As someone who gets pigeonholed as a blues guitarist, I’ve publicly reckoned with what I feel is an othering of blues as no longer really art, but instead what might be seen as a wax museum-ification of a formerly revolutionary genre. Too many established musicians and fans alike don’t want blues to evolve, but to instead be preserved in amber. Yet, its sibling folk music has not only never entirely fallen out of fashion, it has evolved and even prospered specifically because its brightest figures have refused to let tradition and academic codification stagnate the genre. Whether you’re talking about Bob Dylan going electric or Bon Iver collaborating with hip-hop superstars, folk musicians understand that cross pollination and new ideas are vital to growth. To my ears, Yasmin Williams is a proud continuation of that tradition of evolving folk.
To listen to the music of Yasmin Williams is to listen to the thrill of musical mutation in action, to hear and feel playing that is in constant communication, not only with itself, but with myriad styles and personalities. Given how adventurous and playful Williams’ music is, it’s not too surprising that her gateway to music was in fact a video game, specifically Guitar Hero 2.
In a review of Williams’ breakout 2021 album Urban Driftwood for taste-making music site Pitchfork, writer Sam Sodomsky connected Williams’ percussive, tap-heavy fingerpicking style to the mechanics of that game, as well as folk guitar legend John Fahey. Rhythmic intensity and love for the thrill of performance are the unifying elements of Williams’ otherwise impossible-to-pin-down style; this isn’t folk as a study or stuffy examination of tradition, it’s folk as expression at its most pure, music for entertainment, communication, and friendly competition all at once.
Williams’ latest batch of singles from her just-released album, Acadia, impeccably illustrates this eclectic and freewheeling approach to folk. “Hummingbird” is a dazzling collaboration with banjo player Allison de Groot and fiddle phenom Tatiana Hargreaves that recalls Richard Thompson’s lush, melodic picking but marries it to the breakneck intensity of traditional bluegrass.
On the other end of the folk spectrum, “Virga” finds Williams teaming up with Darlingside for a gorgeous and stately slice of indie folk that would fit right in with the likes of Sufjan Stevens and Bibio. Somewhere in the middle is “Dawning,” a bluesy folk number that features Williams dueting on guitar with Aoife O’Donovan of Crooked Still fame, who also provides enchanting, wordless vocals that give the song an almost ambient quality, as if Sigur Rós moved to Appalachia.
Even on songs that are more traditional, Williams playfully inserts pop and experimental elements. Take “Sunshowers,” which opens Urban Driftwood with beautiful fingerpicking that in turn gives way to a simple yet addictive bass-like hook that wouldn’t be out of place on a Post Malone single. Or, consider the album’s title track, which features djembe playing by Amadou Kouaye and adds an almost IDM (Intelligent Dance Music) quality to the song. Or, “Nova to Ba,” a collaboration with Argentine musician Dobrotto that effortlessly transitions from cinematic grandeur to relaxing ambient textures.
As a musician, I can’t help but be entranced by the marvelous skill and tone on display in Williams’ music. But more importantly, as a listener, I’m struck by the immediacy and tunefulness of the songs. Like Williams’ early inspiration, Guitar Hero 2, these songs are hard to put down once you start, and the difficulty never gets in the way of the fun.
“Juvenescence,” one of Williams’ most popular songs, is a handy representation of her skills – the impeccable picking, the daredevil runs that would impress even Eddie van Halen, the self-dueting in the finale. But it’s also immensely listenable and never a chore. Equally impressive is “Swift Breeze,” where Williams utilizes her guitar as an organic drum machine, getting a booming kick drum sound out of the body and rim shot-like hits out of other components, all while arpeggiating like she just got off a tour as the lead guitarist for a Midwest emo outfit.
It might seem odd to bring up emo in a feature on a folk musician, but there is a considerable amount of drama and theatricality in Williams’ music, even though most of it is instrumental. “Adrift,” in particular, has just as many emotional pivots and anthemic hooks as a Panic! At The Disco song. Here, the guitar comes in first, then the strings, but the swaggering hooks and melancholic valleys are there. It’s not hard to reimagine “Restless Heart,” from Williams’ debut album, Unwind, as an emo anthem either; it has a killer riff to kick things off followed by a pick slide and some heavy ringing chords. Even the title sounds like something the Get Up Kids would have used. If Dashboard Confessional was ever looking for their own Tim Reynolds to do an acoustic tour with, all I’m saying is Williams’ name should be high up on the list.
Every genre should be so fortunate as to have an artist like Williams, a performer who challenges herself without losing sight of what makes music a pleasure to listen to. A musician who commits to pushing the boundaries of the genre they call home, rather than maintaining a status quo. No genre should be inflexible and we need more musicians like Williams – period – who push themselves musically just as much as they do technically.
Oscar Wilde said, “If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing well. If it is worth having, it is worth waiting for. If it is worth attaining, it is worth fighting for. If it is worth experiencing, it is worth putting aside time for.”
Composer and guitarist Yasmin Williams can certainly relate to the sentiments in Wilde’s reflection. Williams – who went from New York University in 2017 to releasing her first LP in 2018 to performing across the world – says when she picked up the acoustic guitar, it was about “trying to become the best guitarist [she] could be.”
Though a straightforward aspiration, and one that Williams has pursued fervently between the release of her debut album and now of her third record, Acadia, Williams has lived through ups, downs, and unknowns of the music industry, which have shifted her goals along the way. Particularly between 2020 and 2024, when Williams wrote the songs that would become Acadia, the inherent nature of public visibility and the process of establishing herself in the music landscape led Williams to discern what exactly is worth doing, having, waiting for, attaining, fighting for, and experiencing as a musician. It’s this amalgamation of inner realizations and external escapades that make Acadia the compelling journey it is.
Listening to each piece is like exploring a miniature world. Songs like album opener “Cliffwalk” unlock the door to an event memorable to Williams and all the emotions that came with it – performing at Newport Folk Festival and writing most of the song the night before, with the rest unfolding as an improvisation on stage. Pieces like “Virga” and “Dream Lake” reflect the duality of positive and negative challenges that come with nurturing a career as a musician. The two tracks are fittingly written with this direct connection to the other in mind.
Acadia as a whole is brimming with collaboration, a potpourri of artists, instruments, and culture, songs like “Harvest,” “Hummingbird,” and “Dawning” speak directly to what can grow from embracing new friendships, communities, and the unique creative resonance that can be found therein.
Acadia may encompass a fixed window of time in her life, but much like the many meanings of its title and Williams’ own ethos for the album – a place of peace, a place where creativity can blossom – the project endures as an oasis, a reminder from the past thriving in the present that scatters new seeds for music in the future, as Williams continues to walk down a trail of her own design.
Speaking with BGS by phone before a tour that will take her across the U.S. and to the UK later this year, Williams talked about the value of empowerment and patience, the expectations of the music industry, insights that came from producing her own music, and more.
What was the evolution of your vision for Acadia like and how did things develop as you met new artists and had so many new experiences from 2020 to 2024?
Yasmin Williams: I wasn’t really envisioning the album being as expansive as it is. Back in 2020 and even before that, I was still focused on just trying to become the best guitarist I can be, trying to become more confident in my playing and more confident in my abilities.
When I played Newport Folk Festival [in 2021], it gave me the confidence and the encouragement that I needed to realize that I can actually do this for a living – be a professional musician. It definitely lit a spark and after that, I realized I should take meeting people more seriously. Not necessarily networking, but just trying to make friends with musicians that I’m meeting at these festivals since I keep seeing the same people. That’s kind of how the collaborations came about: Just me being not afraid to tell people, “Hey, I really like your music. I’d love to do something with you,” or people telling me that and me not being afraid to follow up with them because, I guess I dealt with some sort of– I don’t want to say, “inferiority complex,” but like, I feel like the musicians that are on the record have been doing their thing for long time. I’d be afraid to reach out to people and ask them to collaborate with me.
After 2021, I got over that fear, which helped immensely. That led to the collaborations and that led to me thinking, “My next record can be what I want it to be but, I can also invite people to do things that I cannot do.” Like, I don’t play saxophone, I don’t play drums. I’m not super comfortable singing on my music yet and inviting all of these people to do those things really created the atmosphere and the universe that I wanted for Acadia. I wanted it to be something that my other two records aren’t necessarily, which is a more expansive kind of universe.
How did you approach conveying themes, motifs, or emotions when writing music to include others versus writing for yourself?
Every song was different. As far as [asking myself], “How does this person fit into the theme or the emotion that I’m trying to present?” What I did was, I told the collaborator, “Here’s what emotion or mood I’m trying to evoke here. Does this make sense to you? Do you think you can do this? Let’s figure out a way to do it.” I gave them slightly free reign, but help if they needed help figuring something out.
Where does your dedication to informing folks about the social and historical aspects of music, and the prospect of personal responsibility around that, fit within your music career?
It took me years to figure out if I even wanted to be involved in making people aware of the historical aspects of the music that I was playing. I also had to learn a lot about music that I was playing and about folk music in general, because I didn’t really grow up listening to folk music at all or bluegrass or things like that. So I’ve learned a lot in the last five, six, seven years.
Things changed when I finished [my album] Urban Driftwood. Just remembering, going to protests up here in Washington, D.C. when George Floyd’s murder happened and seeing all of the political unrest and social unrest around here where I live, and obviously seeing it on the news everywhere else definitely made me change my mind. As far as being open about, for example, speaking about being a Black female guitarist, which is not something I really wanted to do in my late teens, early 20s. I definitely came around to it and now see it as a necessity.
To me, social media is a great tool to try to help educate folks, because there’s so much online at our fingertips that’s just factually incorrect. Anything I can do to try to help mitigate that, I think is good. I think it’s important for me now to be involved in the full scene in a way that’s positive and educating people – to just get involved in things or be involved in ways that I’m interested in. I’ve always been a history nerd anyway so to me, it makes sense now to do that, whereas before, I guess I just wasn’t mature enough to understand why I would have to be a musician and educate folks and have a social media presence. But now I don’t have a problem at all.
What would you describe as the most challenging aspect of making Acadia and how did you wade through that experience?
Figuring out how to finish some of the songs. I realized I have to let time pass and let it come to me. “Sisters,” for example, I came up with that melody like, two, three years ago now? And it was stuck being a two-, three-minute song for years. I thought, “This doesn’t feel done.” But I couldn’t come up with anything. Then, the night before my recording session, I came up with four extra minutes of material. For me, I can’t force the issue of finishing a song. It just kind of has to come to me. And whenever it comes, it comes. And these songs, some of them took a really long time to get finished. So that was probably the most difficult part of it.
What was the most interesting new musical technique or process you explored while making Acadia and why was it so meaningful?
Producing was the most interesting part of it; hearing what people heard in my music was by far the most interesting aspect of recording. Just hearing how people process it, then hearing what they do in response. Pretty much everyone grasped what I was trying to accomplish in the song that they’re featured on.
For example, “Hummingbird” with Allison de Groot and Tatiana Hargreaves. They both come from a more, I guess, old-time tradition, which is very different than [the kind of song] “Hummingbird” is. It took a little while for us to kind of get the song in the studio, because the song is very difficult, first of all, to play. But they absolutely nailed it. Hearing how they heard the timing and the syncopation and the melody, and the melodic aspects of the song, and how they thought, “Okay, I can fit in here and drop out here and harmonize here,” it was really interesting to see how people’s brains worked and how it’s so different from how mine works but it somehow fits together pretty seamlessly.
How did you discern your feelings when a collaborator might encourage you to try something new, versus deciding to stay true to yourself and your voice as a composer and musician?
I feel like I was more so bringing the collaborators to a different place that maybe they weren’t used to and pretty much everybody who’s on the record was willing to do that and go to somewhere new.
Once the recording process and collaboration process got started, it was really easy for me to just tell people, “Okay, I want this, this, and this.” And most of the time, people are just like, “Yeah!” With Darlingside and the song “Virga,” I made it clear that I actually wanted them to do lyrics and then we worked on that. They were open to it for the most part so for me it was easy. But maybe for some of the collaborators it was about getting them out of their usual music making mode and into a more open-minded mode.
Being ready to make an album like this, it took living life and having different experiences.
This collection of albums is not simply a “best of” 2021. That would be selling every single collection included herein far too short. These roots and roots-adjacent releases each stood as a testament to the music makers and communities that spawned them. Not simply in the face of a globe-halting, existentially challenging pandemic, but in the face of an industry, government, and culture that would just as soon have all of us pretend the last two years — and beyond — simply didn’t happen.
These artists and creators refused to let the pandemic define their artistic output through it, while simultaneously acknowledging, processing, and healing from the pandemic through this music. Not a single album below is a “pandemic record,” yet every single one is a resounding, joyful balm because the intention in each is not simply a reaction to a global disaster or an attempt to commodify it or its by-products. Not a single one is an attempt to “return to normalcy.” They’re each challenging us as listeners, in both overt and subtle ways, to walk into our collective new reality together, wide-eyed and open-armed, and with intention.
Daddy’s Country Gold, Melissa Carper
It was a sly move on Melissa Carper’s part to give her album, Daddy’s Country Gold, a title that works on so many levels, nodding to the passing down of sounds, to her road nickname and to her ability to casually loosen postwar country perceptions of masculinity and femininity. In her songs and performances, her gestures are even more beguilingly subtle. Enlisting a fellow upright bassist to produce with her, the Time Jumpers’ Dennis Crouch, Carper claimed western swing and early honky-tonk eras as her playground, and the shrewd, crooning intimacy of Billie Holiday as her guide. Carper sings in a slight, reedy rasp, deftly phrasing her lines and curling her words to suggest the lasting nature of longing and fleeting nature of pleasure. She’s written a movingly clever ballad of broken commitment (“My Old Chevy Van”), elegantly pining tunes of both torchy and down-home varieties (“I Almost Forgot About You,” “It’s Better If You Never Know”) and whimsical fantasies of rural homesteading, sometimes making clear that she’s cast a female partner in those stories (“Old Fashioned Gal,” “Would You Like to Get Some Goats?”) Her artful knowledgeable nudging of tradition is a revelation. — Jewly Hight
Music City USA, Charley Crockett
Few artists in the last few years have us as fired up as Charley Crockett. His unapologetically individual sound and aesthetic shine through once again on his 2021 release, Music City USA. The irony, of course, is that the album sounds nothing like most of what comes out of modern-day Nashville. It’s an amalgamation of influences both old and new — blues and classic country and soul with a peppering of Texas-tinged Americana on top. Charley Crockett absolutely represents what the future of Music City sounds (and looks) like in our book. — Amy Reitnouer Jacobs
Home Video, Lucy Dacus
We must forgo the existential “Is it roots?” question at this juncture, simply because this stunning and resplendent work by Lucy Dacus refused to be excluded from this list. Perhaps the superlative album of 2021, in a year filled to bursting with objectively and subjectively superlative albums, Home Video is impossibly resonant, relatable, down-to-earth, and touching — despite its intricate specificity and deeply vulnerable personality. Dacus’ queerness, and the beautiful, humane ways it refuses categorization and labels, is the crack beneath the door through which the light of this gorgeous, fully-realized universe is let into our hearts. Her post-evangelical pondering; the challenging while awe-inspiring abstract, amorphous gray zones she doesn’t just examine, but celebrates; the anger of rock and roll paired with the tenderness of folk and the spilled ink of singer-songwriters — whether taken as a masterpiece of genre-fluid postmodernity or an experiment on the fringes of roots music, Dacus’ Home Video establishes this ineffable artist as a subtle, intellect-defying (and -encouraging), empathetic genius of our time. — Justin Hiltner
My Bluegrass Heart, Béla Fleck
It’s been over twenty years since the eminent master of the banjo, Béla Fleck, recorded a bluegrass record. My Bluegrass Heart completes a trilogy of albums (following 1988’s Drive and 1999’s The Bluegrass Sessions) and is as much a who’s who of modern bluegrass – featuring the likes of Billy Strings, Chris Thile, Sierra Hull, Bryan Sutton, Molly Tuttle, Michael Cleveland, Sam Bush and many others – as it is a showcase of Fleck’s still-virtuoso level talent.
But as much as My Bluegrass Heart is an album for a bluegrass band, we would be hard pressed to call it a bluegrass album (in the best possible way). As he has done countless times before, Fleck effectively breaks every rule and pushes every boundary by surrounding himself with fellow legendary rule breakers, creating something wholly beautiful and unique in the process. — Amy Reitnouer Jacobs
A Tribute to Bill Monroe, The Infamous Stringdusters
Bluegrass loves a “back to bluegrass” album, no matter how far an artist or band may or may not have traveled from bluegrass before coming back to it. On A Tribute to Bill Monroe, the Infamous Stringdusters cement ‘80s and ‘90s ‘grass – “mash” and its subsidiaries – as an ancestor to the current generation of jamgrass. Or, at the very least, it cements that these two modern forms of bluegrass cooperatively evolved. It’s crisp, driving, bouncing bluegrass that’s as much traditional as it isn’t. Sounds like quintessential Stringdusters, doesn’t it? Their collective and individual personalities ooze through the Big Mon’s material, which is what we all want cover projects to do, in the end: Cast classics in a new light, into impossibly complicated refractions. And, in this case, infusing postgrass sensibilities back into the bluegrass forms that birthed them. — Justin Hiltner
Race Records, Miko Marks & the Resurrectors
One of the best bluegrass albums of the year most likely would not be “binned” as bluegrass, and that this album is titled Race Records demonstrates exactly why. Miko Marks returns to the primordial ooze aesthetic of country, old-time, blues and bluegrass — without a whiff of essentialism — and accomplishes a Bristol Sessions or ‘40s-era Grand Ole Opry sound that’s as firmly anchored in the present as it is elemental. Marks’ musical perspective has always highlighted her awareness that the death of genre, as it were, is nothing new, but a return to the traditions that birthed all of these roots genres, many of which can be attributed to the exact communities race records originally sought to erase. Marks & the Resurrectors joyfully and radically occupy songs and space on Race Records. The result is as light and carefree as it is profound; it’s devastatingly singular yet feels like a sing along. All quintessential elements of bluegrass and country. — Justin Hiltner
Dark in Here, Mountain Goats
John Darnielle sings at the velocity of a firehose torrent, and he writes songs with titles like “Let Me Bathe in Demonic Light” and “The Destruction of the Superdeep Kola Borehole Tower.” But rather than death metal, Mountain Goats play elegantly arranged folk-rock dressed up with saxophones and the occasional keyboard freak-out. Dark in Here, the best of five Mountain Goats albums released the past two years, coheres into tunefulness despite the clashing contrasts — especially “Mobile,” a gently gliding Biblical meditation on hurricane season, and also Darnielle’s prettiest song ever. Perfect for the whiplash jitters of this modern life. — David Menconi
In Defense Of My Own Happiness, Joy Oladokun
I don’t know if I’ve ever been so immediately captivated by an artist as I was when I first heard Joy Oladokun’s single, “Jordan,” earlier this year. On that song — and every other one on In Defense of My Own Happiness that I played over and over this year — her clear voice and searingly personal lyrics emerge as a calm, universal call to pursue something better, melting down her own painful past and re-molding it in the image of self-love, inner peace and … well, joy. Oladokun is indeed building her own promised land, and we’re all lucky to bear witness. — Dacey Orr Sivewright
Outside Child, Allison Russell
One might assume an album covering the subject of abuse could intimidate a listener with its potential heaviness. While Outside Child does indeed venture into the depths of those dark experiences, Allison Russell gleans profound lessons learned and treasures discovered from each and every detail of her experiences in her youth. The result is ethereal and uplifting — and a release of trauma through a bright musical experience swelling and overflowing with hope for the future. — Shelby Williamson
The Fray, John Smith
Most artists are pretty keen to play down the idea of a “lockdown record,” because they’re worried it will limit the music’s appeal or longevity. But the emotions John Smith pours into The Fray — born of that period when we were all taking stock of our lives, and wondering what to do next — will hold their currency for a long while yet. It’s honest, yes, but also pretty soothing on the ear, showcasing Smith’s fullest sound to date — both heart’s cry and soul’s balm at once. — Emma John
See You Next Time, Joshua Ray Walker
I wasn’t out after “Three Strikes.” Instead, I was all in. With the steel guitar weaving like a drunkard in a Buick, it sometimes seems like this Dallas musician’s third album is about to go off the rails, along with the lives of the people he’s created in these songs. It never does, though, and that’s a credit to Joshua Ray Walker’s commanding vocal and a willingness to bring his dry sense of humor to the country music landscape. From the pretty poser in “Cowboy” to the unsightly barfly known as “Welfare Chet,” these folks feel like true honky-tonk characters. — Craig Shelburne
Simple Syrup, Sunny War
“Tell me that I look like Nina,” sings Los Angeles singer-songwriter Sunny War in “Like Nina,” the keystone song of her fourth album, Simple Syrup. The Nina in question is, of course, Nina Simone. The look is the “same sad look in my eyes,” though in concert War often flashes a bright, disarmingly shy smile — that of a young Black artist demanding to be taken on her own, singular terms, not the terms of cultural expectations. She continues: She can’t dance like Tina, sing like Aretha, be styled like Beyoncé. But she can see injustice, seek love and respect, seek a sense of self, and sing about it, captivatingly, with her earthy voice and folk-blues-rooted fingerpicking, enhanced by a small cadre of friends led by producer Harlan Steinberger. Like Nina? No. Like Sunny War. — Steve Hochman
Sixteen Kings’ Daughters, Libby Weitnauer
There’s a new artist on the folk scene — Libby Weitnauer. Weitnauer is a fiddle player, violinist, singer and songwriter raised in East Tennessee and currently based in Nashville. Her debut EP and first solo effort, Sixteen Kings’ Daughters, was produced by Mike Robinson (Sarah Jarosz, Railroad Earth) and presents centuries-old Appalachian ballads that have been recast into a lush and unsettling sonic landscape. Weitnauer’s high lilting voice is reminiscent of Jean Ritchie, and she glides with ease atop eerie backdrops of electric guitar, bass, fiddle and pedal steel. A strong debut to say the least, and we’re excited to hear more. — Kaïa Kater
Urban Driftwood, Yasmin Williams
Watching Yasmin Williams play guitar can boggle your mind. She uses her full body to coax noise from the instrument, her fingers pounding on the strings, her feet clicking out counter rhythms in tap shoes, one hand even accompanying herself on kalimba. As impressive as her technique is, it’s less remarkable than her facility for compositions that are melodically direct yet structurally intricate. Urban Driftwood is a carefully and beautifully written album, and Williams’ songs lose none of their flair when she transfers them from the stage to the studio. Dense with earworm riffs and evocative textures, the album represents a crucial pivot away from the increasingly staid world of folk guitar, which has recently been dominated by white men indebted to the historical American Primitivism pioneered by John Fahey. Williams is opening that world up to new sounds and influences, insisting that her guitar can speak about our present moment in ways that are meaningful, moving, and subversive. — Stephen Deusner
Guitarists spend lifetimes — often gleefully, sometimes manically, or at times frustratingly — finessing techniques, especially with their picking hand. Entire careers can be made or broken by the idiosyncrasies of one picker’s striking and sounding strings. Fingerstyle guitarist and composer Yasmin Williams has mastered myriad forms of right-hand styles, each complicated enough for multiple lifetimes’ worth of study. But she doesn’t merely alternate techniques between pieces; to a transcendentally perplexing degree she effortlessly alternates her entire picking hand approach mid-song.
On her 2021 release, Urban Driftwood, a collection of thoughtful, dynamic, and engaging instrumentals written for fingerstyle guitar and harp guitar, Williams makes many of these technique-swaps while the compositions charge forward, each one earning tailor-made right-hand approaches. As a result, the songs don’t feel encumbered when Williams, mid-melody, goes from right hand fingerstyle to bowing her strings with a cello bow, or plunking out notes on a kalimba taped to her guitar’s face, now positioned laying across her lap. She utilizes hand percussion and tap shoes to fill out arrangements, interposing Afro-descended instruments from around the world into her compositions, and she picks up, puts down, and readjusts her stable of musical tools in realtime — as a foley sound effect artist, prop master, or choreographer might.
In guitar-centered communities — which are, it’s worth pointing out, largely white, straight, and male — where the overwrought, complicated, and mind-bending are regarded as the highest value currencies, you might expect the intricacies of Williams’ compositions, and the physicality of these impressive, visually striking techniques, to be the entire point of the music. But, as Williams explains in our interview and demonstrates indelibly in her Shout & Shine livestream performance — which will air on BGS on March 31 at 4pm PDT / 7pm EDT (watch above) — the acrobatics of her playing are merely a means to an end. While entrancing, each fresh, inventive way Williams creates a dialogue with her instrument is merely a tool for her to execute each individual song, as close to how she hears it in her head as possible.
We began our conversation discussing this phenomenon and how it’s an active, deliberate choice on the part of Williams to serve her own songs.
BGS: There isn’t nearly as much variation in right hand or picking techniques in bluegrass and old-time as you use – tap, lap tapping, fingerstyle, harp guitar, I’ve even seen you bowing your guitar. So many of these contemporary guitar styles that you switch back and forth between are so different from each other, so what ties them all together for you? What does it feel like when you’re thinking about switching between these styles?
YW: I don’t really think about it much at all! Unless it’s logistically for a live performance, like, “Oh, I need to put my bow here, I need to put my kalimba here.” That [stage choreography] is really the only context in which I think about it. These different techniques, I just use them for whatever the song requires. They’re more like compositional tools. It’s more like I’m trying to find the sound that’s in my head or I’m trying to find a sound that’s different from [how] my guitar [already sounds], something to supplement whatever I’m writing. It’s not really like, “I want to make a lap tapping song!” It’s not conscious like that. These techniques are kind of my inventions and I only really come up with them to well, finish the song, basically.
I’ve never really been technique-forward – yeah, guitar culture is very nerdy and I’ve never been very into that, at least in terms of the techniques, I don’t usually care what people are doing. [Laughs] I care more about the result. However you choose to get there is cool, too! But I don’t really scout other people’s techniques or anything.
It makes me think of Elizabeth Cotten, who you have mentioned in past performances and interviews as an influence of yours. She was left-handed and played “upside down and backwards,” playing the guitar the way she needed to play it.
[Laughs] Yes! She just figured it out, she was determined! Elizabeth Cotten and Jimi Hendrix kind of served the same purpose for me. They’re both extremely unique, I love that about them, and they really didn’t care about how they were “supposed” to do things, they weren’t bogged down by tradition. Elizabeth Cotten, I love her because, somewhat obviously, she’s a Black woman who plays guitar fingerstyle, which is very cool — and banjo, too. How she played, I can’t figure it out! It’s fun to figure out and to watch, but it’s even cooler to not watch her play and just listen. All of her tunes are so catchy. She’s great, I’d love to be as great of a songwriter as her one day, hopefully.
Some of the songs on Urban Driftwood feel so huge and expansive, but some feel so introspective and meditative, despite the fact that most tracks have very similar, stripped down, simple instrumentation and arrangements. It’s not a lot of production and arranging. How do you accomplish that dynamic range? What is your own dialogue with your instrument like during the creative process, during recording and writing?
That’s a really interesting question! But, I don’t know! [Laughs] Sorry to say that, but I really need to think more about this.
Some songs, I definitely did want to be more introspective, like “I Wonder.” That was definitely one I wanted to be very intimate. And I did think about, in a live setting, how I wanted the song to feel more quiet and more intimate than other arrangements. “Swift Breeze” is another one I wanted to have an edgier sound. I don’t really think about it, I guess I’m just extremely tunnel-visioned. At the time of writing or recording a song I only think about what the song needs. Whatever that particular song that I’m working on in that moment needs. I didn’t think about live performance at all until after the album was already out and finished, which was probably not the best idea, [Laughs] I’m kind of regretting it now, but I’m working it out.
I did think about the arrangement for “Urban Driftwood” a lot. I didn’t want to use tons of overdubs or multi-tracks on many of the songs [on the album], because I don’t really “believe” in it, I guess. That one, I wanted it to sound expansive, but also I wanted it to be able to work in a more intimate setting, too. But even so, I’m not really thinking about it that much.
The guitar, when you take it out of the context of the average player’s experience — which is usually playing with a pick and using three or four chords — when you remove it from that context so many new and exciting ideas have to start flowing, like when you pick up a bow instead of a pick. What is your experimentation like when you’re composing/writing?
I tend to repeat things I like over and over again. I can do that for hours. [Laughs] It’s a bit of a mess, it’s not the most efficient way to write something, but I can make up a melodic line that I really like and play it for hours and hours and hours. Other things will start to form while I’m playing that. Then I’ll record it, or write it down in notation, whatever I need to do to remember it. That process can go on for months before I even finish a song.
I love experimenting. I love finding new, different things to use. Like a hammered dulcimer hammer or a bow or tap shoes, which are something else I use. Those were another example of problem solving. Now I’m into pedals a lot more so I’m experimenting with those, too. There are tons of great pedals out there, so it can be pretty difficult. It’s another world on its own! I’ve always been an experimental player, ever since I started playing.
Who are you listening to now who inspires you? And who – you already mentioned Jimi Hendrix and Elizabeth Cotten – do you look to and who influences you from past generations?
I kind of want to go back to where I’m from [in Northern Virginia], Chuck Brown is an influence — maybe not directly, I don’t really model my playing after his at all. He’s a guitar player from the D.C. area, he plays go-go music, a kind of regional style of music here. I’ve always loved him, from when I was a kid.
Libba Cotten, obviously, is a huge influence. I wish I had known about her when I was younger. I think I could’ve saved a lot of time by not trying to be something I was never going to be. I really wanted to be a shredding, metal-type guitarist. I think that’s what I associated the guitar with–
Is that where the tapping came in?
Yeah!
That’s amazing. There are a lot of post-metal pickers in bluegrass! We have quite a few.
[Laughs] I mean, I used to play Guitar Hero and that had so many rock songs and metal songs on it and tapping stuff. A bit of southern rock, too. But it was really rock- and male-centered and it would’ve been great to find Elizabeth Cotten sooner. That would’ve been great. I still like Paul Gilbert, I still like Buckethead, all of them, but it definitely would’ve been better if I had found Libba Cotten or Sister Rosetta Tharpe or Algia Mae Hinton sooner.
Ah! I love Algia Mae, when you mentioned tap shoes earlier I immediately thought of her and the tradition of buck dancing and clogging connected to finger-picking.
I know! I didn’t know anything about that until recently! I didn’t really know anything about that until the past couple of years, I’ve definitely gone down the rabbit hole of all of that now, though.
I guess I am listening to more guitar music these days than I ever have before. When I first started playing I didn’t really listen to any, because I didn’t really like it, the fingerstyle stuff and the technical stuff. Whatever you want to call it. But now, it’s great. There are a lot of contemporary players I really enjoy, I love Daniel Bachman’s stuff. [The band] The Americans have cool stuff. Chuck Johnson and Sarah Louise. There are a lot more people releasing music that isn’t just a derivative of what already exists in the guitar canon or in traditional guitar scenes.
This topic has come up recently — in my interview with Jackie Venson and also with Sunny War — but more and more when I find myself engaging with contemporary guitar music, it’s made by women. To a degree, I think the music women are making in fingerstyle guitar and in “guitar culture” right now is just not what you hear like… in the halls at NAMM. As a queer person, I think I avoid guitar culture a lot because it feels so toxically masculine. Do you feel that, too?
Yeah, I feel that now that I’m in the scene more. When I released my first album — and before that, when I was just learning and coming up — I didn’t feel anything like that, because I think I just ignored it. I didn’t really care. (I still don’t really care.) [Laughs] There are nicer sections in the guitar world as well as more “competitive” or kind of douchey sections. [Laughs again] Like the guy who will turn my amp on, cause he thinks I can’t turn it on. That happens a lot.
Looking ahead to the future, with vaccines rolling out and it feeling like we’re at this transition point from pre-COVID to the beginning of post-COVID — and you’re gaining so much momentum with this record even during the shutdown — what are you looking ahead to? And what does this transition from “before times” to “after times” feel like to you?
I’m actually kind of thankful for it. It’s giving me time to reflect — not only on the album’s success, but it’s giving me time to not worry about shows. I can plan and build a team around me and become more “professional” [to be ready] when touring does start up and venues do start opening again.
Creatively and musically I am all OVER the place! [Laughs] I’m writing a piece for a berimbau group called Projeto Arcomusical, the berimbau is an old, Afro-Brazilian instrument. I’m really excited for that, I can finally use my college degree and be a composer for once. I’m working with another group, based in NYC, called Contemporaneous, arranging songs from my new album for a summer concert, which is fun. I’m working on new music, trying to write more harp guitar stuff, playing my twelve-string guitar more. My head’s all over the place, really.
I definitely feel a sort of rejuvenation now that I’ve gotten past the “WTF is going to happen?” Now I’m just like, “Whatever happens happens,” and I’ve gotta make new music!
Photo credit: Kim Atkins Photography
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