Tag: Troubadour

Steve Poltz Loves a Tangent

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Steve Poltz has built a career by following each song wherever it wants to go. Sometimes that means a meticulously fingerpicked melody. Sometimes it means a story that veers off into comedy, confession, or absurdity before circling back to the heart of the matter. That tangential nature – equal parts songwriter, raconteur, and road-tested troubadour – has become his signature, especially onstage, where no two of his shows are ever the same.

Poltz’s new album, JoyRide (released January 30, 2026), reflects that same restless curiosity. Trim, deliberate, and capped at 10 songs, it distills decades of touring, collaboration, and lived experience into a tightly sequenced record designed to be heard in one sitting. From satirical observations about modern life to deeply personal reflections shaped by years on the road, JoyRide captures Poltz at a moment of clarity – still chasing the perfect song, still trusting instinct over plan, and still finding meaning in the long way around.

Long before JoyRide, Poltz earned his reputation the slow way – by logging miles, swapping verses with fellow songwriters, and learning how a room breathes. Founder of the San Diego-based rock band the Rugburns and co-writer of Jewel’s breakthrough “You Were Meant for Me,” he has never been defined by that early success, instead carving out a singular path marked by humor, humility, and an almost reckless openness.

In a conversation with BGS, we spoke with Poltz about the making of JoyRide, the longtime relationships that have sustained him, and the zany, unpredictable ride that has been his career. Whether sharing a bill with old friends or holding a crowd rapt with nothing more than a guitar and an improvised aside, Poltz approaches music less as a performance than as a conversation – one where the destination matters less than the unexpected connections made along the way.

Let’s start with early memories. Was there a moment when music really clicked for you?

Steve Poltz: I remember when I was in second or third grade, I stuttered, had asthma, eczema, and I didn’t hang out with many people. I started playing guitar when I was six. So I brought the guitar to school for show and tell. And I sang the song “Sloop John B” in class. And other kids brought snakes, brought their moms who were nurses or doctors or firemen, and their dads and stuff. I sang a song on guitar. I went out and sat alone. I remember I opened my lunch and I looked up and there were six girls around me. I thought, “This is all I have to do!” That was it. That was the plan.

I had a friend who was a DJ at San Diego State University [radio station] KCR, and she moved in with these roommates. They had brought this record by that had just come out by this woman named Rickie Lee Jones. It was her eponymous debut LP. And, oh my God, I listened to that record nonstop. There was a song called “On Saturday Afternoons in 1963,” which is still one of my favorite songs. It was in the movie Stripes with Bill Murray.

Man, two years ago I played Byron Bay Bluesfest in Australia and Rickie Lee Jones was on after me. Just the way the world works and the universe works, I knew her percussionist who plays the vibes, Mike Dillon. He sees me, and he’s sitting with Rickie Lee Jones, who’s like my hero. She’s one of my favorite lyricists ever. I’m a Dylanologist, and still, Rickie Lee Jones – those first two records especially – her poetry, the way she puts the songs together, I put it at the top of my whole pyramid.

[At Bluesfest] I told her I’d do a cover of “On Saturday Afternoons in 1963” and I segue into it from John Hartford’s “Presbyterian Guitar.” She loved John Hartford, too. She comes out during the song in front of 5,000 people, sings the second verse, and I just started crying. It was one of those full circle moments. These are the people that are my heroes.

You’ve become very deliberate about keeping your albums, like JoyRide, short and sweet. Why?

We’re just in such a quick world, where people don’t have the attention span. I’ve come to this conclusion that 10 songs is the perfect amount of songs to have on a record. Leave all these other ones on the cutting room floor. Put them out later on B-side compilations or something. Keep it under 33 minutes. It fits on vinyl perfectly. It doesn’t lose any of the resolution. If people are into you, it’s not too hard to give 32 minutes of your time. My hope is they go, “Let’s hear it again.” That’s my fantasy. One day I’ll get it right.

You’re known as a road warrior. What still thrills you about touring?

I feel like I’m kind of like the Grateful Dead in that I’m better experienced live than on record. Live, there’s magic. I’m still looking to make the perfect record. Maybe when I’m 80. I can’t believe Bob Weir just died, I mean he’s so young, 78. I’m like, “God, that’s like 12 years older than I am, I better get my shit together.”

I love it when things don’t work on the road. When something goes wrong, when animals attack. It took me a lot of years to get there, but sometimes things are really good when they don’t work. It messes with the audience. It’s like mental jiu jitsu.

Perhaps not surprisingly, you often reference comedy as an influence. How important is humor to your music?

I loved Andy Kaufman. I loved Richard Pryor. The early Steve Martin albums, Cheech and Chong – I memorized all that stuff. When I heard Allan Sherman sing “Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah!” I remember thinking, “Why can’t every song be like this?” Same thing with listening to the Dr. Demento [radio] show. Dr. Demento was huge. He played the Rugburns [on his show]. “Weird Al” Yankovic used to come to our shows and loved [our 1995 record] Dick’s Automotive. Because of that song, he wrote “Albuquerque.”

What are some of your earliest musical memories? You mentioned Rickie Lee Jones earlier. What are some other early prominent memories of being moved or touched by a song? Where were your first performances?

My uncle took me to see Julian Bream at the Hollywood Bowl. Classical guitar. That was it. I wanted to learn classical guitar. You know, with my left foot up on a stool, with a nylon string guitar, the way you hold it all in the proper classical way. I learned to read music. Fernando Sor’s etudes. My first gigs were in Mexican restaurants in San Diego. Four hours of classical guitar. Free meals. One night I got the courage to sing “Time in a Bottle.” The waitress said, “I didn’t know you could sing.” That night ended with me running out a window and leaving my left shoe behind. I never went back to that restaurant.

And then there was another one in El Cajon and it was called El Amigo. The El Amigo Ballroom. Then I got a job at Round Table Pizza in La Mesa. I got fired because I sang on the mic and I sang “The Rodeo Song.” One night, I got really drunk with the manager and I didn’t know the owner was in the audience. That was where I kind of learned mic control, because the manager was like, “Man, you’ve got a good voice for speaking. I want you to be the guy who says, ‘McDonald, party of four, you’ve got a large pepperoni pizza.’”

One night the manager got me really drunk. He was a younger guy. I started singing “The Rodeo Song,” which was this Canadian song that went, “Well, it’s 40 below and I don’t give a fuck, got a heater in my truck and I’m off to the rodeo.” And the chorus goes, “You piss me off, you fucking jerk, you get on my nerves.” It’s like a really juvenile song that was played on the radio in the late ‘70s. They would have all these bleeps where the cuss words were. And I sang it on the mic. Then the next morning I got a call from the manager. He’s like, “You need to come in and pick up your check.” I said, “We’re getting paid early.” And he goes, “No, you’re fired. We need pizza makers, not entertainers.”

Let’s talk about JoyRide. Tell us about the opening song, “If It Bleeds, It Leads.”

It started with a guitar riff. A major seventh chord. Then the melody. Then the words came. And the next morning when I woke up, I was kind of laughing. I always saved ideas, it’s like a junkyard of melodies, words, everything in my iPhone on my notes page, and then also in my voice memos. And I went, “Oh, this fits.” [Quotes:]

I can never watch the news with you because you yell back
You scream like they can hear you in the television set
What am I to do when all you’re doing is yelling at the top of your lungs?
You’re even scaring all the pets.
You’re scaring all, you’re scaring all, you’re scaring all the pets.

And it just worked out perfectly. You just kind of shave off syllables and fit it into this sort of Sudoku puzzle or something.

And next thing you know, it’s like you’re fishing and you have this song on the line. Like, where do I want it to go next? You can say, “I remember one time when you went and grabbed your pistol.” And so that harkens back to Elvis Presley, who I was lucky enough to meet when I was nine years old. He put me on his shoulders. I’m like, “I gotta name check Elvis in this.”

The songs comprising JoyRide seem especially quirky, even by your standards. Can you tell us about some of the ones that you have the most affection for?

“Petrichor,” which is track two, I really love because it’s really fast fingerpicking. I wrote that with Gary Nicholson, who wrote a bunch with John Prine and toured with Guy Clark. He’s just a wonderful songwriter. I went over to his house and I was like, “I have this idea for this song called ‘Petrichor.” I showed him the guitar riff, we wrote that song, and it’s a banger. I love playing that live. There’s one called “At It Again” that I wrote with Jim Lauderdale that I love playing live, and I love playing “Love a Little Bigger.”

There’s a song called “Hair Lift,” where I learned a tuning from Richard Thompson. It’s just my E string goes down to C and my A string goes down to G, and everything else is the same. He uses that tuning in “1952 Vincent Black Lightning,” but he capos it up. So I took that tuning and wrote this song called “Hair Lift.” I love singing that song because it’s got lines in it that are just so goofy, they still make me laugh. Stuff that I find funny, not everybody else does, which makes me laugh even harder.

My favorite one to do live is called “The Son of God,” and that’s because I get to play myself and Jesus. I’m having a conversation with Jesus, and that whole song came about because when I was a kid – it’s one of my fondest memories – [there] was this door-to-door salesman [that] came to our house. He was selling Funk & Wagnalls encyclopedias. Dude, it was like a new iPhone. All the answers to everything were in this set of encyclopedias, and I begged my parents to get them. I begged them and they got the Funk & Wagnalls encyclopedias for me.

My mom said, “You gotta read every one of them cover to cover.” And I did. Every day I would just read the encyclopedia, because I found all this knowledge so fascinating about everything. Words I’d never heard of and countries I’d never heard of. Niger! I mean, come on. And I’d want to read everything about it. So I was thinking when I made up this song, “The Son of God,” like, “Hey, whatever happened to all those Funk & Wagnalls encyclopedias?” I had this fantasy that Jesus called me up and he was trying to get rid of them, because you have to have a storage unit in heaven.

What came together perfectly on this record?

It’s hard to get me into the studio, so just that it happened is like a dream. I’m always on the road. But I recorded at this guy’s house in Nashville. The vibe was good. That’s everything to me. I wrote songs with Jim Lauderdale. One with Vince Herman. It all came together naturally.

You spent ten years in Nashville before returning to San Diego. What did that city give you?

From the moment I got there, it was where I was meant to be. Everywhere you go, you’re making contacts. Coffeehouses are where everything happens. People are polite. You don’t know who anyone is. Your Uber driver might get you a record deal. I remember I was at this coffeehouse and I looked over and there was Lisa Loeb, who I hadn’t seen in years because I toured and opened for her back in the ‘90s. I hadn’t seen her since that tour and she just happened to be in town and I was in this coffeehouse and she was like, “Steve?” “Lisa?” And she said, “You know, I always come here to write and hang out.” Then, the same coffeehouse, there is another amazing person just a week later. And then at a different coffeehouse, Jim Lauderdale. Then me and Jim became really close – and must have like 30 songs [written together] – and it just went on and on and on. Like wherever I went, I was just making contacts.

Circling back to where we started our conversation, some people don’t want humor or irony or banter in their music, staples and bedrocks of JoyRide and perhaps your entire career. How do you continue to approach and navigate those variables?

Luckily, there are hundreds and thousands of artists for everything. Some people want to slam dance or listen to really serious bluegrass. Some want to cry. My audience wants stories. They want to laugh and to cry. They want to hear some guitar playing. In today’s world, part of the whole thing is you got to be consistent, you’ve got to get out there, and you got to keep doing it, because nobody’s going to just tap you on the shoulder and say, “Hey, kid, I’m going to make you a star.” It just really doesn’t happen.

I like small rooms. Low ceilings. Shoulder to shoulder. Quiet listening rooms. Tangents. That’s the ultimate job.

Photo Credit: Jay Blakesburg

Willi Carlisle Is a Lyric Poet In the Most Classical Sense

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

The first time I saw Willi Carlisle was in Buffalo, New York, in the tiny basement of an old protestant church that Ani DiFranco bought. There couldn’t have been more than thirty or so people there – a queer couple or two holding hands, a mom and a dad plus their kid, a cluster of 20-year-olds too hip for their own good. I see twenty or so shows a year – neighborhood guitar pulls, little club gigs, shows in big theaters, and every so often an arena. Willi was world class, one of the best I’ve seen. He told stories in between the songs, tracing an anti-Vietnam song well into the 17th century, or talking about Mexican ballads and the power of the concertina, or about how a hometown story is both archetypal and plain, universal and contained to a very specific time and place.

As the Buffalo concert suggested, Carlisle is at his best when limning complex networks of historical figures, news, what is called “traditional music,” contemporary poetics, and the natural world. He is a lyric poet, in the most classical sense.

This fact could be seen especially in a track from his new album Critterland, “Two-Headed Lamb.” It’s an adaptation of a Laura Gilpin poem, which Carlisle translates and extends. I’ve always thought that the poem was a bit too glib, a bit too self-assured of its own moral ending.

Carlisle talks about the whole cycle of growth, how it is not a singular freak birth in a generic field, but how the freakish quality of a two-headed calf and the weirdness of that birth functions within a cycle: The farmer who finds it, persimmons growing out of season, a coyote picking at the corpse of a ewe, even “robins singing in an old growth tree.” As a creator, the song becomes an act of interpretation – a poem becomes a song, a song not quite a cover, a critique of a poem that might not work, but the working of the poem depends on an audience.

When asked about the poem, Carlisle responds:

As I explored Gilpin’s poem with friends and strangers, it’s been no surprise that “Two-Headed Calf” seems well-known in both rural and trans communities and their significant cross-section. And why not? It’s a poem about a creature too beautiful for this world, [whose] magisterial dimorphism and tragic death conjures real-world magic. Someone born feeling as if they have no gender, two genders, the wrong gender, might feel this magic themselves. So would someone who’s pulled an ailing calf from the womb of their beloved milk cow with a rope or their bare hands.

That’s a generous reading, a reading done in community – one that expands what an audience could mean, one that is as cyclical and as wide as open as could be. It’s generous to Gilpin, as well.

This whole act of semi-translation also explains the concept of Critterland, which Carlisle describes in our wide ranging conversation as a place where “…we have to dismantle the house, make something different. I think what we inherit (our bodies, songs, tools, houses) makes us the living proof of the suffering of our forebears. We’ve got their noses, their colonial holdings, their drinking problems.”

In a culture, we take and hold onto what is useful for us and the results of that taking we try to build more carefully.

In the list of animals that Willi names in the title track – “Yeah, the sparrow on the wing taught mе to find you/ And the opossum knows his own mind more than I do” – there is hope in being able to craft houses and buildings like the scuttling of everyday creatures. If the possum and the sparrow can (and may I add, the racoon, the crow, the squirrel, every city or country creature) then we can, too. Which is why the best of Carlisle’s songs are ones which mention small spaces – a mother singing “In the Sweet By and By” in the kitchen, or the devastating song “The Arrangements,” with its complex, sometimes compassionate, sometimes ruthless processing of a father who drank too much and loved too little, or in “The Great Depression,” a verse that limns Carlisle’s ancestors:

From the needle-prickin’ mothers who were never taught to read
To the barefoot hungry soldiers that enlisted at 16
Oh in my dumb debasement, I still find great relief
That on the lam and on the dole they counted themselves free…

Those are local examples, small, and there is some argument within them. Like some great folk singers, Carlisle’s sense of local spaces, his skill at deep readings of landscape, is a primary example of his excellence. I think of him as an Arkansas singer, but he has to earn a living – part of that possum life. Carlisle travels constantly, touring half the year or more to make enough money to be somewhere he feels home.

He explains it thusly: “One of the hard facts about touring so hard is that I haven’t really lived in Arkansas for more than a few months a year in six or seven years now. Hell, currently I’m living in southwest Missouri, just over the border. I don’t feel excluded from my life back home, usually, when I’m on tour. “

It’s another network, a cycle of creation, and intimacy. In a song called “Higher Lonesome,” is there something monastic there? Setting up lonely feelings to a higher power? Is he quoting the 1950s Texas technicolor film? Is it a song about drinking?

It’s all of those things and none of those things. He mentions his community and where they are in the world:

…By the time the ride is over, I’m sure I’ll ask to ride again
See the snowfall in Wyoming, strung out on Johno’s coke
Keep a mailbox in Nebraska, so I know the Lord knows
She can write a letter once a year and say that we’re still close
I can put my cents on Benjamin hear the songs he wrote…

The privacy of this song marks the depth and complexity of another, the last work on the record “The Money Grows On Trees.” It’s a 10-minute recitation, a story told in intense, Appalachian Gothic detail, about corruption and a young drug dealer gone wrong.

If any texts could be considered lonely, even in the midst of Carlisle’s careful noting of connections, these are. For example, when in another song, he sings to a “Jaybird” – another of those scuttering creatures, that eats off what is left. He says to the jaybird, that “he’s doing just fine, his head is a wreck and his chest is on fire.” This line, with neither denial nor irony, is a kind of Beckettian notice about continuing on despite the ongoing, struggling moments.

The whole album speaks of a (dis)regulation of feelings, slipping into the natural ebbs and flows of the titular Critterland so the work can continue. In the album, and in his live shows, a cobbling together happens as a kind of hope, but a hard-won kind.

Or, to give Carlisle the last word:

I don’t believe in despair – it would make me hate things, and I cannot bear to do that. So, alas, that means the only other option is the hard one: hope. Here in the first world we have unimaginable resources and power, so much more than we need. We could, realistically, reduce climate change, enshrine human dignity, end global poverty, and celebrate untold freedoms in our lifetimes. Why wouldn’t we? I’m naive, surely. Maybe I’m an idiot, and maybe I’m just obsessed with getting “what’s mine.” Music is a business, after all.

The work is the thing – to pay the mortgage, to tell stories that need to be told, to adapt stories that have been forgotten, to cry or laugh, to mourn, to change people’s minds politically, to seduce or to be seduced.

Carlisle’s practice, in an aching two-step, does this with tradition. There’s a reason why he’s a square dance caller, and there’s a reason why, for him, the dance goes on.

Photo Credit: Jackie Clarkson

Photos: AmericanaFest Pre-Grammy Salute to Lucinda Williams

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Few artists are more associated with Americana music than Lucinda Williams, even as her incredible career is hard to categorize. Her Grammy wins range from Best Country Song (“Passionate Kisses”) to Best Contemporary Folk Album  (Car Wheels on a Gravel Road) to Best Female Rock Vocal Performance (“Get Right With God”). Just a few days following her 70th birthday, the Americana Music Association hosted an impressive all-star tribute concert at the fabled Troubadour club in Los Angeles on Saturday, February 4. The intimate performances underscored Williams’ versatility as a songwriter, with each of the performers putting their own personal stamp on her songs without ever losing the straightforward and often sensual lyricism that she’s known for.

Enjoy photos from the AMERICANAFEST Pre-Grammy Salute to Lucinda Williams:

All Photos: Erika Goldring, Courtesy of the Americana Music Association.

WATCH: Ramblin’ Ricky Tate, “Drifting”

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Ramblin’ Ricky Tate
Hometown: Birmingham, Alabama
Song: “Drifting”
Release Date: July 30, 2021

In Their Words: “Everyone has lost a love or felt homesick, I’d bet a lot of those people have reached for a whiskey glass a time or two as well. ‘Drifting’ is a tune I wrote about just that. This song is about having hope for better days to come when you feel down. Recorded and filmed field recording style on location in a 140-year-old building, this song has a natural reverb unlike anything you will hear in a studio. I put my heart into this song and I love how the video turned out and I’m honored to share it with y’all.” — Ramblin’ Ricky Tate

Photo credit: Jordan Hudecz

WATCH: Richie Furay, “Go and Say Goodbye”

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Richie Furay
Hometown: Yellow Spring, Ohio
Song: “Go and Say Goodbye”
Album + DVD: 50th Anniversary Return to the Troubadour
Release Date: April 23, 2021
Label: DSDK Productions, distributed by MRI Entertainment

In Their Words: “‘Go and Say Goodbye’ is one of my all-time favorite Stephen Stills songs. I’ve recorded it in every band configuration I’ve been in — Buffalo Springfield, Poco, and the Richie Furay Band. Stephen shared the song with me before there ever was a Buffalo Springfield as we sat in his apartment in Los Angeles on Fountain Avenue, learning all the songs he had written for what would become the first Buffalo Springfield album. Over the years I’ve given it a few arrangement changes, musically, while keeping the original feel and dynamic of the song.” — Richie Furay

Pictured: Richie Furay and his daughter Jesse Furay Lynch. Photo Credit: Howard Zryb

Charley Crockett Takes “5 More Miles” to DittyTV in Memphis

Posted on by Editor

Texas troubadour, modern-day drifter, and musical journeyman Charley Crockett brought his old-school sound to the DittyTV stage in Memphis. Now preparing for West Coast dates — after an international tour — Crockett just released his sixth studio album, a collection of story songs called The Valley.

The new project follows Crockett’s unique history of rambling and collecting some Forrest Gump-esque experiences, writing them into songs all along the way. Performing “5 More Miles” from the new release, here is Charley Crockett on DittyTV.

Photo credit: Lyza Renee

MIXTAPE: Sarah Jarosz

Posted on by Editor

Anyone who attended Sarah Jarosz‘s previous LA performance knows that they were privy to something pretty special last June.  When the 21-year-old mando and banjo playing prodigy took to the Hotel Cafe stage a year ago, the packed room was nothing short of entranced.  This Thursday, Jarosz makes a return appearance in our fair city, playing the Troubadour on August 9 (tickets available here).  Before she arrived, Sarah shared the top five songs she’s been playing for this month’s MIXTAPE….

Artist:  The Talking Heads
Track:  ‘And She Was’
Album:  Little Creatures

‘This is one of the best songs to drive around listening to. I am currently obsessed with this band!’

 

Artist:  Joni Mitchell
Track:  ‘Free Man In Paris’
Album:  Court and Spark

‘I love the imagery in this song… Such great commentary on the music business and the longing to get away from it all sometimes.’

 

Artist:  Paul Simon
Track:  ‘Slip Slidin’ Away’
Album:  Greatest Hits, Etc

‘Simply one of the best songs ever. I never get tired of listening to it. Paul Simon has such a way of making the words and music fit together perfectly.’

 

Artist:  John Lennon (also the Donny Hathaway version)
Track:  ‘Jealous Guy’
Album:  Imagine

‘A great song by Lennon… An incredibly funky, ridiculously awesome cover by Donny Hathaway. ‘

 

Artist:  Gillian Welch 
Track:  ‘Hard Times’
Album:  The Harrow and the Harvest

‘She’s a genius and one of my all time greatest heroes. This song is timeless.’