Tag: Yola

The BGS Radio Hour – Episode 212

Posted on by Amy Reitnouer

Welcome to the BGS Radio Hour! Since 2017, this weekly radio show and podcast has been a recap of all the great music, new and old, featured on the digital pages of BGS. This week, we bring you new music from John Hiatt and Jerry Douglas, Yola, and more from our Artist of the Month, Chris Thile! Remember to check back every week for a new episode of the BGS Radio Hour.

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Bill and the Belles – “Happy Again (I’ll Never Be)”

To kick things off on the Radio Hour this week is a new release from Johnson City, Tennessee-based Bill and the Belles. We caught up with them recently on our 5+5 series, where they discussed hosting the revived Farm & Fun Time series in Bristol, Virginia, as well as their musical influences and career-based mission statements. Between lead singer Kris’ songs, their great harmonies, and instrumental prowess, Bill and the Belles are just plain enjoyable.


Sam Filiatreau – “Wrecking Ball”

When asked about his musical influences on a recent 5+5, Louisville-based Sam Filiatreau highlighted country greats John Prine and Guy Clark. Those influences combined with his classic twang shine through on “Wrecking Ball.”

Loose Cattle – “He’s Old, She’s High”

Loose Cattle hope they’ve made Porter & Dolly, Johnny & June, and John Doe & Exene all equally proud with this track, written by their longtime friend and songwriter Paul Sanchez.

Miranda Lambert – “Tin Man”

In this new live version of “Tin Man,” Miranda Lambert reminds us how moving a simple performance can be. The solo acoustic version of the track comes from a new album and film that Lambert and fellow songwriters (and proud Texas natives) Jack Ingram and Jon Randall have crafted. Titled The Marfa Tapes, the album features the recordings that are shown in The Marfa Tapes Film.

Chris Thile – “Dionysus”

Our Artist of the Month, Chris Thile, has been the busiest man in bluegrass for a long time. Between hosting Live From Here, shows with the Punch Brothers, or Nickel Creek reunions, Chris didn’t get to slow down much before the pandemic forced him to. Recorded in an old church-turned-studio, his new album Laysongs reflects on his Christian upbringing and community, and how that relates to where he is now. 

Turner Cody and the Soldiers of Love – “Lonely Days in Hollywood”

In the words of Turner Cody and the Soldiers of Love, “Lonely Days in Hollywood” is a “kind of meditation on the transactional nature of our culture of celebrity; how our dreams belie reality and nothing is for free.”

Tray Wellington – “Pond Mountain Breakaway”

Tray Wellington originally wrote the main riff for “Pond Mountain Breakaway” on the electric guitar, but then realized it would be well-suited for an uptempo bluegrass tune.

John Hiatt and the Jerry Douglas Band – “Mississippi Phone Booth”

For his latest record, famed roots singer and songwriter John Hiatt enlisted the help of the Jerry Douglas Band. Recorded in famed RCA Studio B in Nashville, Leftover Feelings returned Hiatt to his earliest days in town when he lived in a $15-a-week rented room on Music Row. Although the space could easily intimidate due to the amount of classics recorded there, Hiatt suggested that you don’t actually think about it, because it’s such a comfortable environment.  

Paula Cole – “What a Wonderful World”

Paula Cole’s new album American Quilt showcases her impressive vocal range as she sings some of her favorite American standards. She chose “What a Wonderful World” to close the album intentionally, stating that the song “unifies people.”

Satsang – “Malachi”

We caught up with Drew McManus of Satsang recently, and he shared with us the touching story of “Malachi,” a song about his son, which he wrote in the hospital the night he was born.

Rhiannon Giddens with Francesco Turrisi – “O Death”

“O Death” is the latest installment in Rhiannon Giddens ongoing collaborations with her partner, Francesco Turrisi, a gifted Italian multi-instrumentalist. Their new record, They’re Calling Me Home, was inspired by the year they spent together in Ireland, amidst the pandemic. They’re Calling Me Home echoes the many ways that a tumultuous 2020 had many of us yearning for the comforts of home, of the past, or of those that were called home from this world.

Yola – “Stand For Myself”

“Stand For Myself” is Yola’s newest single from her upcoming album, set to release in July. The track is a mix of “symphonic soul and classic pop,” and its message is universal — that real change can come from thinking, living, and standing for ourselves. 

Merle Monroe – “Shelby Tell Me”

Tim Raybon & Daniel Grindstaff of Merle Monroe hope listeners will be captured by the classic sound and wonderful story line of “Shelby Tell Me.” In talking to BGS recently, they stated, “our intention is to move the listener emotionally through the lyrics and melody.”

Pilgrim – “Darkness of the Bar”

When BGS spoke with Beau Roberson of Pilgrim about “Darkness of the Bar,” he shared that the song “…is about the dark struggles of life, and trying to see the light in those dark times.”

Photos: (L to R) Miranda Lambert by Jim and Ilde Cook of CookHouseMedia; Yola by Joseph Ross Smith; John Hiatt by David McClister

The Show on the Road – Robert Finley

Posted on by Shelby Williamson

This week on The Show On The Road, we journey to northern Louisiana for a unique conversation with sprightly blues and southern rock singer Robert Finley, who began making music in his cotton-growing family in the 1960s, and has been rediscovered and empowered through his remarkable partnership with Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys.

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Finley’s funky and cheeky comeback album, Goin’ Platinum (which sounds like a lost Motown gem), came in 2017. In May of 2021, he celebrated the release of the deeply personal follow-up, Sharecropper’s Son. As you can hear in the episode, even in his late sixties, Finley is a playful force to be reckoned with and isn’t shy about sharing how faith and music have gotten him through decades of tragedy and hardship. In 2019 he even reached the semi-finals of America’s Got Talent.

Growing up in a religious home where blues and soul music was rarely allowed to be heard, Finley worked as an army helicopter repairman and professional carpenter for many years, often keeping his keen musical ideas to himself. He may now be legally blind, but the always-sharp dressed Finley (he loves a snakeskin jacket) was spotted busking on the streets of Helena, Arkansas and the blues-obsessed Auerbach was smitten with Finley’s raw, swampy Jimi Hendrix meets James Brown tone.

Both of Finley’s critically-applauded releases subsequently came out on Auerbach’s Easy Eye Sound, which has become a home for previously unheralded Black artists like Yola, Jimmy “Duck” Holmes, and Leo Bud Welch.

(Editor’s note: Read BGS’ recent interview with Robert Finley here.)

 

WATCH: Yola, “Stand for Myself”

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Yola
Hometown: Brighton, England
Song: “Stand for Myself”
Album: Stand for Myself
Release Date: July 30, 2021
Label: Easy Eye Sound

In Their Words: “My school years were during the 90s and 00s, and Missy Elliott’s videos were always aesthetically superior to me. I feel that the video is set in the antechamber to freedom. The feeling of escaping something truly oppressive and heading towards an unknown with a sense of hope and choice you haven’t felt in a long time. We all have the capacity to go through this process in our own minds, I kinda look like a superhero at times, but I’m not. I’m just a person trying to be free.

“The song’s protagonist ‘token’ has been shrinking themselves to fit into the narrative of another’s making, but it becomes clear that shrinking is pointless. This song is about a celebration of being awake from the nightmare supremacist paradigm. Truly alive, awake and eyes finally wide open and trained on your path to self actualisation. You are thinking freely and working on undoing the mental programming that has made you live in fear. It is about standing for ourselves throughout our lives and real change coming when we challenge our thinking. This is who I’ve always been in music and in life. There was a little hiatus where I got brainwashed out of my own majesty, but a bitch is back.” — Yola

Directed by Allister Ann.
Photo credit: Seth Dunlap

With Her Banjo and Best Friends, Allison Russell Delivers ‘Outside Child’ (Part 2 of 2)

Posted on by Editor

Allison Russell’s first solo album offers an intimate look into her life, yet it’s far more than just her musical vision that elevates Outside Child to one of the year’s most eloquent albums. Working with Dan Knobler in Nashville, she populated the studio with musicians like Joe Pisapia, Jason Burger, Chris Merrill, Jamie Dick, and Drew Lindsay, as well as exceptional guests such as Yola, Ruth Moody, Erin Rae, and the McCrary Sisters. She describes them as her “chosen family,” accompanying her as she shares stories about other families in her life.

Enjoy the second half of our BGS Artist of the Month interview with Allison Russell. (Editor’s note: Read the first half of our AOTM feature here.)

BGS: You can feel that sense of community between the musicians on this record. Can you talk a little bit about what it felt like while you were tracking?

Allison Russell: These songs were recorded in four days. Everything that you are hearing, I sang live with the band. We did it at Sound Emporium Studio A. There’s a lovely, big room with glass doors that you can open up. Everyone was in a semi-circle. It was a magical experience. We would gather in the center of the room and work out an arrangement together and then we would record the song. Most of what you are hearing is the second take. That was sort of when it magically coalesced, when everyone was communing and free flowing.

Dan [Knobler] shares my deep conviction that it is not about perfection. It is about capturing the communication in as honest and as true of a way as you can. That has been my approach ever since working with Joe Henry four or five years ago on a record called Real Midnight. So what you are hearing is a community choosing to come together to uplift these songs. I will be grateful for that for the rest of my life, even if no one ever heard the record. That experience of getting to record that way with chosen family. I can’t imagine a more healing, supportive environment than I experienced.

This is your first solo record and though you’ve made many records with groups, I’m wondering if the feeling of picking the songs and the sounds was different for you as a solo artist?

I don’t know that I really picked them. I think that the songs just poured out. So much of the sound is my community of artists. I would never dream of telling any of those artists what to play. I trust their ears and I trusted Dan Knobler’s ears, who produced the record. And I trusted my own ears too, of course, but really what we did was cast the room with people who we love and trust. What was different is that I’d never worked with Dan before and I trusted him bringing in two of his brothers, Joe Pisapia and Jason Burger to join the family of musical kindred that I’ve been part of. A lot of the artists who played on the record were artists that I’d met over my many years and different projects. …

And then since I moved to Nashville in 2017, I’ve been going to hear the McCrary Sisters and loving them. I really got to know them through Yola, because they formed a friendship at a festival in Scotland and I got to know them through her. I’m a huge admirer of them and their work and their harmonies. I reached out to them thinking I wouldn’t be able to afford them and they were so generous. They came and sang for way less than they are worth and worked within my budget. I was honored that they came. So it was really a matter of casting the room and then letting people shine the way they do.

I read your speech from the [2020] Women’s March [in Nashville]. It is really gorgeous, thought- and emotion-provoking. In it you mention that you are the hero of your own story which is wildly inspiring and important for us all to remember – that there are some things we can save ourselves from. Can you talk a bit about ways in which you save yourself?

I feel like connection with a loving community is what saves me every day. Art and music save me every day. I’ve been a book worm my entire life and I can’t emphasize enough, I don’t think I would have survived my childhood if I hadn’t had the escape of literature. Being able to go into other worlds and other imaginings and literally inside of someone else’s mind and take refuge and find inspiration and comfort and strength. Disappearing into books was the first kind of way that I learned how to try to be brave. It was reading about brave protagonists and people in situations worse than I could imagine. I got very obsessed in my tweens with reading first person accounts of survival of the Holocaust. It put into context what was happening to me, that if people could survive that, then I could survive what I was experiencing.

Being in a community with people that uplift you and see you and value you and you do the same for them, that is life-changing. I have that with my partner J.T. I have that with my sisters in Our Native Daughters. We wrote a whole record together, uplifting each other and bringing forward the perspective of Black women within the diaspora and within the historical record. Our particular demographic is so often left out of any kind of historical record in any kind of first-person way, with agency and lived experience. That has been a source of great strength and resilience.

And then to connect with my ancestors. To delve into all of the history. With all of the intergenerational trauma and abuse, there is also incredible intergenerational strength and resilience and transcendence. The ability to overcome circumstances I cannot even dream of. My many-times-great-great-grandmother Quasheba survived being enslaved. She survived being ripped away from everything she knew, her family and language and home. She survived the horrible Middle Passage. She survived multiple plantations and having her children taken. If she can survive all that, I can get through this.

Do you remember what prompted you to pick up a banjo for the first time?

I was in a band called Po Girl, that was my first baby band and the woman I started the band with, Trish Klein, played the banjo. She taught me my first few chords and I just kept playing from there. I met Rhiannon Giddens in 2006 at the Vancouver Folk Music Festival and I was so excited to meet another Black woman that played banjo, because I was the only one that I knew. She told me about the Black Banjo Gathering, which I never got to attend. I’ve met so many dear friends who were a part of that, like Valerie June. All of us in Our Native Daughters play banjo and that has been a deep communion for us.

I think Rhiannon’s minstrel banjo is one of the most beautiful sounds I’ve ever heard. I’ve adapted my little Americana Goodtime banjo to sound as much like that as I can by adding gut strings and a fiber skin head. I’ve modified the bridge a bit to give it that deeper resonance. For me the banjo has allowed me to access my songwriting in a different way. I’ve noticed this over time as I’ve picked up more instruments. Different songs come through on different instruments and now for me, the banjo has become my primary songwriting instrument.

This album is coming out hopefully at the tail end of the pandemic so I’m guessing some of the songs have not been performed in front of an audience yet. Are there songs you are particularly excited about presenting on stage and on the flip side are there songs you are nervous or trepidatious about presenting to an audience?

Basically none of them. Of course I’ve done some virtual performances here and there of a couple of them. But they have not been played live. I am always nervous about everything. I’m just a very anxious person most of the time. But where that stops, usually, is on stage, when I get to be in communion with my fellow artists and with the people who have come to listen. That is very much a two-way exchange. The answer is, I’ll be nervous about all of it right up until the moment we are playing and then I will be in the happiest place I know.

(Editor’s note: Read part one of our Artist of the Month interview with Allison Russell here.)

Photo credit: Marc Baptiste (top); Laura E. Partain (in story)

The BGS Radio Hour – Episode 207

Posted on by Shelby Williamson

Welcome to the BGS Radio Hour! Since 2017, this weekly radio show and podcast has been a recap of all the great music, new and old, featured on the digital pages of BGS. This week, we bring you new music from our Artist of the Month, Allison Russell, an exclusive live performance by Madison Cunningham from BGS’ Whiskey Sour Happy Hour, and much more. Remember to check back every week for a new episode of the BGS Radio Hour.

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Sunny War – “Losing Hand”

Coming out of COVID isolation with fingers crossed and masks on, many artists are releasing new and exciting music. We’re particularly thrilled about Sunny War’s latest release, Simple Syrup. We caught up with the LA-based guitarist and singer for an edition of 5+5 and talked everything — from Elizabeth Cotten’s guitar playing to eating black-eyed peas with Nina Simone.

Ted Russell Kamp – “Lightning Strikes Twice”

Singer-songwriter Ted Russell Kamp originally wrote “Lightning Strikes Twice” in the style of Billy Joe Shaver, as a honky tonk number. But, for his upcoming album Solitaire, he decided to rework the track, bluegrass style.

No-No Boy – “Gimme Chills”

A student of singer-songwriter, multimedia artist, and scholar No-No Boy (AKA Julian Saporiti) once called his song “Gimme Chills” a “fucked up love letter to the Philippines.” No-No Boy agreed. The track is part history lesson and part tribute.

Yola – “Diamond Studded Shoes”

Yola’s roots-pop outing “Diamond Studded Shoes” is a song that explores the divides created to distract us from those few who are in charge of the majority of the world’s wealth. It calls on all of us to unite and turn our focus to those with a stranglehold on humanity.

Dale Ann Bradley – “Yellow Creek”

BGS recently caught up with Kentucky’s own Dale Ann Bradley, discussing her recent album, Things She Couldn’t Get Over — her first release since departing group Sister Sadie. Each of the songs on the project deal with hard times, and finding the courage that gets us through. “Yellow Creek,” a song about the forced removal of Native Americans from their land, finds Bradley giving us a reminder to walk with empathy.

Josephine Johnson – “Where I Belong”

“Where I Belong” by singer-songwriter Josephine Johnson was inspired by characters from British Navy novels set during the Napoleonic wars. Love and high seas adventure, to be sure!

The Wandering Hearts – “Gold”

Inspired by their song “Gold,” The Wandering Hearts created a Mixtape for BGS, entitled The Golden Tonic, it’s a selection of songs that have helped them through tough situations, inspired them, and take them back to specific moments in time. They hope that the Golden Tonic will work its magic on the listener after this heavy and hard year.

Eli West – “Brick in the Road”

In a recent 5+5, multi-instrumentalist and singer-songwriter Eli West discusses the influence of Paul Brady and Irish folk music, understated chaos in visual art, and drunk BBQ with Sting and Mark Knopfler.

Allison Russell – “Nightflyer”

Our Artist of the Month Allison Russell has already made a mark on the modern roots scene through various powerhouse groups, like Birds of Chicago and supergroup Our Native Daughters. Now, she’s stepping out with her first solo record, Outside Child. Stick around all month long for exclusive content from Russell.

Bhi Bhiman – “Magic Carpet Ride”

Bhi Bhiman reimagines iconic rock song “Magic Carpet Ride” in the style of old country blues players – artists like Mississippi John Hurt, Lightnin’ Hopkins, and others who’ve played a huge role in Bhiman’s evolution as a guitarist.

Parker Millsap – “Vulnerable”

Parker Millsap, one of our recent guests on The Show On The Road, is a gifted singer-songwriter who grew up in a Pentecostal church and creates a fiery gospel backdrop for his tender (then window-rattling) rock ‘n’ roll voice.

Madison Cunningham – “L.A. (Looking Alive)”

Last spring, on our debut episode of Whiskey Sour Happy Hour, Los Angeles-based, Grammy-nominated guitarist and singer-songwriter Madison Cunningham kicked off the entire series with an acoustic rendition of “L.A. (Looking Alive).”

Stash Wyslouch – “Lord Protect My Soul”

From bluegrass mad scientist Stash Wyslouch, formerly of progressive string band the Deadly Gentlemen, here’s a traditional number turned upside down, taking a Bill Monroe tune and contrasting it with polytonal backup. Wyslouch told BGS that while he gravitates towards gospel standards in the bluegrass world, his own style drifts to the absurd and unexpected. Like a bluegrass Frank Zappa!

Bob Malone – “The River Gives”

Singer-songwriter and pianist Bob Malone wrote “The River Gives” after the devastating 2016 flooding in West Virginia, but he never had a chance to produce the track like he wanted to – until now!

Marty Stuart – “One In A Row”

Marty Stuart’s new project, Songs I Sing In The Dark, is a collection of twenty songs that he curated that helped him through the tough times that we all saw in 2020. Stuart says this Willie Nelson song has followed him around since he first heard it over twenty years ago. “I think of it as an old friend, same as Willie. It’s a friend for the ages, and an excellent song to sing in the dark.

Photos: (L to R) Madison Cunningham by Claire Marie Vogel; Yola by Joseph Ross Smith; Allison Russell by Marc Baptiste

Artist of the Month: Allison Russell

Posted on by Editor

Allison Russell has already made an exceptional impression in roots music — first in the duo Birds of Chicago, then as a member of Our Native Daughters. Now with her new album Outside Child, she’s putting her own story front and center. Whether she’s singing in English or French, Russell’s voice feels like satin, comfortable and cool. Yet she weaves some of the most painful memories of her formative years in Montréal into the fabric of her Fantasy Recordings debut.

Special guests on the album include the McCrary Sisters, Ruth Moody, Erin Rae, and Yola. Upon revealing the project, Russell wrote, “This is my first solo album. It is acutely personal. It was hard for me to write, harder still to sing, play, and share. Also a relief. Like sucking the poison from a snake bite. Thanks to the supreme empathy, musicality, kindness, sensitivity, and humour of each artist who brought these songs to life with me, the recording process became — by some mystical alchemy –joyous and empowering…. Eased by loving communal laughter as much as shared tears.”

Specifically pulling from the childhood trauma she experienced at the hands of her stepfather, she adds, “This is my attempt at truth and reconciliation and forgiveness — a reckoning and a remembrance. This is my attempt to be the hero of my own history, despite the shame that has been my closest and constant companion all these years.”

We are proud to present Allison Russell as our BGS Artist of the Month for May. In the days ahead, look for a new performance video, an exclusive interview (read part one here)(read part two here), and a sleek style shoot with this singular artist, who now calls Nashville home alongside her partner JT Nero and their young daughter. Discover more of her musical journey with our BGS Essentials playlist.

Photo credit: Marc Baptiste

WATCH: Yola, “Diamond Studded Shoes”

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Yola
Single: “Diamond Studded Shoes”
Album: Stand for Myself
Release Date: July 30, 2021
Label: Easy Eye Sound

In Their Words: “This song explores the false divides created to distract us from those few who are in charge of the majority of the world’s wealth and use the ‘divide and conquer’ tactic to keep it. This song calls on us to unite and turn our focus to those with a stranglehold on humanity. The video is in part inspired by The Truman Show and is about being trapped in a false construct. It is supposedly perfect, but you’re trapped in a life that wasn’t meant for you. I wanted to convey the feeling that everything you know to be true is not quite working the way it’s supposed to. The island at the end is a paradigm of mental conditioning; we are all trapped on an island of our own thinking, until we change it.” — Yola

Photo credit: Joseph Ross Smith

BGS Celebrates Black History Month (Part 2 of 2)

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

We invite our readers to celebrate Black History Month as we always do, by denoting that celebrating Black contributions in bluegrass, country, and old-time — and roots music as a whole — requires centering Black creators, artists, musicians, and perspectives in our community daily, not just in February.

Over the past year we’ve recommitted ourselves to fully incorporating Black Voices into everything we do and we hope that our readers and listeners, our followers and fans, and our family of artists constantly celebrate, acknowledge, and pay credit to Blackness and Black folks, who we have to thank for everything we love about American roots music.

Following a look back on our BGS Artists of the Month, Cover Story, and Shout & Shine subjects, we close our listicle celebration of Black History Month this year with a sampling of some of the most popular features, premieres, music videos, Friends & Neighbors posts, and 5+5 interviews that have featured Black, African American, and otherwise Afro-centric music. We are so grateful for the ongoing, vital contributions of Black artists, writers, creators, and journalists to American roots music and we’re proud to pay credit exactly where it’s due, in this small way.

Black history is American roots music history and all of these incredible folks certainly prove that point.

An edition of our Roots on Screen column featured an interview with Branford Marsalis and dove into his soundtrack for the new Netflix film based on August Wilson’s 1982 play, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.

Bona fide soul man Jerry “Swamp Dogg” Williams took us behind the scenes of his album, Sorry You Couldn’t Make It, showing humorous, casual, candid moments from the project’s creation — and giving us all the opportunity to be there, even though we “couldn’t make it.”

Sabine McCalla simply blew us away with her Western AF video session of an original, “Baby, Please Don’t Go,” last year, and we were ecstatic to include her on the BGS Stage lineup for Cabin Fever Fest last weekend, too.

Joy Oladokun’s vision and determination, and her unrelenting trust in both, paid off on a texturally varied second album, in defense of my own happiness (vol. 1), a self-produced exercise in vulnerability and subject of a feature interview. Oladokun will perform a few of her folk-pop songs as part of our Yamaha Guitars + BGS Spotlight Showcase during Folk Alliance’s virtual Folk Unlocked conference this week, as well.

The preeminent hip-hop-meets-bluegrass band, Gangstagrass, stopped by for a 5+5 and to plug their latest, No Time for Enemies. Gangstagrass were another excellent addition to our Cabin Fever Fest lineup and we look forward to being able to catch them in-person again, soon.

To mark Juneteenth 2020, we published a thoughtful round up of new movement music, a sort of patchwork soundtrack for protest, struggle, civil rights, and progress including songs by Leon Bridges, Chastity Brown, Kam Franklin (listen above), and more.

We were ecstatic to feature Valerie June, Rhiannon Giddens & Francesco Turrisi, Ben Harper, and Yola during our five-episode virtual online variety show, Whiskey Sour Happy Hour, last spring. The show raised over $50,000 for COVID-19 relief — through MusiCares and personal protective equipment via Direct Relief. WSHH season 2? We want that to happen, too! Stay tuned.

Pianist Matt Rollings’ collaboration with Americana-soul duo The War & Treaty was — UNDERSTANDABLY — a mini viral hit, taking off on our social media channels.

Rhiannon Giddens also powerfully and captivatingly warned all of us not to call her names with a new song recently: “The framework in the song is a love affair, but it can happen in any kind of connection,” she explained in a press release. “The real story was accepting my inner strength and refusing to continue being gaslit and held back; and refusing to keep sacrificing my mental health for the sake of anything or anyone.”

We visited once again with now mononymous Kenyan songwriter, Ondara, whose pandemic album, Folk n’ Roll Vol. 1: Tales of Isolation, kept many of us company during sheltering in place.

Speaking of which, Crys Matthews and Heather Mae didn’t let guidelines around social distancing keep them down, as evidenced on “Six Feet Apart.”

Our country-soul queen, Yola, wowed all of us with a Tiny Desk (Home) Concert and some acoustic renderings of her resplendent countrypolitan songs.

As did veteran bluesman Don Bryant, who after a lifelong career writing and recording earned his first Grammy nomination in 2020 for You Make Me Feel, a record that is nothing less than a physical incarnation of rhythm and blues. His Tiny Desk (Home) Concert is entrancing.

Selwyn Birchwood rightly reminded blues fans that it isn’t all sad; in fact, if you aren’t partying to the blues you’re doing it wrong. Just listen to “I Got Drunk, Laid and Stoned” to find out.

Leigh Nash and Ruby Amanfu joined forces on a Congressman John Lewis-inspired number entitled “Good Trouble” just last week, a perfect song to mark Black History Month.

Last year, to mark Women’s History Month (coming up again in March!) we spotlighted the huge influence and contributions of Elizabeth “Libba” Cotten, a folk singer and picker famous for playing her guitar left-handed — and upside down and “backwards!” Though Cotten spent most of her adult life working as a housekeeper, her original folksongs and her idiosyncratic picking style still inspire bluegrass, old-time, and blues musicians alike.

Country singer-songwriter Miko Marks returns this year with new music for the first time in thirteen years, after effectively being shut out of Music City and its country music machine because of her Blackness. A recent single release reclaims “Hard Times,” a song composed by Stephen Foster, who was an American songbook stalwart and folk music legend who performed in minstrel shows and in blackface.

Chris Pierce challenges his listeners with a new song this month, “American Silence,” because as he puts it, “It’s important to not give up on reaching out to those who have stayed silent for too long about the issues that affect those around us all.” A timely reminder to all of us — especially those of us who are allies and accomplices — as we approach the one-year anniversary of this most recent racial reckoning in the United States.

And finally, to close this gargantuan list — which is still just the tip of the iceberg of Black music in bluegrass, country, and Americana — we’ll leave you with a relative newcomer in country-soul and Americana, Annie Mack. Mack’s gorgeous blend of genres and styles is anchored by her powerful and tender voice and we were glad to be stopped in our tracks by her debut EP, Testify. 

Editor’s Note: Read part one of our Black History Month collection here.

Photo credit (L to R): Chris Pierce by Mathieu Bitton; Elizabeth Cotten; Annie Mack by Shelly Mosman.

WATCH: Yola Takes Her Tiny Desk (Home) Concert Outside

Posted on by Editor

Taking NPR’s Tiny Desk (Home) Concert series to the socially distanced outdoors, much-loved artist Yola offers outstanding acoustic versions of three songs from her breakout album, Walk Through Fire, as well as a song from her debut EP. The Bristol-born (that’s Bristol, England) singer-songwriter is as vivacious as ever, yet the outdoor setting of her home concert channels a different, more personal presentation. Yola accompanies herself on guitar, joined by gifted guitarist Jordan Tice (also a member of the band Hawktail). There’s not much one can do to strip down the power and energy of Yola’s songs, but the two paint the them in a somewhat gentler light.

The second song on the docket is from Yola’s 2016 EP, and in the song’s introduction, she describes the newfound relevance of the song in light of the ever-growing Black Lives Matter movement and our nation’s struggles with the global pandemic. The song, titled “Dead and Gone,” speaks on the impossible struggle that she has felt as a Black woman in a world wrought with racism and sexism. Yola’s delivery is a powerful statement on pretense, one that needs to be heard now more than ever. Watch the full Tiny Desk Home Concert here.

 

LISTEN: Yola, “Hold On”

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Yola, with Brandi Carlile and Natalie Hemby on backing vocals, Sheryl Crow on piano, and Jason Isbell on guitar
Hometown: Bristol, England
Single: “Hold On”
Release Date: October 9, 2020

In Their Words: “‘Hold On’ is a conversation between me and the next generation of young black girls. My mother’s advice would always stress caution, that all that glitters isn’t gold, and that my black female role models on TV are probably having a hard time. She warned me that I should rethink my calling to be a writer and a singer…. but to me that was all the more reason I should take up this space. ‘Hold On’ is asking the next gen to take up space, to be visible and to show what it looks to be young, gifted and black.” — Yola

Editor’s Note: A portion of profits from sales of the track will be donated to MusicCares and National Bailout Collective.

Photo credit: Joseph Ross