song originates, where it comes from. It’s in the interpretation of that song that determines at a particular time if it’s bluegrass, country or rock. It’s not the song, it’s how you interpret it. You can make it whatever you want to make it. I’ve always been one who will step a little wide of the mark. But, I’ve never gone past where my peers didn’t go before me. I think there’s room within the realm of tradition and the value of the music to take some liberties. If you go too far, and it becomes something that nobody recognizes, then you’re no longer playing what you say you are. I believe in innovation. I think it’s vitally important for any music to be innovative. Because, if it isn’t, it’ll get stagnant.

You were good friends with Tony Rice. And you recorded a lot with him in the Bluegrass Album Band. We’re coming up on a year since his passing. What do you remember most about him, as a performer and as a person?

One of the most dedicated men to his craft that I’ve ever met. When I was working the last go-round with J.D., Tony’s older brother, Larry, was playing mandolin and I was playing guitar. We lived next to each other in Lexington. Tony came and he would stay at Larry’s. That guitar was never out of Tony’s hand. He was dedicated to it and he was inquisitive. He got to thinking beyond the borders of bluegrass. But then, his heart was in bluegrass. He called me and wanted to do a traditional bluegrass recording to let people know where our heart is. It was some of the most fun recordings I’ve ever done. At the same time, you knew you better come with your A-game because you were with the A-players.

We only meant to do one. We thought that was it. Then Tony said, “Hey, they want another album.” We had done five and Tony said no more, his voice was giving him trouble. And I thought that was the end of it. But it got to where people would say, “When’s your next album coming out?” And I’d say, “You know, we’re not even a band.” Then, Tony called up and said, “Let’s do one more, an instrumental.” So, number six we did the instrumental.

Did you get to talk to him before he passed?

I didn’t talk to him a whole lot. It was hard to talk. Sometimes out of the blue, he’d call me or text me or something. Most of the time he’d text. And I respected that because it was pretty difficult. Out of the clear blue, he’d text, “We had it going didn’t we, brother?” We did.

I would surmise that you still talk to J.D. What did you talk to him about when you decided you wanted to step away and make this decision to retire?

I called him. J.D. and Paul Williams, we’re all real close. We’ve remained friends for more than 50 years. I called J.D. and told him that I was going to hang it up. I said I’m going to step away when I’m still happy with what I just did. He said that’s the smartest thing you’ll ever do — walk away when you can still be proud. Don’t wait until it’s too late. He and I both know that some of our peers did, which is sad to see, because they were my heroes. When I talked to Paul Williams, he said the same thing.

And it just so happened that Sonny Osborne called me about something and I told him. He said, “You’re smart to do that, because if you’re not careful — and you won’t even realize it — you’ll be out there trying to do what you can’t do anymore.” I really wrestled with coming off the road at the end of this year. It took a while. But I’ve made my decision. I’m at peace with it. I can look at my career — and not to be boisterous or egotistical — and I can say that I’ve tried to represent the music and my music about as respectable of way as it could be, and I’m proud of that.

Photo Credit: Kim Brantley

BGS 5+5: Kelley Mickwee

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Artist: Kelley Mickwee
Hometown: Austin, Texas, by way of Memphis, Tennessee

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

All of the elements. Mother Nature, the universe and the natural world are my religion and informs my spirituality, so I’d say nature inspires everything I do. As far as on the daily, I have to do something outside at some point no matter what the weather or where I am or how busy I get. It could be anything, from digging and planting in the garden, pruning, cutting the grass, and watering the plants to taking long hikes with my dog, Moe. If I am in town, you can usually find me at one of our off-leash dog hiking trails with Moe. It’s very centering and really impacts my mental health and general well being. Especially when the sun is shining. And THAT, in turn, gives me the inspiration, energy and right mindset to sit down with a pen or with my guitar to work on a song. Or do anything, really.

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

Not enough. Ha! I learned pretty early on as a songwriter that for me to write the best lines I can, I have to just speak from experience from the first person and be as open and honest as I can or am comfortable. I definitely have many “character” songs about other people or from their stories, especially songs that are co-writes, because then you are sharing a narrative with another writer so who knows how many people/experiences are wrapped up in that one song? But, in general, I tend to write from a first-person experience or relationship. Especially if it’s a song I write alone or start on my own before sharing with a co-writer.

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

I think as songwriters, we are constantly getting input from all kinds of sources and storing it away for when we sit down to write a song. This could be anything from a conversation we had, or another song we heard on the radio, or a movie we just watched. I have written several songs from quick lines I wrote down while watching a film or a documentary. And I am always searching for inspiration and guidance from poetry, especially lately. I took an online poetry course in 2020 and it really gave me some new tools to use when writing lyrics.

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

This one was easy! A locally sourced vegan meal in London with Paul McCartney. I am actually a pescatarian who doesn’t eat or drink dairy, so not technically a vegan. But…when in London with Paul McCartney!

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

Every time! It is not easy for me to complete a song. Very very rarely do they just roll off the end of my pen, or float down from the sky, just waiting to be written down. I have many songwriter friends who have story after story of songs just spilling out of them and it makes me envious of that feeling. I do have one maybe two that came out, say, in a day. But even those were painful and agonizing at times. Like finishing a thesis that’s due the next day. Gosh! That sounds awful. I just mean, I want every line to count and be the best line it can be and as honest and original as possible. I think that’s where the good stuff lives. And so, if it takes me a bit longer to get there, so be it. Because the end result, a song I am proud of and can’t wait to sing, is SO sweet and rewarding, in all of the ways.

Photo credit: Taylor Prinsen

LISTEN: The Barefoot Movement, “Back Behind the Wheel”

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Artist: The Barefoot Movement
Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee
Song: “Back Behind the Wheel”
Album: Pressing Onward
Release Date: September 17, 2021
Label: Bonfire Music Group

In Their Words: “‘Back Behind the Wheel’ is basically a dialogue with myself where I’m expressing my fears and then bolstering myself up. This is a theme in a lot of my songs, and especially on this album. I am by nature a pretty hopeful person; even when I allow myself to feel the full weight of whatever I’m despairing over, somehow I just can’t let that part of me be the ultimate winner. So it’s that idea of letting yourself feel what you need to feel, but not allowing that to be the end of the journey. Because unless you just give up, the only way to move is forward. I wrote the song about my experiences in the music industry, but I think it’s a universal concept. The chorus says, ‘When it comes to this, I don’t know what it means to quit.’ The listener can allow the ‘this’ in the line to represent whatever matters to them!” — Noah Wall, The Barefoot Movement

Photo credit: Workshop Media

WATCH: The Kody Norris Show, “Farmin’ Man”

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Artist: The Kody Norris Show
Hometown: Mountain City, Tennessee
Song: “Farmin’ Man”
Album: All Suited Up
Release Date: September 10, 2021 (Single)
Label: Rebel Records

In Their Words: “‘Farmin’ Man” is a true-life account of the American farmer from my perspective. I grew up in a tobacco farming family in the mountains of eastern Tennessee, so I guess I had some firsthand experience of farm life and know all to well the ups and downs that come along with it. I feel that with this video we were able to capture on point the day-to-day life of the Farmin’ Man: the hard work, the struggles and uncertainty they face every day. We had such a great time filming this and it brought back so many memories of my childhood. I hope when fans see this they will take a minute to pay homage to one of America’s greatest heroes, the Farmin’ Man.'” — Kody Norris

Photo credit: Amy Richmond

The Bristol Sessions Get Another Look on ‘We Shall All Be Reunited’ CD

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For Dr. Ted Olson, Appalachian music has always been much more than a collection of songs. It’s been nothing short of a passion. The Eastern Tennessee State University professor has spent much of his life writing, researching, and documenting the music that has played and recorded throughout the southeastern United States during the 1920s and 1930s. His respected work on Bear Family Records box sets covering sessions in Bristol, Johnson City, and Knoxville, Tennessee, have brought those long-ago recordings to new generations of listeners. For example, the single-disc set Tell It to Me: Revisiting the Johnson City Sessions, 1928-1929 was named Best Compilation Album of 2019 by the Independent Music Awards.

Now, Olson has teamed up again with Bear Family to release We Shall All Be Reunited: Revisiting the Bristol Sessions, 1927-1928, a single CD distillation of these legendary sessions. Commonly called “the big bang of country music,” the recordings in Bristol by the Carter Family, Jimmie Rodgers, and others became unexpected bestsellers, positioning country music as a viable commercial format. Along with reams of new liner notes, the CD delivers not just those familiar names, but also Ernest Stoneman, Blind Alfred Reed, and more, reminding listeners of the diversity that crowded around producer Ralph Peer’s microphone.

BGS: What inspired you to revisit the music from the original Bristol sessions for this album?

Olson: I found that the story of the Bristol sessions had grown significantly, for me. I’ve changed my interpretation of the Bristol sessions, its historical significance, and how one interprets that legacy. This gave me the opportunity to set the record straight about how that story needed to be told. That new narrative is in the liner notes, which are 44 pages. That is the maximum that can fit in a jewel box. I was pretty adamant that this is the story that needed to be told and this is the length it should be.

We have new documents to learn from, new research that was unavailable to us before. New interviews and new artwork. To me, it’s revisionist history in the best sense of the term. When Sony released a single CD of the Bristol sessions in 2003, they focused solely on the 1927 sessions. To my mind, the 1928 sessions are equal to the sessions of the previous year. With this new CD, we celebrate both of those sessions. We have new masters for the songs as well. An engineer in Germany, Marcus Heumann, produced new masters for this release. They’re very exciting and they sound like they were recorded yesterday.

Dr. Ted Olson

What emerges from listening to both the Bristol and Johnson City collections is that they each demand your attention, albeit with different qualities.

The Johnson City sessions were an essential part of the rest of the story. They were echo sessions, just months after the Bristol sessions. They involved many of the same musicians, and yet the Johnson City sessions explored a different side of the Appalachian music that the Bristol sessions didn’t get to. The Bristol sessions accomplished certain things that are valuable and important, but they didn’t explore other facets that Johnson City was able to get more deeply into, because it had a different producer. It also was a different company, with different priorities and fortunes.

Some people prefer the Johnson City sessions to the Bristol sessions. They find the Johnson City recordings wilder, more exciting. Less controlled by the producer. Ralph Peer was a very controlling producer, very interactive in shaping the sounds, whereas Frank Walker of Columbia had the attitude of anything goes in this music. He was more documentarian, in a way. “What do you have? Let’s hear it.” Rather than shaping something into a package, which is what Ralph Peer’s modus operandi was at the Bristol sessions. I love them both. I’m not going to play favorites, but I’m also not going to acquiesce into the idea that Bristol sessions were more important because they were a year earlier.

How did you come to choose one song from each artist for the new Bristol Sessions album?

I knew that I wanted to match the length of the Johnson City CD, which had 26 recordings. I committed to 26 tracks, because that’s as much as we could fit on a CD, but there was also a licensing limitation. I also wanted a new template, where the ’28 Bristol sessions were as important as the ’27 sessions.

There were 28 artists that performed at the Bristol sessions, which meant that I could include one track from everyone except two. I had committed to including performances that in 2020 would be enjoyable by those who aren’t initiated into the sounds of the 1920s musical world. The stylistic approaches back then have changed over the years. We’ve listened to the Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers through the years, so they sound familiar to us. Other artists from those sessions were such talented performers that we can still appreciate their recordings for talent alone.

How did you select the song from the Carter Family? All six of the songs that they recorded in Bristol are amazing.

I came to the conclusion that while “Single Girl, Married Girl” or “Bury Me Under the Weeping Willow” had gotten a lot of attention from these sessions, it’s “The Poor Orphan Child” that, for me, is the one that has captured my ears as the definitive Carter Family debut performance. A.P. is part of it. He’s not on “Single Girl, Married Girl.” He was out fixing their car tires that morning. To my mind, his best singing at the Bristol sessions was on “The Poor Orphan Child.”

Jimmie Rodgers’ recordings in Bristol have always suggested to me a person with a distinctive musical identity that is still seeking a comfort level in front of the mic. His two songs seem a bit tentative, a little nervous. Rhythmically, he’s very loose, which was always part of his persona. I think those recordings show his great charisma. He didn’t invent the singing yodel, but he first demonstrated it on the track that’s on this CD, “Sleep Baby Sleep.” Several months later, he records “Blue Yodel No. 1 (T For Texas),” and that was his breakthrough record.

The Bear Family box set about the Bristol Sessions received two Grammy nominations in 2011. It should have been a high point for you. How did you come to realize that you had much more to do?

It was fascinating for me to watch the press reaction to the Grammy nominations as well as the box set itself. I found that the press reactions were a little bit uncertain of what the Bristol sessions were. It was as though they were all falling lockstep into rapt amazement at the mythic importance of this thing called the Bristol sessions. It was obvious to me that people were changed by a myth, which revolved around two notions. One was that the Bristol sessions were “the big bang of country music.” But what does that mean? It was where Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family made their first records, but there were many other artists there as well.

The other notion was that Bristol is the birthplace of country music, which has been promoted by both Bristol, and the state of Tennessee, but that statement has often left other important sessions to be overlooked. I came to see that critics didn’t know how to unravel the myth. So, there I was at the Grammys, and as a scholar I felt I had only cracked the surface of what these sessions really were. I, too, was under the spell of the myth. And I needed to get past that. It was quite clear to me that there was more to the story. I remember flying home from that event, thinking that this was a life’s work in front of me.

Photo of Dr. Ted Olson by Charlie Warden

What Amythyst Kiah Is Really Singing About in “Black Myself” (Part 2 of 2)

Posted on by Editor

When Amythyst Kiah was a teenager in the suburbs of Chattanooga, Tennessee, she wanted to be “the guitar-playing version of Tori Amos.” Locked away in her room with her headphones pulled over her ears, poring over liner notes and listening intently for every nuance in her favorite records, she found solace in the way Amos told her darkest secrets in her songs and how she turned that vulnerability into something like a superpower. It made her feel less alone, especially as a young, closeted Black girl in a largely white suburb. Tori Amos helped her survive adolescence.

Kiah didn’t grow up to become any version of her hero. Instead, she simply became herself. Her new solo album, Wary + Strange, ingeniously mixes blues and folk with alternative and indie rock, devising a vivid palette to soundtrack her own songs that tell dark secrets. It’s one of the most bracing albums of the year, grappling with matters both personal (her mother’s suicide) and public (the struggles of Black Americans). “Now, when I’m in my mid-thirties,” says Kiah, “it’s amazing to make a vulnerable record and then have people at my shows tell me that my music helped them heal, helped them get through some hard times. To have someone connect with my music is really powerful.”

Editor’s Note: Read the first half of our BGS Artist of the Month interview with Amythyst Kiah here.

BGS: These songs are rooted in your own life and your own experiences, but they do seem like there is something universally relatable in them. Is that something you were thinking about or striving for?

Kiah: Yeah. To have someone connect with my music is really powerful. But that’s been hard to process that idea, because for the longest time I had so much social anxiety and depression and low self-esteem. I didn’t think that much of myself and couldn’t imagine that anybody really cared about me. It’s all stuff related to mental health. Obviously there are people who cared about me. I just couldn’t see it. Now, I’ve come around and maybe fully grasped my value as a person and what I have to offer the world, and that has been very reaffirming. I have a better sense of who I am and why I’m here. And it feels good to make music that helps people get through hard times.

What is it like to revisit the tough times in these songs night after night?

I’ve spent some time thinking about that, and I don’t really know how I’m doing it, to be perfectly honest. A big part of it is that I spent a really long time repressing my emotions and keeping my feelings to myself. So writing a song about how I’m feeling is a sign that I’ve processed it. Not that I’m moving on or I’m done with it, whatever I might be writing about. But I’ve confronted it. I’ve learned from it. And now I can continue with my life and move forward.

A big part of my life has been living in the past and not being fully present in the moment. In order to be present, you have to be able to process stuff that’s happening to you in that moment. Otherwise, you make decisions based on something that happened before. So, a song is a representation of me processing something and understanding what happened to me. Singing that song night after night, it doesn’t feel like I’m necessarily reliving it every time. Because I’ve already processed it. That’s my working theory right now. It might change.

That’s something I think about a lot, because as a listener I can play a song based on the mood I’m in. But as an artist, you’re locked into these songs. You can’t not play them.

I get what you’re saying. The way people listen to music is really fascinating to me. My partner and I, we approach music very differently. My approach has always been to listen to things that reflect my mood. When I was younger, that meant listening to a lot of really sad, depressing songs. Somehow that made me feel good. I’m a very critical listener of music and I like to listen to all the different intricacies. I’m not someone who has a vast library of music, but I’m obsessed with certain sounds and ideas so I will listen to an album and pick apart every detail.

But my partner listens to music to shut her brain off. Her favorite artists are very different from mine. She loves a lot of pop music, like Taylor Swift. To her it’s feel-good music. You break it out and sing along. But she also listens to a lot of classical music, too. She’s got that ability to go back and forth with her listening vibe. That was surprising to me at first, because I used think, “How can people listen to happy music? Don’t they know what’s happening in the world?” I would deliberately avoid happy music because I was personally insulted by it. But thanks to my partner, I can totally see that perspective where you’re listening to music that doesn’t reflect the mood you’re in because you’re trying to snap out of it.

Did that change how you listened to music?

As I’ve gotten older and my mental health has gotten a lot better, I can appreciate listening to something that is just meant to be fun. It doesn’t have to be a super serious moment. I think I learned how to be a lot less pretentious about what I listened to and why I listened to it, and I learned to be a lot less judgmental about other people’s listening habits.

Some lines in these songs sound very defiant of religion — like in “Black Myself,” when you sing, “Your precious God ain’t gonna bless me.” Can you talk about that aspect of your songwriting?

With “Black Myself,” the idea was that each verse would be from the perspective of a specific type of person. So the first verse with that line is from the perspective of an enslaved person. They’re singing about wanting to jump the fence, wanting to be free, wanting to be with the one they love. If an enslaved person had a relationship or a marriage, it was never legally recognized. There was always a chance that they might get sold to different people and they’d never see each other again. Whatever bonds they had could be broken, like they were just cattle. The line about “Your precious God ain’t gonna bless me,” that’s a direct reference to the way that pro-slavery people used Christianity as a way to justify enslaving people.

There was a Bible specifically written for enslaved people — it was even called the Slave Bible — and the people who edited it made sure to only leave in the verses that talk about being obedient. All the verses that talk about autonomy and freedom were removed. The sole purpose was to get enslaved people to be content being slaves, so they wouldn’t revolt. But they were basically saying, “God wants you to be enslaved. He wants you to serve your master. He wants you to be treated like a subhuman.” That is not a God that I would ever want to believe in or ascribe to. That line is that character saying that’s wrong.

I’ve had one or two instances where someone got upset at that line, because they felt like I was being disrespectful to God without really understanding the context in which it’s being said. But I don’t agree with that. There are people all over the world with different belief systems, and at the end of the day, if what you believe in makes you a better person and makes you have respect for humanity, that’s wonderful. If you believe in humanity, that’s what important to me. But why would God be OK with telling someone they have no freedom? But any time you make art, there’s always going to be people who see one thing but not everything else surrounding it. And they base an opinion on that. Not everybody’s going to understand the whole picture.

I read about your performances in Europe, where the crowd would sing “Black Myself” back to you. It definitely seems to reinforce that idea of having a conversation with the song.

I was at the Cambridge Folk Festival with Rhiannon [Giddens], Yola, and Kaïa Kater. We put together a set where we’re singing our own songs and then singing harmonies for everybody else’s. There had to be 500 or 600 English white people in this tent, and it was the first time I’d really noticed other people singing the song or singing that line, “I’m black myself.” I remember thinking, “What planet are we on?” One of my biggest reservations about that song was that people would hear it and think, “Oh, that’s just for black people.” But to me, when someone’s telling a story, it’s meant for everyone to hear. Systemic racism is something that affects everybody in different ways, so we all need to be part of the conversation if we’re going to make things better and look out for each other.

Did you get any other negative responses to the song?

My big concern was that there would be some backlash from white people who weren’t really listening to the song or thinking about it. I was afraid they’d try to make a point like, “If this was called ‘White Myself,’ you’d be canceled.” And there have actually been some comments like that, which completely disregards the fact that the song is about Blacks. It’s about overcoming adversity despite being Black. So if someone can’t hear the words of the song and actually understand what’s happen, that says more about them than it does about me or the song. So I have no apologies for it.

But there are white people who understand what the song is about and they’re singing in solidarity. They know that it’s about human experience. And just because you didn’t personally experience some of this stuff doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to sing along with it. I had a similar conversation the other day with somebody about the song “Coal Miner’s Daughter” by Loretta Lynn. I’m not a coal miner’s daughter. I didn’t grow up in the coal mines. But I love that song and I love to sing that song. It’s a great song about someone else’s experiences. Empathy is such an important quality in that regard and we need allyship in order for things to get better.

Editor’s Note: Read the first half of our BGS Artist of the Month interview with Amythyst Kiah here.

Photo credit: Sandlin Gaither

WATCH: George Jackson Feat. Wes Corbett, “Mississippi Sawyer”

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Artist: George Jackson featuring Wes Corbett
Hometown: Christchurch, New Zealand
Song: “Mississippi Sawyer”
Album: Hair & Hide
Release Date: Single, August 25; Album, October 29
Label: George Jackson Records

In Their Words: “I live just up the road from the house where the legendary musician John Hartford once lived, on the edge of the Cumberland River in Madison, Tennessee, and for this live video we had the amazing opportunity to record the take in the crow’s nest on top of Hartford’s old riverside home. The current owners were very generous to let us film in that space and they even keep John’s old chair up there, a nod to when he used to sit in that same room overlooking the river and play banjo himself. It was magical to get to play in that room!

“Wes Corbett and I played a version of ‘Mississippi Sawyer’ together while we were warming up together one afternoon by jamming on some fiddle tunes in preparation for arranging some music to record on my banjo and fiddle duets album, Hair & Hide. It was immediately so much fun and had such a great energy to it that I decided then and there that I wanted to record it with Wes for the album. This tune lends itself really well as a way to bring together elements of old-time fiddling that I bring to the table and of virtuosic bluegrass banjo playing from Wes, as well as being a great vehicle to muddle the lines of both genres as we play it together.

“I ended up taking a deep dive on some old recorded versions of ‘Mississippi Sawyer’ from various old-time fiddlers after that initial jam, and came across two really unique versions that I loved from a couple of legendary West Virginia old-time fiddlers, Ernie Carpenter and Edden Hammons. I liked elements of both of their versions so I decided to take inspiration from Ernie’s A part and Edden’s B part to create this really fun and unique take on this great old chestnut fiddle tune that’s endlessly fun to play. Wes is one of our generation’s great picking banjo players and it was so fun to get to work on this tune with him and hear how he improvises around the melody so fluidly. I hope you all enjoy this!” — George Jackson

Photo credit: Natia Cinco

LISTEN: Seth Mulder & Midnight Run, “Carolina Line”

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Artist: Seth Mulder & Midnight Run
Hometown: Gatlinburg, Tennessee
Song: “Carolina Line”
Release Date: August 24, 2021
Label: Mountain Fever Records

In Their Words: “We’re so excited for everyone to hear our new single, ‘Carolina Line.’ It features our guitar player Ben Watlington singing lead in a Osborne Brothers-inspired arrangement that we had fun coming up with. Ben really connected with the song vocally and personally and always finds a way to make each song he sings his own. ‘Carolina Line’ was brought to us by our good friend Jerry Salley, and we feel that it represents our various musical influences. We hope everyone enjoys it as much as we enjoyed recording it.” — Seth Mulder

Photo credit: Miranda Goff