Violinist and Singer-Songwriter Anne Harris “Brings Things Up a Level” with New Album

Anne Harris is having a moment. Though many people (this writer included) are just finding out about this Midwestern violin virtuoso this year, she has been making records since 2001. With her new album, I Feel It Once Again (released May 9), Harris decided, in her words, to “bring things up a level.”

Not only is the disc getting rave reviews, it marks the first-ever violin commission in America between two Black women – Harris and luthier Amanda Ewing. The 10 songs on I Feel It Once Again range from traditionals like “Snowden’s Jig” and the closer “Time Has Made A Change” to originals like “Can’t Find My Way” and the project’s title track. Throughout, Harris remains impressive in both her vocals and her violin playing. The album was produced by Colin Linden who has worked with Bob Dylan, Rhiannon Giddens, Bruce Cockburn, and many others.

Harris is currently based in Chicago, but was actually born in rural Ohio. She took to music at a very young age, inspired by her parents’ record collection. After attending the University of Michigan’s School of Music, Harris moved to Chicago, where she delved into the city’s theater and music scenes. Now, she is about to tour with Taj Mahal and Keb’ Mo’ this summer. BGS had the pleasure of catching up with Anne Harris for a conversation about the new album, her Amanda Ewing-built violin, her influences and inspirations, and more.

To start, tell me where and when I Feel It Once Again was recorded.

Anne Harris: I did the record in Nashville. Coming out of the pandemic, I had been writing and I felt like I had a collection of songs – a pool of things that I wanted to be on my next record. I wanted to work with a producer, [but] I wasn’t sure who to work with. All my prior records had just been basement records, basically. Nothing wrong with that, but I wanted to bring things up a level. A friend of mine, Amy Helm – who is an amazing singer-songwriter in her own right – recommended Colin Linden to me.

Colin is Canadian born and raised. Incredible multi-instrumentalist [and] producer that’s made Nashville his home for many years now. Anyone [Amy] recommends I’m gonna listen to. So I started listening to some of the records he made. I got in touch with Colin and sent him, in really rough form, a big basket of songs I was considering. He really loved them and wanted to work on the record. We got the basic core of the record laid down in about a week of intense recording in Nashville and finished up with a few things remotely after that.

Is it true that you first picked up the violin as a kid after watching Fiddler on the Roof?

Yeah! My Mom took my sister and I to see the movie version of Fiddler on the Roof when we were little; I was around three. I was born and raised in Yellow Springs, Ohio. I remember being at this movie theater in Dayton for a matinee. I remember the picture of the screen – you know, this opening scene where Isaac Stern is in silhouette on a rooftop playing the overture. And [my mother] said I stood up, pointed at the screen, and yelled – as loud as I could – “Mommy! That’s what I wanna do!” She was like, “Okay, you gotta sit down and be quiet.”

She thought [it was] maybe a passing thing and that I was caught up in the drama of the music. [But] I just kept bugging her about it. So she let me do a couple of early violin camp kind of things here and there. I just had this intensity about wanting to really study it. So when I turned eight, I started studying privately with a teacher. Suzuki and classical training was sort of my background.

Tell me about the title track, which is also right in the middle of the album. What inspired “I Feel It Once Again?”

A couple of years ago, [my] friend Dave Hererro – who is a Chicago based blues guitar player. Sometimes he’ll come up with a little riff and send it my way and say, “What do you think of this?” He sent me this guitar riff, which is kind of the through line of that song. I heard it and immediately the whole song and story unfolded in my head. I wrote [it] around that guitar riff in, like, one session. I did a demo and I played it for Dave. I’m like, “Dude! I love this so much.” He’s like, “Well, do whatever you want with it!”

Writing is an interesting thing. I’m not super prolific. I’m not one of those people that’s like, “I journal every day for 13 hours!” [Laughs] You know? [I don’t] have a discipline or method other than trying to stay open to inspiration and committing to it when it happens.

[That] was the case with that song. I had the story and a picture in my mind of what that song about. Somebody musing over a loss. You know, it’s twilight and they’re finishing a bottle of wine and mourning the loss of this great love. One part of you is fine when it’s daytime and you can put on a face and you’re going about your business. But then when the curtain comes down, behind that curtain is this loss and this mourning. That’s what that song is about.

Everything looks different at 4am, doesn’t it? [Laughs]

I [also] wanted to ask you about “Snowden’s Jig.” That’s a type of music I know virtually nothing about. I know it’s a traditional.

Yes. “Snowden’s Jig” is a tune that I learned from the Carolina Chocolate Drops record Genuine Negro Jig. It was my gateway into the Carolina Chocolate Drops. I was doing errands somewhere and I had NPR on and [they] were a feature story. And it was just this mind-blowing thing.

Joe Thompson [has] been deceased for a while now. But he was one of the last living fiddlers in the Black string band tradition. They would go to his porch, learn tunes from him, and learn the history of Black string band tradition. That’s sort of how they started their group. [“Snowden’s Jig”] was on that record and they learned it from Joe.

Part of my mission as an artist is to be a bridge of accessibility through my instrument, the violin, to the Black fiddle tradition. There was a time during slavery days when the fiddle and banjo were the predominant instruments among Black players. Guitars were sort of a rarity. That was when string band music was really at its height. North New Orleans was the sort of center of Black fiddle playing. Often time, enslavers would send their enslaved people down to New Orleans to learn how to play fiddle and then come back to the plantation to entertain for white parties and balls.

You’re based in Chicago. It’s a big music city. How has living in Chicago informed your music?

Chicago is known as a workingman’s city, a working class city. There’s something very grounded about Chicago in general and that’s the reputation it has. I’m a Midwestern person [anyway], from Ohio originally. There’s something about us in the Midwest. You know, we’ll never be as cool as New York or LA! But we work our asses off. I feel that translates into the artists in this town. It’s really a place where it’s about the work.

This album apparently marks the first violin commission between two Black women. Yourself and Amanda Ewing?

Correct. Amanda Ewing. It’s the very first professional violin commission that’s been recognized in an official capacity. Amanda has a certificate from the governor of Tennessee – she’s a Nashville resident – citing her as the first Black woman violin luthier in the country.

When I first saw Amanda, it was online. The algorithm basically brought her to my phone. I saw a picture of this beautiful Black woman in a work coat, holding the violin and I about lost my mind. I was so blown away and inspired. I read her story and got in touch with her and told her, “I have to have you make a violin for me. I have to own a violin that was made by the hands of somebody that looks like me.” It never occurred to me, in all my years of playing, what the hands of the maker of my instrument might look like. That’s not an uncommon thing, but it’s sort of sad! It would never occur to me that a Black woman would be an option.

So as soon as I met her, we embarked on a commission that was funded by GoFundMe. She decided she wanted to make two [violins] so that I would have a choice. They were completed in February, a couple of months ago. [One violin] will make its official debut for a public audience on the 23rd of May. I’m gonna be playing at the Grand Ole Opry with Taj Mahal and Keb’ Mo’. I’m going on tour with them.

It’s funny, I was gonna ask you next about that tour! I noticed you had some upcoming tour dates with Taj and Keb’. I wanted to ask your thoughts on that and maybe what people can look forward to on this tour.

A friend of mine is Taj Mahal’s manager and she’s also good friends with Keb’. She said that Kevin [Keb’] had approached her looking for a violinist player for this upcoming tour. They have a new record out as TajMo called Room On The Porch. It’s their second under that moniker and it’s an amazing collaboration. Two iconic figures making beautiful music together. So she recommended me and [Keb’] had seen me before – I think when I was touring with Otis Taylor years ago. He called me and you know I’ll keep that voicemail forever!

As far as what to look forward to, it’s gonna be amazing. The opportunity to work with luminaries… I’m gonna be the biggest sponge, soaking up all of the knowledge from these giants. Taj has been influential to just about everyone on some level. He’s one of those people who’s worked with everybody and done so much. I’m just over the moon.


Photo Credit: Roman Sobus

John Mailander’s Improvisational Forecast Says ‘Let The World In’

Whether or not you know it, you’ve likely heard John Mailander music. Chances are he’s even worked with one (or some) of your favorite artists, from Bruce Hornsby to Billy Strings, Noah Kahan, Joy Williams, Lucy Dacus, Molly Tuttle, and many more.

No disrespect to his work with the Noisemakers (who he’s toured with since 2018), or Strings’ GRAMMY-winning album Home, or any other projects, but it’s Mailander’s original works where his musical wizardry glows brightest. On his latest effort, Let the World In, his abilities are stronger than ever as he combines the influences from everyone he’s worked with into an adventure of orchestral bliss guided by trance-like, open-ended jazzy jams.

Helping Mailander to paint these soundscapes across nine tracks and 35 total minutes of run-time are his longtime band members in Forecast – Ethan Jodziewicz, Chris Lippincott, Mark Raudabaugh, Jake Stargel, David Williford – who he first started playing with during a Nashville residency at Dee’s Country Cocktail Lounge in 2019 to celebrate the release of his debut album of the same name. Through eight instrumental tracks (and a cover of Nick Drake’s “Road”) they send listeners on an introspective journey throughout Let the World In that brings the jazz leaning work of Hornsby and jam-fueled tendencies of Phish together, showing just how far he and Forecast have grown and evolved since first coming together.

“The first record was a blueprint, the second was settling into and discovering who we are, and this record is the most confident statement of who we are,” Mailander tells BGS. “Harmonies, colors, melodic themes, it can all be tied back to the first record in some way.”

Mailander spoke to us ahead of the album’s release about how all of his prior collaborative experiences set the stage for Let the World In to shine, writing on the piano, reality checks from recording, song sequencing, and more.

From your work with Billy Strings and Bruce Hornsby to your own music, you’ve always had a very collaborative way about you and this new record is no exception. What are your thoughts on the significance that played in the process of bringing this album to life?

John Mailander: Collaboration and improvisation are some of the most beautiful parts of being a musician. I love working with the widest variety of artists that I can. It’s a great way to become closer on a human level with the people you’re working with.

Initially, when I was starting this Forecast project, I envisioned it as more of a collective of musicians where we could all bring our own original tunes to the table and improvise freely. However, over time it’s formed into a more regular lineup with the six of us, allowing for the group to grow together as a unit.

Is the album title, Let the World In, meant to be a nod to that collaborative nature and outside influences that loom so large on the project?

Absolutely. The title has a lot of different angles to it. I hesitate to say everything it means to me because I don’t want to put it into too much of a box – I want to leave room for the listener to imagine what it means for them as well. It’s a follow-up to the last record [Look Closer] that we made in isolation during the pandemic.

While that record was very introspective, this new one is much more expansive, because of the world opening up more now and having this constant flood of information coming at us from all directions. It’s an overwhelming time to be alive, so this album feels like a companion piece to the last one, almost like the other side of the coin.

The title track also features the “Let the World In Sound Freedom Expressionists” – Hannah Delynn, Maya de Vitry, Gibb Droll, Ella Korth, Lindsay Lou, and Royal Masat. What was your intention with recruiting them for that one track, and what do you feel they brought to it that it may not have had otherwise?

They are a collection of very dear friends in Nashville who have been there for me in my personal life through a lot. It felt really important to me to credit these friends on the record in some way. That manifested into this collection of sound bites from each of them including poetry, sound effects, singing, and field recordings, which I put together into the sound collage you hear in the track. I love knowing that all of their voices are in there. I hope with each listen you can tune into different elements of it and hear new things.

In terms of outside influences on the record, I know Bruce Hornsby played a big role. What tricks and lessons from him did you implement into these songs?

Bruce is one of my greatest teachers. He’s been really encouraging over the past few years to pursue this project, grow into a band leader, and becoming more confident on the piano. I’m very rudimentary, but I’ve become obsessed with learning the piano recently, in large part thanks to Bruce and watching him play it so much. Everything on this record – except for the cover, “Road,” and the improvisational tracks – were ones I wrote on the piano, which was a huge change in direction for me.

I’ve also tried to incorporate elements of how he leads a band, like having dueling conversational solos rather than individual ones or weaving in and out of and finishing each other’s lines, into what we do with the Forecast as well.

Process-wise, how did the construction of these songs on the piano differ from when you’re composing on fiddle?

Going back to the title of this record, the piano gave it a wider scope compositionally for me, because I was thinking a lot more about bass lines and counter melodies and other things that as a fiddle player aren’t as prevalent. With the fiddle I think much more melodically – it’s kind of the top voice – which makes it harder for me to compose that way because even though it’s my primary instrument it’s hard to get a full picture with it. On the piano it felt more like writing for an entire ensemble rather than just writing a melody in chords.

You ended up knocking out the recording for this album during four consecutive days last year. What was it like doing it all rapid-fire like that compared to the more conventional, slow and steady approach?

It was intense, and we even recorded more than just what made it on the record. A lot of the work in post [production], for me, has been crafting everything we recorded into something that tells a story, which would’ve been tough to do across multiple sessions with the band over time, given that they’re all touring musicians as well. It felt good getting together with everyone from basically 10 to 6 every day and working our butts off as much as we could. It was the most concentrated and focused time we’ve ever had together as a band, as well as a reality check about things in the band we needed to work on.

It’s like putting a microscope on everything because we’ve been playing live at Dee’s every month for a few years, but now we’re in this hyper-focused environment where we can hear and analyze every minor detail. It opened up a lot of rabbit holes that I ended up going down later, but I think we really grew as a band through the process of making it this way.

You mentioned the time being a reality check for what you needed to work on as a band. What were some of those things?

It was like putting a microscope on how the particular instrumentation and individual voices on our instruments really blend and work together, revealing sonic and dynamic things that worked or not. It revealed some habits we’d gotten into through playing live that we discovered didn’t always translate to a record. The sessions were an awesome and intensive way to grow as a unit.

You’ve produced all of the Forecast records thus far. Is that something you plan to continue doing in the future?

Actually, the next record we do I’d like to have another producer. I love producing, but I’m realizing that for my own music I’d like to get another perspective in the room next time we do it. It’s really tough taking on both of those roles, but I’m really proud of what we did and grateful for producing it again this time around.

One of my favorite elements of the record is how well the songs flow from one into another – if listened through in order it presents almost as one long, 35-minute track. Tell me about sequencing this record and the importance for listeners to digest the full project from start to finish?

I’ve always been a nerd about sequencing records. I think it’s a really important part of the experience of listening to music. With this one I put a lot more attention into connecting the tracks. Some of them blend into one another, which is something that my mastering engineer Wayne Pooley – who I know through the Bruce Hornsby world – and I spent countless time laboring over the microseconds between every track to make sure each one hits you in a very intentional way.

Only one track on the album has lyrics – your cover of Nick Drake’s “Road.” Why’d you choose it, and what do you feel it contributes to the overall narrative you’re striving to present on the record?

[Nick’s] been a huge inspiration for years. Even as more of an instrumentalist I’ve always been drawn to his writing. But in terms of that song, I’ve known it for a while and love the entire record it’s on, Pink Man. About a year and a half ago – just before work on Let the World In began – I brought the song to the band. Nick Drake’s version is around two minutes long, but I thought it would be cool to use the song as a tool with our band to improvise and jam like we do at our live shows. We did just that by stretching it out to over nine minutes long. Lyrically it fits with the themes on the rest of the record, but it’s not heavy-handed either. It’s still open to interpretation, which is what I really value in it.

Initially I thought about having a guest vocalist on it, because on our last record we had a couple guest singers. But as we got closer and closer to the studio sessions I realized that it was important for me to sing this one myself, and I’m really proud with how it turned out.

If you could collaborate or have a jam session with any musician past or present, who would it be?

My hero, Trey Anastasio. It would be a dream to play or collaborate with him someday.

What has music, specifically when it comes to the creation process for Let the World In, taught you about yourself?

It’s allowed me to connect with my bandmates on a deeper level than I know how to do any other way. Through that I’m able to tap into those energies that exist between us as people, which is a type of connection I practice and strive to achieve every day.


Photo Credit: Michael Weintrob

Combining Classical and Bluegrass, Scroggins & Rose Improvise and Inspire on ‘Speranza’

Acutely expressive, profoundly innovative, and ceaselessly gripping, Scroggins & Rose are masters of sonic storytelling. The project consists of Alisa Rose (violin) and Tristan Scroggins (mandolin), both virtuosic talents with a sprawling list of credits each in their own right. While Scroggins primarily forays in the bluegrass sphere and Rose spent her musical upbringing largely studying classical music, the two alchemize a blend of genres to achieve their distinct style.

The duo’s third collection, Speranza, relays a moving dialogue between fiddle and mandolin, drawing upon a diverse range of musical influences to weave together a thoughtful assortment of colors and textures. Initial ideas for the project began back in the quarantine days of 2020, and Speranza – which consists of six immersive instrumentals, a dynamic assortment of original and familiar tunes – now arrives nearly five years later in a moment where its intonations of hope feel just as crucial.

BGS had the pleasure of sitting down with Scroggins & Rose to discuss their origins, influences, and the percolation of their most recent release.

Congratulations on the album release! To start us off, could you talk about how the two of you came into playing together?

Alisa Rose: We both taught at NimbleFingers, which is a camp in British Columbia.

Tristan Scroggins: It’s a bluegrass week of workshops that has been going on for a couple decades. I always describe it on stage as “sleepaway camp for adults who want to learn how to play the banjo and drink.”

AR: There’s a really nice feel at that camp. Tristan was in a band with his dad at the time, so I did some shows with them there. Then one night, I remember the two of us improvising by a picnic table and we just had a really nice musical chemistry where we follow each other’s ideas around. Immediately it felt like, “Oh, this is a good musical fit.”

TS: At that time I was playing with my dad in Jeff Scroggins & Colorado, and we were touring full-time. So I just ended up in California a lot and I would tack on extra time to come hang out with Alisa. And we started writing music and playing shows. I live in Nashville now, so these days it’s more of a deliberate effort when I come out to collaborate.

At this point you’ve been able to flesh out that musical chemistry over the course of three collections. What would you say unites your musicality or differentiates it?

AR: I think when we improvise, it’s playful and creative and experimental – we’re not afraid to leave what may be reasonable behind, and sometimes that takes us to good places, and sometimes we fall on our faces. We also have a similar sense of rhythm and how we respond to it. It allows us to improvise freely because we feel rhythm in the same way. So that’s where we unify, but we have really different musical backgrounds.

Could you tell me more about that?

AR: Sure. Growing up I played a little bit of fiddle, but mostly I grew up in the classical world. I was a Suzuki kid, so I learned by ear initially, which I think has allowed me to play a lot of different music, but I was learning primarily classical violin growing up. Tristan grew up very much in the bluegrass world, and I’ve studied bluegrass and I’ve played in bluegrass bands, but I still have a different sense of melody and expressiveness. I think a lot about how to make music really expressive emotionally and I play with timings – those two things are less common in the bluegrass world.

TS: I think it’s been really valuable for me, generally musically and especially in the context of this project, to be exposed to those different ways of thinking about playing. I grew up playing with my dad, and in mandolin contests just learning how to play bluegrass, which does instigate this question of, is bluegrass expressive or not? I think it is sort of, but it’s so different from how classical music is expressive or how jazz is expressive. I’ve had to work a lot on navigating that challenge, because for me, I didn’t go to school at all for music. So much of how I play is very instinctual and this project often has me figuring out how to adapt those instincts in order to have more options, especially since there’s just two of us. We have to really be on the same page a lot of the time and work together to fill in spaces or leave holes where we want them to be – they have to line up, and it’s really obvious if they don’t.

Speranza does an excellent job at combining those classical and bluegrass sensibilities to achieve expression while still leaning into roots-like melodies. Can you tell me about the impetus behind your latest release? What drove you to create this third collection?

AR: So our first collection, Grana, was very improvised and we were a new duo. Basically we set out to make a demo – we wanted to record, like, three tunes and get some gigs. We got an Airbnb, rented some recording equipment, had our awesome engineer friend set it up for us, and we just hit record over and over for a weekend. By the end it seemed like it was an album, so that’s how that one came to be. Very improvised, very sort of exploratory. There were like 1000 takes of everything. Well, not actually 1000 because we didn’t have that long, but there was definitely a sort of trial and error of figuring out what we wanted to create.

And then for the second album, Curios, we worked out everything. We rearranged everything and really sought to emphasize the strength of melodies. A lot of that album was about making the melodies come out. To me, it’s also an exploration of different sound colors. We worked with Wes Corbett on that one and he helped bring that out in that album. We really tried to shape each tune into a little story, so they’re more composed. Some have solo sections, but they’re more like little pieces and arches – I mean, I would call them miniatures, but really they’re sort of standard length for bluegrass. In the classical world they might be considered miniatures– little, crafted, sparkly gems.

But we put [Curios] out in the pandemic, which was very anticlimactic. We were supposed to have a release tour and we worked really hard on that album for a long time. We had received a great grant from FreshGrass and were able to do a lot of things in the way we wanted. We worked with Dave Sinko as our engineer, who was awesome, and recorded in this pretty church in Nashville with Egyptian stained glass.

So the third one, Speranza, is more organic. We’ve grown as a duo in terms of creating, so we decided that instead of writing a whole record of stuff we would write and record as we went, or write and improvise as we went, and do some of both. So I believe this album combines the freedom of the first album and the shape and craft of the second album. And the material for Speranza came out of the pandemic – that was such a crazy time. Life seems sort of normal now, but a lot of the tunes started in that time and then we finished them once we could get back together.

TS: I think that in a lot of ways Speranza feels very shaped by the reality of the pandemic, 2020, things getting shut down – the first stuff that we worked on remotely, because we had to. It feels wild that we’ve been working on this for years now. It’s funny, similarly to the pandemic, it doesn’t feel like that was five years ago. We recorded it over different sessions and then mixed it over different sessions.

AR: “Pandemic Buddy” and “Reaper” are the darkest ones – those I did write in like that first month of the pandemic, but I just came up with the beginning idea and then as a duo, over two or three or four visits, we finished writing the pieces together. We’re often coming up with ideas, kind of sitting with them, and then recording voice memos and listening to them. It takes us a fair amount of time to do it and we really flesh out the arrangement and how our parts fit together in person. That tends to be pretty time-intensive. Basically we’re writing the pieces, but we’re memorizing them at the same time, with space for improv – everything is fluid, but the basic composition is pretty worked out. So our compositional process is pretty spacious and lengthy.

What was inspiring you during the composition of these pieces? Any art that you were ingesting or other cultural touchstones of during that moment?

AR: In the beginning of the pandemic, Tristan did a tune challenge, which is where some of these songs started. There was a word prompt every day to write a tune about. For example, “Reaper” began with the prompt “death.” “Pandemic Buddy” was for the prompt “friend.” It was a really nice way to channel energy at the beginning of the pandemic, when everything was crazy. I spent hours every day writing these tunes and trying to get a good video, and I think I got a little better at them as I went.

TS: I mean, it’s sort of an obvious one, but we talk a lot about Mike Marshall and Darol Anger. It’s the same mando and violin pairing, but I love listening to them and listening to other people who do this kind of new acoustic music/composing. I spend a lot of time in Nashville with Wes Corbett. Wes produced our second album, but he’s also a friend of mine, and I helped him with publicity for his first album, which has a lot of really beautifully written instrumental pieces.

It’s interesting – we spent so much time working on this in chunks and that was a very different part of my brain than the part of that was working very hard on, like, Texas-style fiddle tunes. Those weren’t crossing over, exactly. I think rather than being influenced by something specific, it’s more that I try to cultivate something within myself by listening to both stuff I like and new stuff. Absorbing all of that, letting it ferment inside, and then figuring out how to express that all together, rather than trying to emulate any one thing.

AR: I tend to think that when composing, everything you’ve ever listened to, everything that ever resonated with you and definitely anything you’ve ever played with your body or had in your body – whether you danced to it, or you physically played it – is a part of your musical sensibility. I don’t know what I was listening to when I was writing these tunes, but I definitely love Darol Anger and Mike Marshall. I also love Schubert string quartets, I love Beethoven piano sonatas, and I love Debussy piano music – I love a lot of different kinds of music, and I think all of that is part of what comes out. That’s all part of what’s in my head when I’m conceiving of new material.


Photo Credit: Lenny Gonzalez

Basic Folk: Kathleen Parks of Twisted Pine

Hot off the heels of Twisted Pine’s latest release, Love Your Mind, Kathleen Parks is here to dig into her uncelebrated polka origins. Daughter of renowned trumpetist Eric Parks, the younger Parks grew up in New York’s Hudson Valley in a very creative family (her mother was also a dancer and the one who made Kathleen practice all the time). She started young on the violin and was surrounded by her dad’s polka music, as he was a member of Jimmy Sturr & His Orchestra, which my dad (also a polka-head) calls “the top polka band revered by all polka bands.” Parks even sat in with the band as a teen, when she would occasionally fill in for their violinist. She fully embraced her strong Irish roots not only in music, but also dance, which she calls her second love. After accepting a full scholarship to Berklee College of Music in Boston, she started meeting and jamming with bluegrass musicians in the area, especially at the Cantab Lounge, famous for its weekly bluegrass night. This is where her new band Twisted Pine scored a residency and started building a following.

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On the group’s new record, Kathleen is the de facto lead singer, which she’s just fine with. She also explains the band in one phrase: “Let’s see what happens.” That philosophy is definitely present on the new record, which is filled with wild vocal performances and sees the band operating at its highest level.

In our Basic Folk conversation, we explore the mental health themes highlighted in “Funky People,” a song about how difficult it can be to take care of yourself on the road and the relief you find in people you meet. Plus, we cover “After Midnight (Nothing Good Happens)” and finally find out what time one should go to bed at a bluegrass festival. It’s always earlier than you think.


Photo Credit: Jo Chattman

Out Now: The Accidentals

Our next band featured on Out Now is the Accidentals, a group that I met over a decade ago, tucked under the oak trees in Northern Michigan at Interlochen Artist Academy. Interlochen is a hub for music and arts education. Katie Larson and Savannah Buist (founders of the band) attended the academy at the same time I did. I’ve admired their artistry and dedication ever since. I remember listening to Interlochen Public Radio, hearing a song they wrote, and thinking these artists were going somewhere. Spoiler alert… they have already gone everywhere, touring all over the U.S.!

Before they attended Interlochen, Katie and Savannah were already playing together in an orchestra and exploring their musical chemistry. The pair are creative, dedicated individuals, curious souls, skilled instrumentalists, and incredible writers. They built a successful career while still very young, touring and playing festival stages in their teenage years. Both turned down college scholarships to hit the road instead. After high school, they added Michael Dause to the band as their percussionist. In 2023, Michael parted from the band; they now play as a trio again with Katelynn Corll.

The Accidentals just released their latest single, “What a Waste.” It’s an honor to highlight this phenomenal band on Out Now. Learn all about their plans for the future, why they create music, and about their incredibly creative minds in our interview with Katie Larson and Savannah Buist.

You’ve been playing together since high school. What has it been like for you to create, write, record, and travel together for the past decade?

Savannah Buist: All of those processes – creating, writing, recording, and traveling – demand different parts of us, and all of them have changed and grown over the years. Creating and writing used to be a more solitary process, and yet [now] we find ourselves collaborating and co-writing with some of the people who inspired us to become songwriters in the first place. Recording went from being solitary, to with producers, to us becoming engineers and recording many of our own projects, to recently joining forces with producer Mary Bragg for a collaborative record. Traveling together used to mean 250 days on the road, sleepless nights living on the opposite schedule of everyone we loved – and now, we ease into it, take our time with it, and the number of people in the van seats, their names and faces have changed over the years.

But the thing that remains true is the constitution of our friendship and our trust. I lean on Katie more than I’ve ever let myself lean on anybody before. She’s the reason why I constantly challenge myself to do better, not just musically but as a person too. She’s a natural listener; she’s observant and deep-thinking. She’s the kind of person who would make an incredible documentary carefully examining both sides of a complex situation and reaching some inevitable core of truth. It’s been incredible watching her grow and change, too, just like all the processes that we engage in together. I think the growth and change I’ve undergone is just as dramatic and important. It’s what keeps us open to each other and supportive of our many interests and endeavors.

Adding Katelynn Corll to the band a couple years ago was like picking up a golden retriever to tour with. She’s always positive and brings balance to the band with her ability to see the big picture, ask good questions, and amp up the energy on stage. She’s got both our backs all the time. It’s a no-ego dream band reality.

Katie Larson: Some days, 10 years sounds like a lifetime and other days it feels like a drop in the bucket. Think about how much change people go through from their late teens to late 20s, then add in the inevitable ups and downs and major transitions you go through in the music industry. What a privilege to have someone by your side who has known your heart since day one. Not only that, but a friend who’s a true collaborator, business partner, and salsa-making science geek who’s always ready to dive into philosophical rabbit holes and will fiercely have your back no matter what. We take a lot of inspiration from the Indigo Girls, a few years ago we got to watch Ann Powers interview them during Americanafest. They’ve been playing music together for almost 40 years now and are still true friends.

Your early success, including playing at various festivals, is impressive. What were some of the most memorable moments or experiences from those early days of touring?

SB: I’ve kept journals for many years and those have sort of fallen into the digital world via Tour Blogs, which we write weekly on our Patreon. Cataloging our experiences has given us a plethora of perspectives. There are times I look back through those journals and blogs and think to myself, “How are we still alive?” From busted trailers to stolen gear to pedalboards lighting on fire from faulty power, playing in caverns and drained swimming pools and stages so tiny we stood shoulder-to-shoulder trying not to poke each others’ eyes out with our bows; farmer’s markets and people’s dogs and their bookshelves when we crashed at their houses, and the strangers who became family along the way. It’s literally too much to recount, because that’s thousands of memories stacked into some neural Jenga of nostalgia. I will say that the early days are like the later days in that we’ve never stopped learning, and never thought we were incapable of learning more.

KL: As an introverted teen, I remember being shocked by kindness from strangers. It still amazes me, but back then it seemed crazy that music could be a catalyst for people making us a home-cooked meal, letting us stay in their homes, or giving us boxes of books to read on the road. One time in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan a man handed us an entire smoked salmon after our set. On another tour in Colorado, we kept accumulating homemade pumpkin bread wherever we went. It wasn’t just gifts – music was also a fast pass to personal conversations with fans at the merch table or with our hosts who became family.

I remember playing a coveted electronic festival called Electric Forest the summer after we graduated high school. Playing folk rock in our dorky dresses (mine covered in pop art chickens and Sav’s covered in cats), we were probably the biggest outlier on the bill, but our artist badges gave us all access. We could go to any stage and watch Lindsey Stirling and Phantogram and Skrillex perform from behind the curtain. In the artist lounge there was this huge juicer, and the women there made me this juice concoction with beets and apple and fresh garlic, and they laughed and said I was glowing. I couldn’t believe we were there.

What was it like for you to start touring and building a career at such a young age?

SB: It was a lot. We thought we were just having fun playing some music with each other and it took on a life of its own. Sometimes in the early years it felt surreal, like a plane taking off and you’re running down the tarmac trying to get on it. I think having a team early was key. We’ve always had the support of our respective parental units – both our moms and dads are musicians and singers and songwriters, so they understood our ambitions and goals and sought tirelessly to lift us up. Having a parent that understands the industry and was willing to support us full time was a lot of the reason we were able to be full-time musicians from a young age.

My mom took us on a brutal “trial tour” in the summer of 2012 – she booked 30 shows in 27 days with radio shows a lot of those mornings, to convince us to go to college. It didn’t work. It just solidified that Katie and I were compatible on the road. At the end of that tour, Katie and I knew we wanted to do this music thing to the extent of both of us [gave] up scholarships to college. My mom agreed to manage/tour with us and we signed our first deal right out of high school. She buffered a lot of the stigma attached to young females playing in clubs they weren’t old enough to be in and took a lot of the verbal abuse that comes with this industry and recording with people you don’t know very well and we watched her handle it.

We learned to start with respect – even when it isn’t mutual – but stand up for ourselves when necessary. We learned to compromise when we could and if we couldn’t live with it, hold our ground. We were made acutely aware of the power of “core base, fans, supporters, road family” and FAMgrove, the fanclub was born. They have kept us going through all the hardest parts.

KL: It was eye opening for a lot of reasons. We had an amazing support system and we were eager to learn and become better musicians. A lot of artists and people in the industry took us under their wing and I learned so many life lessons from those who treated us with mutual respect. There were times when people assumed we put ourselves on a pedestal and didn’t know how to use our gear or hold our own, because we were young. We learned quickly that being alone in the wrong place at the wrong time could be very dangerous and relied on our tour family to keep each other safe. Contradictions can be true. I think touring made us more independent, and also more dependent on each other. It made us more self confident, and more self-conscious.

You founded a nonprofit organization, Play It Forward, Again and Again, to empower youth and provide better access to instruments, lessons, and mentors. What led you to that kind of work, and do you have plans and hopes to continue? What is your vision?

SB: We do a lot of workshops for kids all over the country – songwriting workshops, improvisational workshops, alternative styles for strings workshops. When we were in high school, a duo called the Moxie Strings came to our school and did a performance playing electric violin and cello. That was so monumental to us; it showed us that it was possible to take those instruments to a contemporary world and succeed and it also showed us that there were women out there making it happen. We started doing workshops for exactly that reason – to perpetuate that cycle of inspiration and encouragement; to allow people of any background to have the opportunity to express themselves via music.

It’s hard to do that when budgets for music programs are typically the first to get slashed. Many schools we traveled to had only a choir or a band program, if any program existed at all. The underprivileged areas we visited often contained extremely talented kids who were naturally gifted, but lacked access to the tools due to financial constraints. Instruments can be incredibly expensive, especially in the orchestral world, and it keeps them from being accessible to kids who could use them for therapeutic purposes, who could change the world with them.

So, that led to us establishing a nonprofit with the goal to get instruments into those kids’ hands. Not only that, but we want to establish a support system for them to get follow-up lessons from a musician local to their area. This allows them not just the tools for self-expression, but also instruction on how to use those tools, too. We wanna connect schools with bands that are touring through and provide funding for the band and school to show kids that it’s possible to make a living doing something you love.

For anyone reading this who might not be out of the closet, were there any specific people, musicians, or resources that helped you find yourself as a queer individual?

KL: I’m still figuring out where I identify on the LGBTQ+ spectrum, so one of the most helpful things for me is to talk to friends about their experiences. It allows me to sort through things I resonate with and gives me a safe space for self-reflection. I’m not always the best communicator, but since I was a kid I always thought I had a good understanding of myself. That makes it hard for me to acknowledge that there are still parts of myself I’m learning about. It helps to hear other people I admire doing the same thing at various points in their life. These are a couple articles I’ve read that come to mind: Lucy Dacus on coming out and Amelia Meath of Sylvan Esso talking about her identity.

Who are your favorite LGBTQ+ artists and bands?

SB: I think it’s important to clarify that many artists and bands have LGBTQ+ members without being an “LGBTQ-themed” band, per se. It’s hard for me to definitively know if a band with LGBTQ+ members or an artist who lies somewhere on the LGBTQ+ spectrum wants to be considered an LGBTQ+ artist or band, unless they’re specifically writing songs about their queerness – otherwise it leads to assumptions that I don’t think it’s my place to make.

I think identification can be both empowering and entrapping. We contain multitudes and we are so much more than who we love. It’s a big reason why I don’t always talk about my queerness. That being said, there is an important aspect to identifying with your queerness and resonating with it that creates a safety net for others to be themselves and I am all about that kind of inclusion.

There are artists of the LGBTQ+ community paving the way for inclusivity every day: Ani DiFranco and Brandi Carlile were the firsts for me, then I had a writing session with Maia Sharp and it opened up my world. She was the first person to tell me that I was OK. Then I met Crys Matthews, Heather Mae, Ethel Cain, Spencer LaJoye, and I felt safer talking about it. There is space for queer artists to create art about their queerness and queerness as a whole, and there’s also space for queer artists to create art that’s not about their queerness, at least to themselves. My favorite LGBTQ+ artists and bands write all kinds of music, while staying true to themselves – whether they are out of the closet or still deciding how to verbalize how they feel.

What is your ideal vision for your future?

SB: We made a pie chart at the beginning of ’24 and we each decided how much time we wanted to give to each project. My ideal vision for the future is balance. Right now I’m feeling pretty good about playing as a side artist with Lainey Wilson and still sitting in with artists like Ashley McBryde, Hannah Wicklund, Beth Nielsen Chapman, and Kim Richey. Katie and I played strings (and other instruments) and sang on 40+ other albums this year and we loved that. So we’re always down for more session work.

The Accidentals are touring less in ’25 to make room for other projects and that was the plan that came out of the pie chart conversation. We’ll put out a couple albums in ’25 that we’ve been working on for two years, a TIME OUT 3 album (first single just dropped), a children’s album written with Tom Paxton, and a Christmas album with Kaboom Collective Studio Orchestra. We’ll tour those albums, but not much aside from that. We’re also looking at a “Michigan and Again” children’s book deal.

As far as long term, I’m one semester away from my bachelor’s in biology so I’ll likely finish that when time allows. The takeaway from all that is we are in love with the process, the learning, the growing, the becoming. We find gratitude everyday for the opportunity to explore all those things and become the best version of ourselves.


Photo Credit: Jay Gilbert

BGS 5+5: Jolie Holland

Artist: Jolie Holland
Hometown: Houston-bred, LA-based
Latest Album: Haunted Mountain
Personal Nicknames (or rejected band names): They say you can never nickname yourself. Ones that have come to me fair and square are Soup Kitchen, bestowed by the great author Vanessa Veselka, because every time I stayed in her basement on tour I’d cook for the household. And I had the nickname Jewelweed for a minute, because some friends standing nearby pointed out some jewelweed growing, and I thought they’d called my name.

What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?

There are so many beautiful moments to remember. I enjoy being a “sideman” more than being in the spotlight. I’m a musician and a writer, and never was interested in performing, per se. I remember doing free improv on violin with a small trio at a flop house in Austin, Texas while some circus performers played with fire and danced. It wasn’t a show, just artists being together. My Wine Dark Sea band was really fun, a loud, chaotic band, but full of some of the most sensitive and wild musicians. I recently got to play a three-night residency with Jim White on drums, Adam Brisbin on baritone guitar, and Ben Boye on piano. It was like being a little tornado in a hurricane. So much motion and power.

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

I came to music after I was deep in visual art, which really centers originality. So I came to music with that lens. It literally took me decades to understand that not everyone is interested in that kind of ethos. A lot of people are happy staying in one or two related genres. But for me, I always have more questions.

What has been the best advice you’ve received in your career so far?

I have basically received no advice in my career. It’s been almost impossible to find trustworthy mentors. So I’ve just watched other people I admire and tried to learn from them. I love seeing how open-hearted and generous both Boots Riley and Marc Ribot are with their audiences. Both of them are political organizers, so that makes sense. They regard their position on stage as a place from which they inspire action and movement. I regard my audience as my collaborators, in many ways. We need each other.

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

I love to cook with or for the musicians I love. I’m imagining making a jelly roll for Jelly Roll Morton. My great uncles were pimps who lived 6 blocks from Jelly Roll Morton at the same time he was pimping. So I always imagine they must have known each other. Their little sister, my grandmother, passed for white and moved to North Louisiana to get away from the mafia. I wonder if he would have liked this jelly roll I once made with a genoise sponge, orange blossom water in the whipped cream, and a bitter marmalade I made with Seville oranges from my neighbor’s yard.

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

I feel like this question is important, but I’m answering it sideways: Why do a lot of people assume all songs are autobiographical? I come from the perspective that lyrics are literature, and a song can be a one act play. Songs can be fiction, drama, and not just memoir.


Photo Credit: Chris Doody

WATCH: Mark & Maggie O’Connor, “All We Will Be”

Artist: Mark & Maggie O’Connor
Hometown: Charlotte, North Carolina
Song: “All We Will Be”
Release Date: September 30, 2023
Label: ONErpm/OMAC Records

In Their Words: “‘All We Will Be’ is one of our new vocal songs where we reach for a more contemplative place in words and music. There is such mystery and intrigue with the lyrics, by my co-writer Joe Henry, and the story-telling vocal performance by Maggie, that it was interesting for me to create an expanded instrumental soundscape for it. The musical qualities move from plaintive Americana guitar strums to a jazz-rock acoustic fusion crescendo that showcases Maggie’s majestic violin solo. The powerful and intuitive bass and drums on this song – by Dennis Crouch and John Gardner – help to elevate this idea. Our journey here is about testing faith and rediscovering it through love and music.

“In scouting locations for the music video, it was Maggie that suggested the piece be filmed adjacent to the stillness and reflection of our North Carolina lake. On the day of filming, it poured down during the day leaving us a sense of renewal in the forest when things cleared off to do the shoot. The storm also left a painting in the sky — one of those colorful Southern sunsets over the water that had us dancing to the music for the video on the shoreline. I had my 1865 Martin out there on the edge of the swampy part of the lake conveying timelessness through the bending of the strings like ripples in the water. With inspiration from the lyric, ‘Back into trees, like all that we are,’ the low setting sun gave us the shadow effect essential to combine Maggie’s violin and my viola that accompanies her, returning us into the roots of trees on the forest floor. It was joyful to create this video with my wife Maggie, and even more so to have my son Forrest handling the great camera work and the directing of our music video.” – Mark O’Connor

Track Credits: Written by Joe Henry and Mark O’Connor

Maggie O’Connor – vocals, violin, cello
Mark O’Connor – vocals, guitar, mandolin, mandocello, violin, viola
Dennis Crouch – upright bass
John Gardner – drums
Tracking Engineer – Neal Cappellino
Overdubs and Mixing Engineer – Mark O’Connor
Mastering Engineer – Dave Harris at Studio B Mastering, Charlotte, NC
Recorded at Sound Emporium Studio A, Nashville, TN
Overdubs at Hometone Studio


Photo Credit: David Hume Kennerly
Video Credit: Filmed and directed by Forrest O’Connor

STREAM: Secret Museum of Mankind – Atlas of Instruments: Fiddles Vol. 1

Album: Secret Museum of Mankind – Atlas of Instruments: Fiddles Vol. 1
Release Date: September 15, 2023
Label: Jalopy Records

In Their Words: “The museum’s musical atlas of instruments continues with the opening of another wing, the first in a series on bowed instruments. To stretch boundaries over the earth and over time is to forsake them; whether it is a matter of Synchronizität or just the plain unconscious. In Western cultural history, the bowed instrument is a late installment, after centuries, of an almost primordial vibration that we imagine in sound; see in the old paintings; and yet can sample in the remnants of the ancient world captured on gramophone records.” – Pat Conte, curator

The Secret Museum series is legendary. It opened up new possibilities for me when I first heard it in the 1990s. The curator is Pat Conte, he did something remarkable, even more so because it was before the internet: Starting in the 1970s he began assembling the first and arguably greatest collection of world music recorded in the 78 rpm record era of the 1920s – 1950s, give or take. He did it by casing junk stores in Queens, New York, the most diverse place in the world, and by maintaining letter correspondence with collectors and dealers across the globe. That is the music you will find on the Secret Museum of Mankind albums.

“Conte programs the records by feel, not with a predefined structure. The records are not meant to be academic, they are meant to move the listener. The movement is emotional, using music that was recorded in different places and at different times. Each listener will experience the sequence in their own way, and each track is its own world.

The Secret Museum of Mankind: Atlas of Instruments – Fiddles, Vol. 1 continues the series and presents fiddle sounds developed and practiced across the globe. The compilation, drawn from Conte’s pioneering and remarkable personal collection of 78 rpm discs recorded in the 1920s – 1950s, offers fiddle music recorded across the world from Crete to Madagascar, Mexico, England, Sicily, Norway, India, the USA, Cape Verde, China and more.” – Eli Smith, producer


Image courtesy of Jalopy Records, Nick Loss-Eaton Media

WATCH: Laura Cortese & the Dance Cards, “Three by Three”

Artist: Laura Cortese & the Dance Cards
Hometown: San Francisco, CA / Ghent, Belgium
Song: “Three by Three”
Release Date: April 28, 2023
Label: Compass Records

In Their Words: “…The song tells the story of a walk [my daughter and I] took together in early Spring 2021. I used her favorite syllables from an old Dutch children’s song in the chorus to see if she noticed. And … she did! The first time I sang it for her, she sang along. So naturally, we had her join in on the track itself.

“After the recording of ‘Three by Three’ in Colorado with Jayme Stone, we headed to Oregon on tour. While there, we were invited by boutique microphone maker, Ear Trumpet Labs, to take a tour of their workshop and film a video using their beautiful hand-built microphones. It had a been a rainy day, but just as we started to play, the sun came streaming through the big glass window at the back of the workshop.” – Laura Cortese


Photo Credit: Marc Ripper

Basic Folk – SistaStrings

WHOA! SistaStrings is the real life sister duo of Monique (cello) and Chauntee (violin) Ross. Currently tearing it up on the road with Brandi Carlile and Allison Russell, The Ross sisters’ musical roots began with their intense classical training, family gatherings and in church. All five of their siblings played music, toured around with their minister parents and even had their own family band, Sisters of Praize, with older sisters Charice Ross on violin and Rickena Johnson on viola. After Chauntee was done with college, she and Monique teamed up again and ventured out in the Milwaukee music scene where they cut their teeth and tried their hand at all sorts of different styles: hip-hop, jam bands, electronic music and singer-songwriters. There, they met a kindred spirit in Peter Mulvey, who they started performing with in 2016.

LISTEN: APPLE • SPOTIFY • STITCHERAMAZON • MP3

SistaStrings officially made the move to Nashville in the summer of 2021. Once there, they started playing gigs with Allison Russell. Monique’s encounter with Brandi Carlile at Newport Folk Fest led them to both touring with her band. In our conversation, Lizzie and Cindy talk to Monique and Chauntee about being romantic string players thanks to their classical background, which also gave them very thick skin. They also talk about the decision to pursue a musical path into the folk and Americana world, which is a notoriously white space. Spoiler alert: it wasn’t an easy decision, but it’s one they have not come to regret.


Photo Credit: Samer Ghani