Tag: the national

BGS 5+5: Josienne Clarke

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Artist: Josienne Clarke
Hometown: Scotland
Latest album: In All Weather

Which artist has influenced you the most … and how?

This is a difficult question to answer because different artists have influenced me at various stages in my life, but to pinpoint one would be hard. I guess the first artist to influence me as a songwriter, or to [influence me beginning] to consider being a songwriter, would be Don McLean. My mother had his American Pie album on tape in the car when I was really young and I remember songs like “Winterwood,” “Empty Chairs,” and “Crossroads” grabbing my attention and drawing me into the lyrics, all heavily melancholic tunes! I would say I can hear the influence those songs have had on my approach to songwriting.

What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?

In 2015 I got to perform in The National Theatre’s Production of Our Country’s Good (by Timberlake Wertenbaker) singing both songs I’d written and some that were composed and arranged specifically for me by Cerys Matthews. We did 43 shows of it on the Olivier Stage at The National on London’s Southbank. It was one of the most exhilarating experiences of my career. Having no professional acting experience, being on stage acting alongside extremely well-trained professional actors was daunting and a steep learning curve. I shan’t forget that in a hurry.

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

I have a reputation for a love of brevity in song and that is certainly true on In All Weather. No song is over 3 minutes 30 seconds — the shortest one being just 59 seconds in length — and the entire album clocks in at a succinct 36 minutes long!

This is true to my career motto, I came up with it several years ago in relation to not overplaying one’s slot at a festival or gig…

“Get in there, smash it, fuck off!”

I applied this logic to the writing and setting of songs on the new album and one thing that can’t be said is that it’s outstayed its welcome!

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

The changing of seasons is always a reference in my work and none more so than this latest album. This can be seen almost everywhere but woodland areas are the most noticeable place to feel the changing colour of the leaves.

Also I grew up by the sea and I was living on the Isle of Bute while I wrote the latest album, so seascapes and beaches are a natural force much referenced in my work. I find the expanse of sea inspiring; you feel simultaneously closer to other places because you’re on the edge of the land and far away because you are separated by a vast natural moat, making them a great location for reflection.

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

Almost never. I’m an extremely autobiographical writer. I’d say that’s one of the particular things about my work.

I only really write behind a character in commissioned works. For example, writing for theatre. You’re given a specific character’s narrative to create songs for. I find this challenging and it’s great fun for that reason but I actually feel like an artist reveals more about themselves when they do that, in an unconscious way.

I like to be as honest as possible in my writing. I’m usually working through something, some problem or concern from real life in song and the aim is to describe my emotional state as accurately as I can. I write emotional narrative, so this is not a series of events or actions in song form. It focuses instead on “what it feels like” and I find I can most effectively do that from a truly first-person position.

Hiss Golden Messenger: Hope, Joy, and ‘Terms of Surrender’

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To make his eighth proper album as Hiss Golden Messenger, M.C. Taylor left his adopted hometown of Durham, North Carolina, and went… everywhere? He booked studio time in Nashville, tracked songs in New Orleans, and headed north to upstate New York, where he recorded at the studio owned by The National’s Aaron Dessner. There might have been even more cities in that list, but logistics and time cut his traveling sessions short.

“I wanted to make a record anywhere other than Durham,” he says. “I felt like I needed a change, and it felt like the songs were asking for a change. This is a wandering record. It just felt like the songs were wandering around a little bit. So I felt like maybe I should, too.”

Travel is a major theme of his music, both as inspiration and consequence. Working as a musician means touring; providing for his family means leaving them. Out on the road, however, he finds new reasons to make music. Taylor peppers Hiss Golden Messenger songs with place names, references to home and elsewhere. For Terms of Surrender he decided he needed to make that part of the creative process, which meant recording wherever he landed.

Taylor’s wanderlust extends to the music, too, which draws from a range of roots traditions: psychedelic folk and rural funk, southern soul and classic rock, American primitive guitar and ‘60s frat rock, J.J. Cale and the Staple Singers, Neil Young and composer Harry Partch. The result is a sober but hardly somber album that surveys America at the end of the 2010s, during a moment that is — to say the very least — tumultuous.

BGS: Place always feels so important to your music, so it made me wonder if getting away from a place was as important as getting to a place. Could you have made this record back home in Durham?

Taylor: Yeah, I could have made it in Durham. Definitely. But it would have a very different character. I try not to think of the records as the final form of the songs. I think of them as snapshots of the songs, snapshots in time — a documentation of the tunes as they exist among a certain group of people on a certain day in a certain city. So this particular version of Terms of Surrender is a document of that particular time in my life.

Given that these are wandering songs, and given that you’ve talked about the album coming out of a very hard year, how did that inform the music?

The trials and tribulations I was experiencing are obviously threaded through the songs. Some of that is maybe obvious lyrically, and some of it is a little more coded. It’s something that is obvious only to me. I was dealing with those issues in the composition of the songs, but the making of the record was pretty joyous. Actually, the writing was, too, because it’s always a cathartic experience.

So I can’t really say that I went into the writing of the songs in a tortured place and came out with all the answers. The songs were just a way for me to speak about that stuff, to process it in a way that made me feel like I was evolving emotionally. Not that I was solving my problems, but I was at least beginning to understand what they were. We don’t find an answer in an instant, but we can identify the issue and over time find ways to address it.

To what degree can you talk about the events that informed this album?

It’s a tricky question, because it was something that was part of the fabric of my life for the last year or two. It’s something that comes up in the one-sheet because every record has to have a story, but then when it comes time to talk about it, it’s tough. You never know how much you want to reveal, you know what I mean? I’m a pretty open person but there’s this curtain between all of the stuff that I make public and all the stuff that I keep private.

So I’ll just say that I had some personal problems with someone that I worked very closely with. It felt like over the years they had become an emotionally abusive person. I couldn’t even put a name to the things I was feeling because of that relationship. I thought I had lost my way a little bit. Over time I came to understand what was going on and was able to extricate myself from that relationship. That was important. And then to have all that against the backdrop of the way our country feels right now… it was a lot. I’m a sensitive guy, I guess.

That definitely seems like something that informs these songs, but it’s not a political record. It’s more about living at a certain time when these things are encroaching on your mental health.

And I want to be clear: I’m one of the fortunate ones. I’m a white man in this country. I’m living on Easy Street compared to people of color, queer people, women. But that was a question that came up on the last record, Hallelujah Anyhow. That wasn’t really a political record either, unless you realize that everything is political. The personal is political; the emotional is political. But that record and the new one were made a different times, so the relationship to hope is different.

That’s something I picked up on: this sense of optimism as well as something like joy. That’s not necessarily a word that I associate with this time in history, but it comes through on a lot of these songs.

On Hallelujah Anyhow joy and hope seemed like these bright, sharp things, a nice glinting in the sunlight. They could cut through just about anything. But they work differently on this record, I think, because you realize that we have to work at them every day. If we don’t, they’ll become dull and unwieldy.

And hope and joy are things that I have to work at. Some of these songs are reminders to myself to work at these things that bring me hope and joy. You have to keep that bright thing sharp. It’s like marriage: If you stay in a marriage long enough, you realize that it takes a lot of hard work to keep it going. I’m pretty sure that that’s the way forward for me if I want to survive.

Is it difficult to get into that mindset when you’re writing, to remind yourself of these larger goals?

There are days when I wake up and think, I don’t want to make this music anymore. I don’t want to make any music anymore. This isn’t something that’s making me happy anymore. There’s too much competition, too much saber-rattling, which is all so superfluous to what we all actually do. I guess I’m interested in people who have been making music for a long time, because I want to be in this for the long haul. How does their language change over time? How do they adapt to survive in the world?

You mentioned that you wrote these songs as reminders to yourself. Does that change how you relate to them on the road, when you have to perform them night after night?

That’s why I try to approach records as snapshots. I know the songs are going to change every night, because of the emotional content in them. That changes the phrasing of how I sing certain things. Part of that comes from my emotional understanding of the songs, you know? The other part of that is that my favorite songs are the one I write without totally understanding. Usually I’m not very satisfied with them when I get them down on paper, but eventually I realize that if I live with that dissatisfaction, it’ll becomes something different.

It’s like there’s a hand that is guiding this stuff. It’s not God-like; it’s more an unconscious feeling that it’s okay to feel that way. It’s OK to feel like, “OK, this is as good as I can do right now. I don’t have the time or the emotional capacity right now to make this any better.” And then you just leave it. It’s like planting a seed. It grows even though the words on the page don’t change.

Is there a particular song in your catalog that changed or grown like that?

I would say most of the songs that are in live rotation remain in the set list because there is that element of discovery from day to day or week to week. “Blue Country Mystic” [from 2012’s Poor Moon] is a good one. And there’s one on the new record called “Down at the Uptown,” which is about this dive bar where we all used to hang out in the Mission District in San Francisco. This was many years ago, late ‘90s. It was a formative place for many of us.

I knew that I wanted to write about that time in my life, and I did the best I could. But it felt clunky. I thought, I’m just going to leave these words here and hope that if something better does come along, it’ll be better than what’s on the page now. But the process of singing it in rehearsals has made me realize that no, this is really good. Not a great song, but for me it’s good. It does the thing that I needed it to do.

That one did stand out because it seemed like a very specific reference to a very specific place. I thought it might be in North Carolina, but I was on the wrong side of the country.

I don’t even know if the Uptown is still there. When my friends and I moved to San Francisco in the late ‘90s, we found this bar on the corner of 17th and Capp in the Mission District. It was pretty scuzzy, you know. But the Uptown was this little hidden waystation where all of us learned to drink. There were a lot of promises made at that place, some of which we kept and some of which we didn’t. It was a clubhouse. And the jukebox was very educational. Lots of stuff on there was way above my pay grade. That’s where I heard Patti Smith’s “Horses” for the first time. I’d be lying if I said I loved it immediately. But all of my favorite music is not something that’s immediate.

I was an adult, but I was still a child in a lot of ways. I was out of the punk rock phase of my life — at least musically, not spiritually. I wanted more, but I didn’t know how to do it. It was a time when I was discovering all of the music that has continued to inform my life. So Patti Smith, but also the Silver Jews, Johnny Paycheck, Merle Haggard. All of that stuff was coming into my life at that time, and it was overwhelming in the most beautiful way.

That discovery of oneself is thrilling. It’s exhilarating to find a formative record one day and the very next day it’s another record that brings a similar emotional resonance. It happens less now because I’ve heard more. But every time I have that feeling, it’s wonderful.

That gets at something I’ve been thinking about regarding Hiss Golden Messenger. You’ve got eight albums in ten years, which is very prolific. How do you manage to keep things fresh for yourself?

Just trying to remember why I started doing this in the first place is usually the best way. I try to make sure what I’m doing feels vulnerable and genuine. Whether or not it feels fresh to other people? I don’t know if that’s something that I necessarily feel I should concern myself with. I hope people continue to find things in my music that moves them, because I’m still discovering new things in the music.

Photo credit: Graham Tolbert

MIXTAPE: Sons of Bill’s Songs by Other Brothers (and Sisters)

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“What is it like to be in a band with your brothers?” is always the introductory question we’re asked in interviews. Sadly, I never really have any salacious stories of drama or rivalry. I just love, trust, and respect my brothers, and we share a deep history. There’s just no one I’d rather be in a band with. — James Wilson

The Louvin Brothers – “The Great Atomic Power”

The Louvin brothers made such terrifying and beautiful music. They are the first band that comes to mind when I think of the famous Tom Waits quote – “beautiful melodies telling me terrible things.” Their gospel music can seem so superficially brimstone Baptist but that’s all just a front for brothers who really knew the depths. You can hear it in their voices. Ira was a wild man – his wife shot him four times. Their gospel music still gives me chills and strangely seems to increase in depth and staying power with the passing decades.

The Beach Boys – “Warmth of the Sun”

This is band that definitively kept us from laying claim to “The Wilson Brothers.” We grew up with their music from my mom’s record collection. I know the term genius is thrown about too often, but Brian Wilson deserves it. He did all of the writing, all of the elaborate vocal and instrumental arrangements, and yet completely abandoned the glory of performing live at the height of their careers. Such a pop music purist.

The Replacements – “Left of the Dial”

We don’t often think of the Replacements as a brother band, since Paul Westerberg is considered the main artistic force of the group, but I think that Bobby and Tommy Stinson are a big part of what made this band so legendarily great. They gave the band this shambolic-fearless-Midwestern-blue collar front which Paul wore like a mask, giving him the courage to be the face of the Replacements. It always seemed that the Replacements “thing” — the drinking, the self-defeating “fuck you” attitude — was all some sort of elaborate defense mechanism for a guy who was probably much too existentially sensitive to handle life without it. It’s this strange combination of ennui and bone-head rock and roll that made me fall in love with this band.

Lamb of God – “Walk With Me in Hell”

As Virginians we’ve got to give it up for Richmond’s Lamb of God. The Adler brothers manage to make virtuosic angry music that is completely free of pretension. We’re taking a band field trip to see them again this summer with Slayer on their farewell tour.

The Jesus and Mary Chain – “April Skies”

I just love this band. You could say they were the brothers that made me want to start a band but it’s more accurate to say they’re the band that made me want to have brothers.

The Stanley Brothers – “Are You Afraid to Die”

My dad loved the Stanley Brothers and we grew up with their songs long before I heard their recordings when bluegrass music came back into fashion in the early 2000s. Individually the Stanley Brothers voices are so raw and honest but when they sing together something altogether different happens—their voices take on this angelic purity. We learned how to sing harmony from a lot of these songs.

The National – “Fake Empire”

Matt Beringer is often the face and spokesman for this group, but I think it’s the two sets of brothers that make them one of my generation’s greatest rock bands, instead of a summer art project. The depth of compositions and chemistry between the brothers is so compelling. You’ve got to experience it live.

The Everly Brothers – “Bye Bye Love”

We grew up with the songs from the Everly Brothers and it’s still some of the best pop music ever recorded. I find myself listening to the Everly Brothers when I want to listen to the Louvin Brothers, but don’t want to hear so much about Satan. It’s a rare occurrence but it does happen.

AC/DC – “Thunderstruck”

Angus got most of the air time but Malcolm held it all together. Everything you could ever possibly want from two guitars.

Dawes – “That Western Skyline”

When you see this band live you can really detect a special chemistry between Taylor and Griffin Goldsmith. It’s such a cool thing to see a band whose primary trust and chemistry is between the drums and vocals. It anchors the song and creates such a cool space and freedom.

Radiohead – “The National Anthem”

Jonny and Colin greenwood are such masters of their respective instruments. So much of what breaks up bands with brothers is ego, but all of their parts feel so perfectly and completely egoless. They are both of one mind in simply serving the music.

Haim – “Falling”

This band gives me faith in modern pop music. It’s so important to be reminded in 2018 that pop music doesn’t have to be terrible.

Sons of Bill’s new album, Oh God Ma’am, will be released on June 29. Photo credit: Anna Webber

BGS Class of 2017: Second-Half Preview

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Lee Ann Womack: TBD

This Is the Kit: Moonshine Freeze

Will Hoge: Anchors

Tyler Childers: Purgatory

Iron & Wine: Beast Epic

Suzanne Santo: Ruby Red

Joan Osborne: Songs of Bob Dylan

The Orphan Brigade: Heart of the Cave

Eliot Bronson: James

David Rawlings: Poor David’s Almanack

k.d. lang: Ingenue (reissue)

— Kelly McCartney

* * *

David Barbe: 10th of Seas

Iron & Wine: Beast Epic

Loretta Lynn: Wouldn’t It Be Great

Jerry Douglas Band: What If

Chris Stapleton: From A Room Vol. 2

Shelby Lynne and Allison Moorer: Not Dark Yet

Kacy & Clayton: The Siren’s Song

Nicole Watkins: Goodnight Rhonda Lee

Randy Newman: Dark Matter

Offa Rex: The Queen of Hearts

Lee Ann Womack: TBD

Gillian Welch & Dave Rawlings: The Harrow & the Harvest (reissue on vinyl!!!!!!!!!)

Lal & Mike Waterson: Bright Phoebus (reissue)

Carious: Even a Tree Can Shed Tears: Japanese Folk & Rock  (reissue)

Fairport Convention: Come All Ye: The First Ten Years (1968-1978) (reissue)

— Stephen Deusner

* * *

Tristen: Sneaker Waves 

Arcade Fire: Everything Now

Shelby Lynne and Allison Moorer: Not Dark Yet

Cordovas: That Sante Fe Channel

Iron & Wine: Beast Epic

The War on Drugs: A Deeper Understanding

The National: Sleep Well Beast

The Lone Bellow: Walk into a Storm

— Desiré Moses

* * *

Cory Chisel: Tell Me True

The War on Drugs: A Deeper Understanding

The National: Sleep Well Beast

Alex Williams: Better Than Myself

Kip Moore: Slowheart

Will Hoge: Anchors

Tyler Childers: Purgatory

— Marissa Moss

* * *

Shakey Graves: And the Horse He Road in On

Waxahatchee: Out in the Storm

Fat Possum Collection: Worried Blues 

Grizzly Bear: Painted Ruins 

Loretta Lynn: Wouldn’t It Be Great

Iron & Wine: Beast Epic 

Son Little: New Magic

The Lone Bellow: Walk Into a Storm

Benjamin Clementine: I Tell a Fly

— Amanda Wicks

* * *

Lee Ann Womack: TBD

Lee Ann Womack: TBD

Lee Ann Womack: TBD

Lee Ann Womack: TBD

Lee Ann Womack: TBD

— Justin Hiltner

Reacting Melodically: A Conversation with Lisa Hannigan

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Lisa Hannigan got her start on the stage with Damien Rice, providing vocals for 2002’s massively successful O and growing more confident in her voice and her words ever since. Hannigan’s 2008 debut, Sea Sew, was met with extensive acclaim and a slew of award nominations in her home country of Ireland, and its 2011 follow-up, Passenger, made for more compelling evidence that Hannigan’s haunting vocals find their best fit at center stage.

It’s been five years since Hannigan released any new music and, while she struggled with the writing process, she’s quick to interject that her latest work, the 11-song collection At Swim, isn’t that depressing, by the way. She’s right — one of the things that makes At Swim such a strong effort is its capacity to soar from stirring highs to paralyzing apathy and back again.

I read in an interview from a couple of years ago that you had a favorite song to play live — “Little Bird” — but that it was originally kind of a struggle for you to play in front of people. What makes any particular song difficult to play in the live setting, and how does it evolve for you over time?

I think some songs feel a little more raw, really. In the most basic sense, they feel a little more exposing or truthful — just bare. That song, when I first wrote it, I felt a bit exposed singing it. But then I kind of began to enjoy that feeling, in a way. [Laughs] I sort of enjoyed feeling the rawness of it. The heart of the song still conjures up the moment that it was written in. But it doesn’t feel quite as … it doesn’t feel quite as sunburnt. [Laughs]

What is it about that feeling that appeals to you?

When I say that I enjoy that feeling, I think that that song, in particular, for me, was a way into a slightly different approach to songwriting than I had done. I really felt the truthfulness to it. It was actually really freeing and really enjoyable, in a way, and I’ve tried to bring that into the songs on the new record — tried to express things in a bit more of a bare way. I don’t know if anyone would hear them in the way that I feel them when I’m singing. I would say there are a few songs on my new record — at least, I’ve only been playing a few recently — that give me that same feeling and that I just love to sing for people. “Prayer for the Dying” is one; “We the Drowned” is another. I tried to bring that sense of rawness to all the songs on the new record, to an extent.

These are really personal songs, but you worked with a new producer. Tell me about working with Aaron Dessner on this record.

Well, I had been having a bit of a hard time trying to write songs for this record. I finally got off tour from the second record, and I just kind of felt empty or something. I don’t know why, but I didn’t have the feeling that I usually have when I want to write songs. I was feeling a bit down about the whole situation. [Songwriting] is what I do, so when I don’t do it, I feel a bit confused about my purpose in the world. But then I got this email, completely out of the blue, from Aaron, saying just, "My name’s Aaron. I’m in a band called the National." [Laughs] Which I already knew. But it was just this really sweet email saying, "If you want to write together, or you need someone to produce your next record, or whatever — just if you want to get in touch, please do." So we started this lovely correspondence and became musical pen pals. He would send me all these beautiful pieces of music, and I would try to react to them melodically or lyrically or in any way. It was really fun, and it kind of brought back the fun of songwriting that I had so much squashed down with all of my trying so hard and being down about the whole she-bang. It was really a breath of fresh air in the whole slightly stale situation that I had found myself in.

One of the first songs that he sent that I found easy to write to was the song “Aura” on the record. He sent it and it was very fleshed out — this beautiful, rolling piano chord structure. It had this really beautiful feeling of oars and water. It had this calling sensation to it. I remember vividly: I was just folding the washing at home, and I always have my phone recording whatever humming I would be doing. For “Aura,” I just immediately started singing the melody as it ends up, really. It just felt so natural, and the words and everything felt very natural for that piece of music. Every once in a while with me and Aaron, we would have that situation — where it would just be very immediate and sudden, the connection. So that ends up being on the record and the heart of it being very similar to what we hit on initially. I had a sort of kinetic energy, to keep it whole. We kept it pretty much how it was.

It’s so interesting to hear you talk about this because, so often in the past, you’ve worked with other musicians as the outside collaborator coming in and contributing to their records.

In any situation, you always want to serve the song, be it my song or somebody else’s. You’re always trying to find a way of recording a song or approaching a song which kind of leaves it in its wholest form. I don’t think you should mess with things too much. You should kind of let them be what they want to be.

What was really interesting to me about Aaron and the way he wrote is that I would always want to put kind of a lot of lyrical, melodic things [into songs], kind of intertwining. His approach for this record, he says, was that he wanted it to be kind of austere in a way that it would be very, very rich and textured, but melodically somewhat austere. I thought that was a really interesting approach, and I learned a huge amount from him just in the way that he heard things like that. I think you always learn from people when you collaborate, I think, but I learned a huge amount from Aaron. I’m not sure how much he learned from me. [Laughs] Probably very little!

[Laughs] I’m sure that’s not true. Can you tell me about “We the Drowned”? That song jumped out at me from the record.

That song was one of the early ones that I wrote, when I was feeling so lost. Everything I was doing to myself was not in my best interest. I just couldn’t bring myself to set myself right, you know? Even in terms of reading or everything. I just found myself falling into the rabbit hole of not nourishing my brain as much as I wanted to, or should have. I felt really stuck and sad, you know? I felt really down. I started writing a song, the melody, and the words … they were sort of all very much about the idea of self-sabotage and blindly making decisions and doing things without ever seeming to take the wheel — even when you know the wheel is right there. I feel like that is part of being a human being, where you’re approaching life, and you know so much of what we do, and we shy away from people who make us feel uncomfortable and we sort of make decisions that don’t seem to come from a higher part of our brain at all. I was trying to express that sort of blind marching toward the abyss.

Now that you look back at the song and the record, is there a particular aspect or moment you feel you did take the wheel — that you feel most proud of?

I love all of the songs on the record. I think I’m going to sound terrible, because it was such a difficult process for me that, in a way, I’ve never experienced before. I’m really just proud that there’s a record at the end that I love. There were so many times in the process that I just thought, "I don’t think I’m going to make another record. This has been quite painful." I really felt desperately down. The record isn’t that depressing, by the way! It’s not as depressing as I’m making it sound! But the process was very difficult. Every once in a billion, I would write and I would say, "I love that song!" But then, for months, I would not enjoy anything that I was doing. So I really feel proud that, at the end of all of that difficulty, I feel like I’ve learned to keep going. There is a light at the end of the tunnel.

 

For more on the creative process, read our interview with Lori McKenna.

Photo credit: Rich Gilligan

3×3: Oh, Jeremiah on Stealing Blazers, Getting Tackled, and Beer Me Five

Posted on by Amy Reitnouer

Artist: Jeremiah Stricklin (of Oh, Jeremiah)
Hometown:  Hattiesburg, MS
Latest Album: The Other End of Passing Time
Rejected Band Names: Voldemort Jr, Diet Michael Stipe, or Powder

If you had to live the life of a character in a song, which song would you choose?
Paul Simon's "Graceland." I would want to be Paul's child from his first marriage. And while we're driving across Memphis, he tells me about this girl in NYC who calls herself a human trampoline. We'd laugh, and then make the greatest album of all time.

Where would you most like to live or visit that you haven't yet? 
Australia or the Grand Budapest Hotel.

What was the last thing that made you really mad? 
Someone stole my kelly green sports blazer. I've had it since the eighth grade. I bought it at a thrift store. People just assumed I was good at golf, just by wearing it. Now I have to actually learn how to play.

 

Quality time with my nephew.

A photo posted by Oh, Jeremiah (@oh_jeremiah) on

What's the best concert you've ever attended? 
The National live at the Ryman in Nashville, Tennessee. Matt Berninger came into the crowd and tackled the guy next to me during "Mr. November." I was jealous it wasn't me.

Who is your favorite Clinton: Hillary, Bill, or George?
Is George the one from House of Cards?

What are you reading right now? 
The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen

Whiskey, water, or wine? 
Whiskey. It makes me look richer.

North or South? 
I was born in the Free State of Jones (Laurel, Mississippi). By law, I have to say the South.

Steve Carell or Ricky Gervais? 
Steve Carell. The American version of The Office is my all-time favorite TV show and defined my high school years. I also can't begin to guess how many date nights Erin and I spent watching The Office reruns. Beer me five. 

Kurt Vile with J Mascis, ‘Box of Rain’

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It wasn't always cool to like the Grateful Dead. There was a period there, in the '90s especially, where Deadheads were often regarded as deadbeats, clueless hippies who were clinging to some sort of departed ghost — all while the rest of the world grunged out or glammed up, basically turning anything associated with "jam bands" into a pejorative. Hemp? Patchwork pants? Thanks, but no thanks — or, shall we say, all apologies.

But the Grateful Dead always had way more to offer than just a culture, and their music — from those spiraling, dreamy licks smeared across the War on Drugs or the noodle jams picked up by Rayland Baxter — has been far more influential sonically than just the dancing bear-shaped imprint they left on aged Deadheads' bumper stickers. A new collection, Day of the Dead, curated by Aaron and Bryce Dessner — both members of the New Yorker-reading, Brooklyn-residing polar opposite of a jam band, the National — gives the group its proper due with a 59-song tribute featuring the likes of Courtney Barnett, Real Estate, and Fucked Up. In other words, people who make both perfect and imperfect sense — because beneath the flannel and the distortion pedals, everyone's a not-so-secret Deadhead.

One of the best songs on the tribute — and one that really showcases that not-so-fine line between the lo-fi, slow RPM weed-rock of today like Mac Demarco and the psychedelic days of the Dead — is Kurt Vile's version of "Box of Rain," accompanied by J Mascis of Dinosaur Jr. The duo keeps those signature Telecaster riffs intact, along with vocals that touch softly on Phil Lesh's original mournful coo, and warps it into something that easily could have rolled off of Vile's recent catalogue, with its gaze half at its shoes, half toward the concrete skyline: Proving in one slick track that it's not just cool again to like the Grateful Dead, it's actually pretty essential.

3×3: The Accidentals on Musical Obsessions, Non-Designer Jeans, and a Shared Love of Amy Poehler

Posted on by Amy Reitnouer

Artist: The Accidentals
Hometown: Traverse City, MI
Latest Album: Bittersweet
Rejected Band Names: The Savage Kittens
Personal Nicknames:
Sav: SavvyKat 
Katie: Katie Arson is my heavy metal name. Someday we will have a psychedelic side project called the Acid Lentils (instead of Accidentals).
Michael: Big Michael, Scout Leader, Boy

What was the first record you ever bought with your own money? 
Sav: Echoes, Silence, Patience, and Grace by the Foo Fighters and Illinois by Sufjan Stevens. I bought them together.
Katie: The soundtrack to the film Juno. I listened to it obsessively in middle school. 
Michael: Seventh grade — Rocks by Aerosmith and Fly By Night by Rush

How many unread emails or texts currently fill your inbox?
Sav: I'm really OCD, so … none.
Katie: None! 
Michael: Zero, OCD like Sav.

If your life were a movie, which songs would be on the soundtrack?
Sav: 1. "Rhapsody in Blue" by George Gershwin … the Fantasia animation pretty much sums up my life. 2. "Mr. Blue Sky" by ELO. Who can resist such a happy song? 3. "Bicycle" by Queen: "I want to ride my bicycle. I want to ride my bike. I want to ride my bicycle. I want to ride it where I like." Sums it up.
Katie: Everything on the Juno soundtrack. (I am obsessed.)
Michael: Anything by Sufjan Stevens and the National, with a pinch of Animal Collective.

What brand of jeans do you wear?
Sav: Brands. Ugh. Whatever fits and doesn't have holes in it.
Katie: Flying Monkey (dig the name).
Michael: Arizona

What's your go-to karaoke tune?
Sav: When I was six years old, I performed "Paved Paradise" for my school talent show to a karaoke track. That's all I got.
Katie: Any song from any Disney movie ever.
Michael: "Don’t Stop Me Now" by Queen or "Just Like Heaven" by the Cure

If you were a liquor, what would you be?
Sav: I’m not a drinker, so I have absolutely no idea. I would guess the strong bitter kind that you have to have an acquired taste for. 😉
Katie: I don't drink, so to confidently answer, I took a quiz on quizrocket.com. RESULT: Rum — "You are sweet and friendly and sociable, but you have a laid back vibe. You are best enjoyed in a relaxed state of mind."
Michael: Fireball Whiskey = red hair. 

Poehler or Schumer?
Sav: Amy Poehler slays it in Parks and Recreation.  I'm pretty sure she's my spirit animal.
Katie: Tina Fey is my favorite, so naturally, Amy Poehler. 
Michael: Poehler all the way.

Chocolate or vanilla?
Sav: I was actually born without a sense of smell or taste, so it's all the same to me.
Katie: Chocolate
Michael: Vanilla, for sure. Chocolate is everywhere, and a good vanilla flavor is hard to come by these days.

Blues or bluegrass?
Sav: Blues-grass.
Katie: Greensky Bluegrass
Michael: Billy Strings — Punch Brothers — Bluegrass

Between the Lines: ‘I Should Live in Salt’

Posted on by Editor

“Don’t make me read your mind. If you’ve got something to say, say it.”

I don’t answer him right away. It’s hard for me to put my thoughts into words and I want to do my best to get it right. He bites his lip when it takes me too much time.

“I’m thinking,” I manage. “You should know me better than that.”

He sighs. “I should know you better than that.” He looks angry and sad. “You’re not that much like me, you know? People always say we’re so much alike, but it isn’t true.”

I nod but say nothing. He’s right — we are very different, but that’s not what I wanted to say. That’s his point, not mine.

“Can you turn the TV down?” I ask. He blinks a few times before standing up and walking over to our shabby old TV. Everything we own is old and shabby. The news is on and I can’t stand it. It’s always something heartbreaking these days. You tell yourself it’s only noise, but there’s too much crying in the sound. He pushes the power button harder than necessary and the screen goes black. I can still see the outline of the faces that were there only a moment ago, delivering our daily dose of depression through plastic smiles. Or maybe I can’t. I don’t know.

“Look, maybe we should try something else? Maybe you should try writing down what you want to say?” He’s calmer now. He’s been doing his exercises. Deep breathing, counting to 10, all that stuff. He grabs some paper and some pens, walks across the living room and puts them in front of me. I look at him with doubtful eyes.

“Just try,” he says.

“I don’t think I can.”

“Why not?”

I hesitate.

“Why not?”

“There’s no room to write it all.”

“No room?” He’s mad again. “No room? What are you talking about? When did you start to slide outta touch? Why do you have to be so …“ He takes a deep breath and clenches his jaw. After a few seconds of silence, he starts again. “I should leave it alone, but you're not right. You know you’re not right. There’s plenty of room. If you run out, I’ll get you more paper. If you can’t write it there, then write it on the damn wall, for all I care!”

He slumps down onto the couch and puts his head in his hands. It’s quiet for a few minutes. I like quiet. It’s easiest for me to think when there are no other sounds.

I don’t understand how people can use those ocean sounds to help themselves fall asleep. I could never do that. I need it to be absolutely silent. I guess we have different enemies. Mine is noise. Apparently, everyone else’s is silence. I think they should all learn to appreciate the void. “Please.” His head is still in his hands. “Please, just write something.”

I pick up a pen and push it to the page. It takes me a long time to think about something so much and the words aren’t coming out right. I start and stop several times. I can see him biting his lip again. I finish writing and put the pen back down. He stands behind me and reads the words out loud. “I should live in salt for leaving you behind.” He sounds confused. He looks from the paper to me and back down. “You should live in salt? What’s that supposed to mean?”

I’m quiet again. It doesn’t sound right when he reads the words out loud. I put my head down on the table and close my eyes.

“For God’s sake. Salt? Leaving me behind? What that hell does that mean?”

I say nothing.

“You get these ideas in your head. You tell yourself these things and then you just sit there in silence and I’m supposed to figure it out? Why does it have to be so difficult with you?”

I say nothing.

The table is cool and feels good against my skin.

“You should know me better than that.”

Story by Joshua Hyslop based on "I Should Live in Salt" by the National. Photo credit: / Foter / CC BY.