BGS 5+5: The Pine Hearts

Artist: The Pine Hearts
Hometown: Olympia, Washington
Latest Album: Lost Love Songs
Personal nicknames (or rejected band names): Bruce Springsteen of Bluegrass

Answers from Joey Capoccia

Which artist has influenced you the most, and how?

This is a tough one because about every six months I find someone new that I dive headfirst into. I love that feeling of discovering someone new and having their music brighten your day. Seeing them immediately influence your songwriting… it’s the best! Sometimes you are so inspired by a new song you hear, you start to learn it, and it winds up sending you down a path to write your own song. Possibly one of the best parts of music is how one song leads to another.

But, if I had to choose… I’d say Stuart Murdoch from Belle and Sebastian. That’s the biggest shift I’ve ever felt musically/songwriting. I can remember going through my friends’ music collections, absolutely devouring every bit of them I could find. It’s basically a marker in my life… pre- and post-Belle and Sebastian. At the height of my love for them, they came to The Capital Theater in Olympia. It was one of those magical moments where the band you’re in love with is suddenly playing in your town… I’ll never forget it!

What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?

This was fairly recently actually. September 2021 at Treefort Music Festival in Boise. The whole summer was pretty good, we had a bunch of really fun shows, with great audiences and hosts, but at Treefort, we had a full house of folks who really seemed into the whole vibe, and the entire environment of the festival was great! It was our last show in a string of gigs, which means we were warmed up, playing tight, and grooving off each other. That, mixed with the crowd, was a perfect combo! Plus we got to watch a bunch of our friends play, make new connections, and also just enjoy the city. My brother who is an architect out of Portland has a building project going on around the corner from where we played, so I got to check that out as well. Really great stuff!

What other art forms inform your music?

When I’m not playing music, I’m usually doing carpentry. I absolutely love working with wood. It’s not a perfect product. It has imperfections and abnormalities, and you have to learn to accept those. If the board is gonna crack, or splinter when you pound a nail through it, the best you can do is be prepared for that, and mitigate it the best you can. Maybe that prepares you for the flat tire you get on the way to the gig that you’re already late for?

Carpentry also helps when you don’t have the money for a setup job on your upright bass. I’ve definitely sanded down the fingerboard in my kitchen with decent results. Or glued the top of my guitar back together after it cracked from high altitude in a dry Montana winter. Another element of carpentry, when it comes to songwriting, are the people you meet on a job site… plumbers, electricians, equipment operators. Great working folks. People that I really identify with. To say it’s important to have connections like that in my life is an understatement. It’s the reason music/art exists…labor by day, art in the evening.

What rituals do you have, either in the studio, or before a show?

Rituals are very important to me, maybe most important. For instance, especially in songwriting, I can dabble here and there, and slowly turn out songs. But if I really want to get things done and finish up a batch of tunes, then I need to set times and days, and keep it consistent. 2 p.m. That’s what works for me. If I spend a few hours starting at 2 p.m. every day, by the fifth day the songs will be flowing.

Before a show, I usually go on a walk. There’s a lot of down time between arriving and playing. I find a casual stroll through the neighborhood is incredibly relaxing and keeps me from having too many beers before downbeat. For this last recording, I made running in the morning my ritual. I do often run, but not in the morning. We were in the tiny town of Enterprise, Oregon, so every morning, I’d wake up and run past farming equipment… down dirt roads… it wasn’t bad once I got going. But usually the last thing I want to do upon getting out of bed is start running down the road.

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

Well, my favorite food is pizza, so maybe Bruce and I will get a slice someday? It’s a great question though, because I find that one of the hardest parts about touring is finding the food you need that works for you. It’s basically disappointing gas station food most of the time. So when you play a venue that cares about food, and is excited about the music, amazing things happen! The Pine Hearts are all about good food. If we have a place for a night on tour, you know we’ll be cooking up a storm. Each of us has our own specialty, but we tend to combine it for some amazing dinners!


Photo credit: Jemual Gardner

LISTEN: Beth Whitney, “I Go”

Artist: Beth Whitney
Hometown: Leavenworth, Washington
Song: “I Go”
Album: Into The Ground
Release Date: May 28, 2021
Label: Tone Tree Music

In Their Words: “In the 1960s, my grandparents started a tradition in our family called ‘the 9-day Backpack’ that continues in different forms to this day. I’ve joined about five of these and to tell the truth, I do not backpack gracefully. Mosquito and horse fly bites turn into big welts. I’m blistered from boots and bright pink from the sun… but as the wilderness takes me in, it starts to heal me somehow and I come into focus.

“I wrote this one with Gina Belliveau and Brittany Alvis at a songwriting retreat some friends and I hosted in the mountains. The assignment was to write a song inspired by one of our favorite poems, ‘The Peace of the Wild Things,’ by Wendell Berry. These two were a joy to write with and are both featured in the recording.” — Beth Whitney


Photo credit: Eratosthenes Fackenthall

BGS 5+5: Eli West

Artist: Eli West
Hometown: Olympia, Washington
Latest Album: Tapered Point of Stone

Which artist has influenced you the most … and how?

Probably Paul Brady, as a singer and guitar player. While I don’t play Irish folk music much, the tradition, while having lots of shapes and inflection, isn’t inherently showy. You don’t see an Irish folk musician put their foot up on a monitor to take a solo. I think communicating something interesting in an understated way is so satisfying…. Leaving room for the listener, not hitting you over the head with an idea. Tim O’Brien is an American version of that as well.

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

I’m a visual learner. Visual and spatial art, woodworking, painting, all have something to do with my musical decisions. I love understated chaos, like arranging things that seem to already be there. Goldsworthy is an obvious example of this, but there are many folks who do this in a variety of mediums. I tend to overthink, so anything that helps me escape my head to see things in a simpler way.

What rituals do you have, either in the studio or before a show?

Running, for my mental health. Also, getting to know a new town before a show. Also, eating. Big fan of eating.

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

I grew up on salt water, sailing, and kayaking with my dad. Also skiing and backpacking in the mountains of the Northwest. I think the understory of a dense cedar grove is pretty inspiring, usually quiet while full of life.

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

Huh… I love seafood. There is a restaurant in Tel Aviv called the Old Man and the Sea. I would love to sit outside, eating fish, talking to someone like Django or Jim Hall about guitars. Since both those guys are gone, maybe drunk BBQ with Sting or Mark Knopfler would be fun (all those things borrowing from my high school self).


Photo credit: Jenny Jimenez

LISTEN: Sway Wild, “Edge of My Seat” (with Anna Tivel)

Artist: Sway Wild
Hometown: San Juan Islands, Washington
Song: “Edge of My Seat” (with special guest Anna Tivel on violin)
Album: Sway Wild
Release Date: February 12, 2021

In Their Words: “‘Edge of my Seat’ is a reflection on my personal struggles with anxiety. It’s one of those songs that kind of just wrote itself, and I didn’t know where it was going to lead me, or if I was leading it. I’ve been living with anxiety ever since I was young and recently started being more proactive in addressing it… part of that was looking for some hidden messages in my dreams, and really just reaching a new awareness of what is below the surface of my consciousness. I know I’m definitely not alone in 2021 in sharing about my own mental health challenges. We are all moving through this unprecedented time together and my hope is that this song can be a balm to others also experiencing a heightened sense of anxiety, that it can serve as a reminder that you’re not alone. We’re truly grateful to have Anna Tivel’s violin singing through the background on this tune; her playing on this one was as intuitive and emotive as always.” — Mandy Fer


Photo credit: Laura Anders

WATCH: The Sweeplings, “Deep & Wild”

Artist: The Sweeplings (Cami Bradley and Whitney Dean)
Hometown: Spokane, Washington (Cami) and Huntsville, Alabama (Whitney)
Song: “Deep & Wild”
Album: Losing Ground, Vol. 2
Release Date: September 18, 2020
Label: Nettwerk

In Their Words: “‘Deep & Wild’ is a lighthearted song about entering into the unknown with a willing attitude and a free spirit. We sat down to write this song with a painted picture of each scene in our minds. It shaped itself as we wrote, seamlessly creating a tune about the longing to explore the unknown with someone you love with no other purpose other than to find what’s most freeing. This song in particular fits itself into our EP series, Losing Ground, Vol 1 & 2, as a happy spot of contrast to the cinematic drama of the most of the collection.

“It took us a long time to get to these EPs. We worked tirelessly relationally and musically to make it happen. Stopping and starting, pushing and pulling. Because of that, we lost some ground in our process, but it ultimately brought us to something more magical. These two EPs truly have the grit of our story behind each song. The songs range in sentiment and tone, but all share the same heart. We wanted to create something special with as minimal sonic distractions as possible. We just let the performances and songs speak for themselves, simple and even bare at times. In that, we found our true identity as artists and songwriters.” — Cami Bradley and Whitney Dean, The Sweeplings


Photo credit: Glass Jar Photography

Building on Double Banjo, The Lowest Pair Concoct ‘The Perfect Plan’

The Lowest Pair may be best known as a double-banjo folksinger duo, yet their new album is a full-band effort that somehow sounds like a complete departure without actually straying from home. It’s a fitting theme, considering that the release of The Perfect Plan – their sixth album in seven years – arrives during a global pandemic. BGS spoke with bandmates Kendl Winter and Palmer T. Lee as they were isolated in separate homes in Olympia, Washington.

“We’re supposed to have been on the road now — a couple of festivals the past couple of weeks,” says Winter, who spent this past winter in Antarctica working at a scientific research station and running the annual South Pole Marathon, in which she set a women’s time record. “We were thinking we were going to hit the ground running and now we’re just hitting the ground, trying to figure out how to promote the record in this new paradigm.”

On the bright side, with any luck, the fact that everyone is stuck at home will provide plenty of time to digest The Perfect Plan’s complex instrumentation and intuitive arrangements, worked out with multi-instrumentalist and producer Mike Mogis (Bright Eyes). Although previous efforts feature the stripped-down duo sound fans have come to enjoy in their live sets, this project is a little more aurally ambitious. Listeners still get their banjo and acoustic guitar, but these are afloat amid bass, drums, and electric guitar with all its effects.

“We wanted to hear what [our music] would sound like with a bigger sound,” Winter says. “We went into the studio pretty open to what Mogis was thinking, in terms of production. I think we both have dreamed about having drums and bass behind us. It’s not as easy to do on the road, but it was kind of a fantasy record.”

Lee, a Minnesota native who spent his winter at a writing retreat in Wisconsin, agrees. “We’ve definitely been talking about doing bigger band stuff in different ways over the years. Logistically, it’s a bit of a challenge and a bit of a gamble, I suppose. Being a duo, you keep your overhead pretty low. It’s just simpler that way. But it’s definitely been a dream of ours for a while.”

The Lowest Pair began when Winter and Lee were playing in other groups. They spotted each other at a bluegrass festival. “I remember seeing Palmer’s string band and noticing a kindred thing he was going for,” Winter says. “He played the banjo but differently from other people, putting more notes in it. He has a soulful voice, saying stuff that isn’t very common in bluegrass music. He had a song about tea and I had a song about tea, about drinking tea. I felt like … we’re going for similar things from really different places, with different vehicles.”

That night, they spent hours jamming around a campfire. Though they continued to follow each other on social media, it was another five years before their paths crossed again. Both were considering solo projects and decided instead to join forces, ultimately naming their duo after a John Hartford poem.

Winter remembers: “Palmer got a hold of me and said, ‘You look like you need a singing buddy.’ He proposed the idea of doing an album together. As soon as we started singing together people responded immediately. Both of us were like, ‘Well, we’ll just do this.’ We kind of had shows lined up before we even had a band, because I had been working on a solo project and no one really minded that I came with somebody else.”

As it happened, when that summer wrapped, Lee had studio time booked with Dave Simonett of Trampled by Turtles as producer. “I was going to do a solo record and then I [told Dave], ‘Hey, I’m working on this new project. Let’s do this instead.’ That’s when 36 cents happened,” Lee says of the duo’s 2014 debut album.

A string of quickly-released projects followed as Winter was on a roll, churning out great songwriting for one recording after another. Somewhere along the way, the duo got into a rhythm, barely even needing to break from a tour in order to jump into a studio and produce another album. But the idea of, at some point, slowing down long enough to put a full-band effort together kept gestating. They wanted to explore sounds beyond bluegrass, to see how their songs might be able to stretch them in new directions.

By the time they visited Mogis’ studio in Omaha last year, they knew almost instinctively that it would be the place. Though Winter and Lee stuck to the core of their sound on The Perfect Plan, balancing their banjos and vocals, there are a few tracks where they veered especially far from the norm.

On “Morning Light,” for example, Winter played most of the instruments herself while Lee simply added vocals. “We decided not to have banjo on the track,” she says. “That was one we actually did [with] layers and built it up. We had a vocal line that was … kind of an obnoxious vocal line that didn’t really work. We wrote lyrics for that song during the time we were there. That one got fleshed out in the studio. But, most of [the songs] we performed all together with the band, so it was really like, ‘Learn the song and let’s go.’”

“Mike had the demos for a couple of months before we came in,” Lee adds. “He had all sorts of ideas and had some musicians in mind. Then it kind of just happened organically. Kendl and I started playing through the songs and everyone would start jamming. It was pretty awesome.”

Mogis encouraged the duo to bring their own drummer, so they roped in Minneapolis mainstay J.T. Bates (Bonny Light Horseman, Big Red Machine). Fans of bluegrass know well that banjos and drums don’t always mix, as the latter can so easily overpower the percussive tonality of the former. Luckily Bates’ subtlety is so on-point his rhythms seem to follow the duo’s acoustic strings, rather than the other way around.

Lee explains, “On that ‘Wild Animal’ track, for instance, we just started jamming. Rather than drive the song in a particular direction, J.T. was able to find the best way to accent what was already happening.”

“Sometimes as we arrange, we fill up the space according to how we’re going to play as a duo,” adds Winter. “On the one hand, it gives us endless options. On the other hand, it gives us really limited options as to how many different sounds we can do as two people. But I think we left some space on these tunes to let people be creative. We didn’t want to get in there and have too strong an idea [of how everything should sound] because we knew Mike was magic and we wanted him to have a voice in it.”

Thanks to this somewhat laissez-faire approach, the arrangements are deeply intuitive, an extension of the intimate pairing of the duo itself. Rather than drown out the delicate subtlety that makes the Lowest Pair such a stirring band in the first place, The Perfect Plan centers the duo well and allows their unique vibe to lead the way.

The result is so sonically pleasing, it can be easy to forget there are so many people in the room behind the group. Winter and Lee had planned to pull that studio band together for a few live dates once the album dropped, but that part of the release schedule is on hold for now. Luckily, there’s plenty of richness on this album to dig into in the coming weeks.

But if The Perfect Plan is the album the Lowest Pair has been building up to for years, don’t mistake the duo for having hit their stride.

“A stride implies it was kind of smooth,” says Winter, provoking laughter from her bandmate. “I think we just got hooked on each other and the project has a momentum. I think we just kind of rolled into a lifestyle where this is what we do.”


Photo credit: Sarah Kathryn Wainwright

LISTEN: FRETLAND, “Must’ve Been Wild”

Artist: FRETLAND
Hometown: Snohomish, Washington
Song: “Must’ve Been Wild”
Album: Fretland
Release Date: May 22, 2020
Label: Tone Tree Music

In Their Words: “We all know how it feels to love someone who doesn’t love us back. To be the friend, to pine from afar. I wanted to capture a love triangle where the characters were earnest in wanting what was best for each other. Of course they all deeply want to be seen and loved in return, but when they recognize that same struggle in each other they are moved to be a good friend and have compassion. To love someone and know they might never love you the same way is so beautiful and heartbreaking to me. That’s true love.” — Hillary Grace Fretland


Photo credit: Jake Hanson

LISTEN: Jessi McNeal, “Out of Reach”

Artist: Jessi McNeal
Hometown: A working 5-acre farm in the rural Skagit Valley, north of Seattle, Washington
Song: “Out Of Reach”
Album: The Driveway
Release Date: August 23, 2019

In Their Words: “This song is about questioning and self-doubt. I wrote it from the perspective of an artist asking, ‘Is my work good enough?’ but it’s equally about all facets of life for me. ‘Am I making the right decision? Do I really want to commit to this thing?’ Ultimately, it’s about fear, and I’m trying to rest more in what I know to be true as opposed to getting hung up on all of the possibilities and worst-case scenarios when I’m facing a decision.” — Jessi McNeal


Photo credit: Arlene Chambers Photography

LISTEN: Lizzie Weber, “When You Look at Me”

Artist: Lizzie Weber
Hometown: Seattle, Washington via St. Louis, Missouri
Song: “When You Look at Me”
Release Date: May 31, 2019 (single)

In Their Words: “This song is an intimate reflection on the physical and emotional feelings that arose when I found myself falling in love. When composing it, I wanted that intimacy to be palpable; for it to feel as though it were a poem written from one lover to another. I kept the arrangement simple, leaving space for the vocal to be surrounded by the warm tones of the open tuning on my acoustic guitar and melodic embellishments from piano, strings, and the electric. My hope is that it inspires the listener to reflect on a moment in time when they felt enraptured by another.” — Lizzie Weber


Photo credit: Tony Hammons

WATCH: “Song for Ora,” Jacob Navarro with Navid Eliot

Artist: Jacob Navarro with Navid Eliot
Hometown: Anacortes, Washington
Song: “Song for Ora”
Album: Otter House Sketches

In Their Words: “This melody came about while thinking of my daughter, who is now all grown up and a mom herself, a fact that never ceases to amaze me! I found that I could focus on the song’s intention best by just letting the guitar do the talking, and it ended up becoming the first of a few instrumental songs on my new record, Otter House Sketches. We filmed this video where I mixed the record, in an old marina warehouse called The Baitshop. There aren’t many hole in the wall art spaces left in Seattle, because most have been hit with the wrecking ball and turned into condos, but this one is still standing. There’s a little greasy spoon at the end of the building, where after an all-nighter of mixing songs you can blearily walk downstairs and grab a coffee and some pancakes, and look out at the boats in the marina. It’s perfect, really!” — Jacob Navarro


Photo credit: Luke Dumke