Trampled by Turtles, the American original Minnesota-based sextet, is back with a highly-anticipated new album, Alpenglow. Their tenth, and perhaps finest album yet, is produced by Jeff Tweedy of Wilco, and will be released on October 28th.
The album title refers to the rosy glow that washes over the mountains just between dusk and dawn, the liminal space that exists between what was, and what is yet to come. Setting the tone for the album, the opening song, “It’s So Hard to Hold On” toys with the tension that exists between nostalgia, and our inherent desire for renewal.
Almost 20 years after first getting together, Trampled –– lead singer and songwriter Dave Simonett, bassist Tim Saxhaug, banjo player Dave Carroll, mandolinist Erik Berry, fiddle player Ryan Young, and cellist Eamonn McLain –– explore new ways to surprise us and one another. The rootsy outfit has learned a thing or two about change, somehow managing to operate as a quirky bluegrass rock band of sorts, one that employs string instrumentation with folk and punk influences. They can change from a foot-stomping, buoyant ditty, such as “Don’t Let Go,” to a mellow, string-fueled stroll, like “A Lifetime to Find,” just as quickly as they can shift the tone from uplifting to forlorn on Alpenglow.
Consistent with the theme of change, Trampled decided to work with a producer for Alpenglow, a move that is unusual for the group. Dave Simonett’s heartfelt lyrics and earthy voice, augmented by the band’s perfectly layered and robust harmonies, were taken to new heights with the addition of Tweedy’s perspective. “I came in with songs I thought were finished, and then Jeff was really great about taking them apart, adding something here, taking something away there. He gave us fresh ears on songs and new ideas for how to present them. We all just sat in a circle and played,” says Simonett.
The Trampled-Tweedy experiment results in an album that is sure to have lasting power.
Now he walks in quiet solitude the forests and the streams Seeking grace in every step he takes His sight has turned inside himself to try and understand The serenity of a clear blue mountain lake And the Colorado Rocky Mountain high I've seen it rainin' fire in the sky…”
John Denver, the two-time Grammy Award-winning singer songwriter and Poet Laureate of Colorado, wrote the lyrics for “Rocky Mountain High” while camping during the Perseid Meteor Shower. Denver’s lyrics hint at his Thoreau-like appreciation for the transcendent and divine beauty of the natural wonders in Colorado.
Despite the fact that his commitment and skills as a vocalist, guitarist, performer and songwriter were largely underrated by the music community, Denver is the 53rd highest selling artist worldwide, with over 33 million records sold. Rocky Mountain High was the first of Denver’s seven Billboard Top Ten albums. He also released seven Multiplatinum, 13 Platinum, and 20 Gold U.S. Certified albums.
Denver wrote a string of classics: “Annie’s Song,” “Leaving On a Jet Plane,” “Sunshine On My Shoulders,” “Back Home Again,” “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” “Rocky Mountain High, and his catalog continues to sell thousands of units per week.
Since 2007, “Rocky Mountain High,” title track from his 1972 album, is officially recognized as a state song of Colorado.
Colorado Governor, Jared Polis, recently confirmed the renaming of “Mountain Lion Trail” in Golden Gate Canyon State Park, which will now be called the “Rocky Mountain High Trail”. Polis says, “Here in Colorado, we’ve always known that our majestic mountains, our bright blue skies, our starlit nights and our forest and streams were the stuff of legends—but John Denver made them the stuff of song lyrics, too, and not just any lyrics, but world-famous lyrics that span genres and generations”.
Earlier this month, Denver’s estate commemorated the 50th anniversary of Rocky Mountain High with a special performance by the Colorado Symphony Orchestra, featuring audio and video of Denver himself, and backed by members of his former band, who shared stories about Denver throughout the evening.
Denver’s Estate is now teaming up with Sony Legacy to digitize from their archives, “John Denver's Rocky Mountain High”—a concert special filmed in 1974 at Colorado’s Red Rocks Amphitheater, which will air on PBS in spring 2023.
A limited-edition blue vinyl reissue of the album is out now on Windstar Records and Secretly Distribution.
Rocky Mountain High Track List
Side One
1. Rocky Mountain High
2. Mother Nature's Son
3. Paradise
4. For Baby (For Bobbie)
5. Darcy Farrow
6. Prisoners
Side Two
1. Goodbye Again
2. Season Suite: Summer
3. Season Suite: Fal
4. Season Suite: Winter
5. Season Suite: Late Winter, Early Spring (When Everybody Goes to Mexico)
“I guess what everyone wants more than anything else is to be loved. And to know that you loved me for my singing is too much for me. Forgive me if I don’t have all the words. Maybe I can sing it and you’ll understand” –Ella Fitzgerald
When asked to write a review on the upcoming CD and LP release of Ella Fitzgerald’s Live at Montreux 1969 performance, I could not respond quickly enough.
Giddy and smiling from ear to ear, I thought to myself, the bar has been set high. It simply does not get any more legendary than Ella Fitzgerald.
Named “The First Lady of Song,” “Queen of Jazz,” and “Lady Ella,” Ella Fitzgerald won 13 Grammy-awards and sold over 40 million albums over the span of her six-decade career. She gained the respect of fellow giant in the industry, Frank Sinatra, who said, “Ella Fitzgerald is the only performer with whom I’ve ever worked who made me nervous. Because I try to work up to what she does. You know, try to pull myself up to that height, because I believe she is the greatest popular singer in the world, barring none—male or female”.
Ella Fitzgerald had a unique ability to use her voice like any instrument. She is widely known for perfectly mimicking the sound of the horn section, making her one of the most influential and highly respected scat singers of all time. American conductor Arthur Fielder once referred to Fitzgerald’s voice as the “orchestra’s richest and most versatile sound.”
Live at Montreux 1969 captures Fitzgerald’s dazzling first performance at the Montreux Jazz Festival. On this monumental night, she shared the stage with American jazz pianist and composer, Tommy Flanagan and his trio. In addition to enduring classics such as, “I Won’t Dance,” and “That Old Black Magic, the endlessly inventive Fitzgerald delivered her inspired takes on Paul McCartney’s “Hey Jude,” Cream’s “Sunshine of Your Love,” and Dionne Warwick’s “This Girl’s in Love with You”.
On January 20, 2023 Mercury Studios will release Ella Fitzgerald:Live at Montreux 1969 on CD and LP. Originally released on DVD in 2005, this is the first time this concert is being made available on audio formats.
The legend of our iconic “First Lady of Song” lives on.
Track Listing:
Side A (LP):
1. Give Me The Simple Life
2. This Girl’s in Love with You
3. I Won’t Dance
4. A Place for Lovers
5. That Old Black Magic
6. I Love You Madly
7. Trouble Is a Man
Side B (LP):
1. Sunshine of Your Love
2. Well Alright Okay You Win
3. Hey Jude
4. Scat Medley
5. A House Is Not a Home
CD:
1. Give Me The Simple Life
2. This Girl’s in Love with You
3. I Won’t Dance
4. A Place for Lovers
5. That Old Black Magic
6. Useless Landscape
7. I Love You Madly
8. Trouble Is a Man
9. A Man and A Woman
10. Sunshine of Your Love
11. Well Alright Okay You Win
12. Hey Jude
13. Scat Medley
14. A House Is Not a Home
Peter Rowan will share the stage with Railroad Earth on New Year’s Eve at the Vic Theatre in Chicago and Grateful Web was thrilled to have a chance to talk to Peter leading up to the shows...
As someone who was raised in the Appalachian region— the area that birthed so many bluegrass artists— I somehow missed out on the creative genius of GRAMMY-award winner and Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame member, Peter Rowan.
Just in case you are in the same camp as me, let me help you out.
Peter Rowan is a renaissance musician with a career that spans over six decades. Bluegrass scholar Neil Rosenberg once described Rowan as a music visionary, which is fitting for a man with a seemingly endless supply of creative juices flowing through him. He consistently has a solid stream of recordings, collaborative projects, and tours. He is a chameleon of genres, working artfully with the roots of bluegrass, newgrass, Americana, country rock, jazz, reggae, Hawaiian, and Tejano music.
His roots run deep, and they spread far and wide.
Rowan, who was born near the end of World War II, became acquainted with the ukulele after an introduction from his uncle. Songs like, “Ain’t She Sweet,” “Muleskinner Blues,” and musicians such as Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, and Chuck Berry shaped Peter in his early years. He recalls, “making up [his] own songs as [he] learned to square dance and jitterbug.”
Eventually he traded his Telecaster for a Martin acoustic guitar, and began his journey into the roots— Leadbelly, Lightning Hopkins, Josh White, John Lee Hooker, Sonny Terry, and Brownie McGhee. “They all had acoustic guitars, and the long gone lonesome blues,” Rowan says. “Finally, it was bluegrass, with its powerful vocal harmonies, and interweaving instrumentals that called me to the high lonesome sound of Bill Monroe.”
Rowan is referring to Bill Monroe, the “Father of Bluegrass,” known for creating the entire bluegrass genre. Monroe—who asked Rowan to join him as a “Bluegrass Boy” in 1964— was instrumental in his unique path of learned mastery.
“Bill told me, ‘Pete, if you can learn to play my music, you can play any kind of music!’” Rowan recalls.
Rowan is beginning to understand what Monroe saw in him. “I think as a man in his 50s looking at a 22-year-old kid, he saw me,” Rowans says. “He saw who I was before I did. He’d always yell at me on stage ‘Sing it like Pete Rowan!’ He always wanted the individuality to come out.”
Rowan finds himself in a similar situation now, which is why it is noteworthy to mention that his new album features young roots musicians like Molly Tuttle and Billy Strings. His own Bluegrass Band (Peter Rowan Bluegrass Band) features young musicians like Chris Henry on mandolin, Max Wareham on banjo, Julian Pinelli on fiddle, and Eric Thorin on acoustic bass.
“I’ve got a young band, and it’s fabulous,” Rowan exclaims. “They’re bursting with ideas. They’re in their years of inspiration. They’re really quick learners and their ears are wide open because this generation is built on everything we did, dare I say, all those years ago.”
For many, Old & In The Way (1973)— which featured Peter Rowan on guitar, Jerry Garcia on banjo, David Grisman on mandolin, and Vassar Clements on fiddle— was the gateway drug to a plethora of blazing bluegrass music.
This powerful group of bluegrass purists, with its exceptional musicianship, was revolutionary in the way that it exposed so many to the backcountry feel of bluegrass, especially significant to those who, unlike me, did not grow up in the backcountry.
In honor of Old & In the Way, Peter Rowan will share the stage with Railroad Earth on New Year’s Eve at the Vic in Chicago. “It is a pleasure to join musical forces with Railroad Earth to celebrate a new year of music with the songs of Old & In the Way,” Peter says. “Railroad Earth is part of the unfolding of that ever-blooming musical flower handed to us by Luke The Drifter, Hank Williams and Bill Monroe— with touches of John Coltrane and Oscar Peterson.”
Hank Williams’ Luke the Drifter personality is also the inspiration behind Peter Rowan’s latest album, Calling You From My Mountain. Luke the Drifter is the “genius spirit [who] carried Hank forward and stayed with him until the end,” Rowan explains. “We all now partake of Hank’s Legacy, and Luke the Drifter presides ceremoniously as we inhabit Hank’s spiritual lineage. But even deeper, Luke the Drifter holds the inner treasures for us of Hank’s inspiration. Luke the drifter IS in fact that inspiration.”
Rebel Records, who produced Calling From My Mountain says the “music sounds like Rowan himself, a modern day California dharma bum, a man as nourished by a metaphysical interest in the mysteries of the physical universe as he is by the intricacies of handcrafted music making.”
Peter Rowan has mastered the art of tapping into the cosmic energy that flows through and around us, connecting us all. Like the perfect embodiment of the trickster archetype, he is skilled at weaving in and out of any group, setting, or genre.
He is a creative powerhouse.
I may have been late to the party, but as Rowan, self-proclaimed Buddhist would undoubtedly agree with, there is no time like the present.
Do yourself a favor and join the rollicking good time that is sure to take place on December 30th and 31st with Peter Rowan and Railroad Earth at Vic Theater in Chicago.
And be sure to listen to Peter Rowan’s latest album, Calling You From My Mountain.
Railroad Earth will be celebrating New Year’s Eve in Chicago at the Vic Theatre for a two-night bluegrass extravaganza, featuring the legendary Peter Rowan. Friday night’s show is a tribute to Peter Rowan’s former outfit, Old & In The Way. The party kicks off at 8:00 on both nights. | Get tickets here: 12/30/22 | 12/31/22
This past week, mandolinist and pianist John Skehan of Railroad Earth sat down with Grateful Web to discuss the upcoming show in Chicago with Peter Rowan, and the inspiration behind their most recent album, All For The Song. Read on below for an in-depth view into the creative mind of John Skehan, as he shares his sincerest reflections on losing bandmate and friend Andy Goessling, his major influences, and what it means to be an artist.
GW: I am interested in the inspiration for Railroad Earth’s most recent album, All For The Song, which was released on April 22, 2022. Is there anything, or anyone specific, that influenced the direction RRE decided to take on that album?
JS: “We went into the studio in January of 2019 to begin work on All For The Song. Andy [Goessling] had just passed away three months earlier in October of 2018. It was an extremely painful loss after a year and a half of uncertainty. Andy had to step out of touring for a while to undergo treatment during spring of 2017, which went well enough for him to rejoin the band for a full fall, winter, and spring of touring into 2018. He was back and in great shape, playing beautifully as ever, and we still didn't know at that point that we were ultimately bound to lose him. I guess you could say we went into the studio at that point as a healing process, something to document that moment in time that had changed everything for all of us. The world was no longer the same. The band and brotherhood that we had known for eighteen years was forever altered. For the first time we sat in a studio realizing that we were now five, instead of six. It was certainly a time to look at where we were, as well as look back on everything that we'd experienced since the start. Todd states it quite nicely in the opening lyric to the title track: ‘If I told you all about it, your head would spin’.”
GW: How did you end up collaborating with Anders Osborne? Why did you choose to work with him, and also record in his home city, New Orleans?
JS: “Anders is on the roster of our management company, and was suggested by Alex Brahl our manager. Anders is a deeply spiritual cat who has been through his own fair share of trials and tribulations, so I think he was a great choice to guide the band through a new project considering what we'd all just been through.”
GW: Do you have any memorable stories or experiences that stand out from your time while recording All For The Song?
JS: “Well, we started playing some of the songs from the record on tour in early 2020, thinking that we'd be releasing it that year, then the pandemic hit. After being shut down for all that time, and then finally hitting the road again two years later, a song like "It's so Good" takes on a whole new meaning when you play it for a bunch of folks who have been isolated from one another for so long. ‘It's so good to be here again, seeing all of my friends in one place’.”
GW: How does this album compare to your others? What sets it apart?
JS: “Throughout our history of making records, we tend to alternate between self-produced projects— sometimes in a barn, an old house, or a studio close to home— and projects with a producer at the helm. This was the first time we'd actually left New Jersey for a destination project, so it really kept us focused within a concentrated week of daily sessions. Compared to some of the earlier self-produced records (Amen Corner, Last of the Outlaws) —where we'd set ourselves up in a space with a relatively open ended amount of time— we would just roll with lots of different songs, some jams or riffs that would eventually turn into a song, and record everything until we had what felt like an album. With this record, we went in with a list of mostly finished songs and arrangements, and just dug into trying to get the best performances of them.”
GW: Can you talk more about the time you spent with Andy Goessling?
JS: “Andy was a one of a kind musician in his towering ability, not just to play so many different instruments so very well, but also in his instinct to play just the right thing at the right time, always knowing what the song or the moment needed. He was a quiet gentle "old soul," kind of a personality, but he could also be funny as hell, and definitely provided a sort of calm grounding presence within the band. Andy just wanted to play, and was always headed out with his mandolin, or a flute and a horn, looking for another jam session or someone to sit in with after a gig or a festival set, no matter how tired or fried from being on the road any normal human would be. He was a musical Swiss-Army knife who brought such a wide palette of sounds to the band. it was always interesting to see new fans or audience members— who may not have previously been exposed to much bluegrass or acoustic music where such instruments are commonplace— absolutely marvel at this one guy who would switch from mandolin to banjo, then guitar to dobro, and back to banjo, all within the space of one set. Then, he'd further astonish them by picking up a flute, penny whistle, or clarinet, only to finally bring the house down by playing alto and tenor sax— at the same time! A one-man horn section, who could also play every string instrument there was. In his spare time at home he collected and played antique Zithers. For fun. His absence has left the band forever changed, as there is only one Andy Goessling, a musician and a spirit that is irreplaceable, but, as Andy would have done, you keep on going, you explore new sounds, and always remember that it is— All for the Song.”
GW: You are performing a two-night run with Peter Rowan on NYE in Chicago. What do you enjoy most about working with Peter Rowan? What excites you most about that particular collaboration?
JS: “Peter has always been a hero of mine, so getting the chance to make music and develop a friendship with him is one of those surreal life-defining experiences. Hearing the Old & In The Way record for the first time was a game changing moment for me. Suffice to say, like many of us in the newgrass, jamgrass, americana world, I likely wouldn't be doing what I am today without the influence of that record and Peter's unique voice as a songwriter. Working with Peter is like being guided by a Shaman. The journey may unfold in unexpected ways and the destination may be uncertain, but there will be an abundance of wisdom to be gained along the way.”
GW: As a fellow creative spirit, I am curious about your creative process. I love the spontaneous moment when inspiration strikes. I am so present and in the moment while it flows through me. I also love the revision/polishing/fine-tuning stage. Putting all those creative juices in a pretty container. What excites you most about the creative process?
JS: “It's always the beginning stages that I find most exciting. Knowing that you've started something that feels like it has potential, but not quite knowing where it will go or how it will turn out. Sometimes it may stall out a bit, but then when you find what you need to complete it, it comes at you with such clarity that it feels like you're finding something that already existed, something that needed a channel to be realized. A lot of it can be just about getting out of your own way.”
GW: Why do you create, and what need does that satisfy?
JS: “That's a tough question and I suppose it means something different to everyone. One reason might be to make something that simply says, “I was here.” Other than that, I always fall back on one of my favorite quotes from Glenn Gould, “The purpose of art is not the release of a momentary ejection of adrenaline, but rather the gradual, lifelong construction of a state of wonder and serenity.”
GW: What do you like to do outside of music that contributes to your art, or how do you rejuvenate your creativity?
JS: “I like sanding and staining wood, doing trim projects around the house, door and window trim, baseboard, crown moulding, shelves, and bookcases.”
GW: What is it like to create as a group? What does that process look like and what role does everyone play?
JK: “It varies depending on the situation. In the studio, or working together on new things in rehearsal, we all have so many different ideas that we'll often turn a song arrangement or a riff inside and out so many times just to see where it will go, and then arrive back where we started to find that the first idea was still the best. The only rule is; we do our best to execute each idea fully before moving on to the next.”
GW: Can you explain the influence that Irish/Celtic music had on your playing style? Other major influences?
JS: “Traditional Irish music has always been interesting to me, mostly due to the modal quality of the melodies. These are what Bill Monroe referred to as the ‘ancient tones,’ as they occur in bluegrass as well, in the fiddle tunes which are directly influenced by the Celtic fiddle traditions, and in the old style scales that predate the formalization of western tonal music that occurred in the baroque era circa 1600. Hearing that in Celtic music was also a sort of connect-the-dots moment for me in regards to the Grateful Dead. You hear that modal quality in many of the instrumental hooks and riffs in tunes like “Birdsong,” “Playing in the Band,” and in the outro of “Uncle John's Band.”
GW: I know you have studied mandolin with Todd Collins. What were the most important lessons you learned from your time with him? Any other players that have left an impression and/or influenced you?
JS: “Todd Collins was a major influence on my life. Some years before Railroad Earth formed, I was a bit adrift in what I was doing musically. I was playing a lot of local gigs here and there and alternately playing piano, guitar and some mandolin with different projects and various singer/songwriters. I knew that I had to get back into some course of formal study, which likely would have been jazz or classical piano, but through some random chance encounters, and the realization that I was finding the mandolin very intriguing, I wound up studying with Todd. Todd was not only a mandolin player, but also had a master’s degree in jazz guitar, so the journey of study with him encompassed a diverse range of music and styles. Bluegrass fiddle tunes alongside Charlie Parker bebop. I didn't have much exposure to the bluegrass festival culture at that point, but per Todd's instruction: ‘Gather up your camping gear, get a cooler full of beer and head up to the Winterhawk (eventually Grey Fox) Festival and join in as many pickin' circles and late night jam sessions as you can.’ I found myself having a profound eye-opening experience—not unlike going to your first Grateful Dead concert— wherein you realize that there's an entire subculture that centers around a sort of music that by and large most people don't even know about. It was there also, sitting on the big hill above the stage on the old Rothvoss farm as the sun was setting, when the Del McCoury band came out and blew my mind with the power and beauty that a true acoustic ensemble can create playing into the open air of a festival setting. I realized then and there that this was how I wanted to hear and experience live music from here on out. No more rock concerts in crowded stadiums where you can't really hear or see the band very well, or noisy rock clubs where your feet stick to the floor. Give me an open field and a bluegrass band playing into microphones.”
GW: Bluegrass seems to make the blending of genres possible. What are your thoughts on the bluegrass genre today? Is the future bright with 30-year-old Billy Strings selling out arenas?
JS: “Bluegrass has always been a dynamic, evolving art form. What Bill Monroe achieved in inventing the genre was a uniquely American synthesis of other styles that creates something completely new and wholly definable, but still open to limitless expansion and development, just like jazz. It's amazing to see how far all that has grown, and how it has continued to cross boundaries that expand the music, and most especially reach ever larger and younger audiences like Billy Strings does. That's what music needs in order to keep developing and inspiring the next generation of musicians.”
GW: What advice do you have for other aspiring musicians and/or artists?
JS: “I'll quote George Burns on this one. When asked the same question at 90 years of age after a lifetime in show business, his answer was, “Sit down, whenever possible.”
This past weekend, LA by-way-of NY artist, Shira Elias, formerly of Turkuaz, sat down with Grateful Web to discuss her newly released single “Earth Sun” from sophomore companion EP Services, as well as her upcoming debut as a solo performer.
The production of Services was a collaboration between Shira and husband/producer MEGA, and is scheduled to release on Friday, December 2, 2022.
Shira’s first solo set will kick off in steamy Miami on December 10 as part of the North Beach Music Festival stellar lineup. She will share the stage with former Turkuaz bandmates in their brand new outfit called Cool Cool Cool on the following day.
Read on below for an inside view into the motivation behind Shira Elias’ most recent work, her reflections on the sudden breakup of Turkuaz, her creative process, and her experience collaborating with other artists during such challenging and uncertain times.
GW: After a decade of touring and recording together, the days of Turkuaz were cut short after a dramatic departure of seven band members in 2021, including yourself. Can you tell me more about that?
SE: “All I can say is that it was a really incredible thing that we did together for a long time. It was a beautiful thing that was created, and it was amazing for so many people for so long. I don’t look at it as a failure because I basically owe my whole career to it. It is already hard for bands, especially of that size, to succeed. That combined with the internal problems we had with certain personalities, substance issues, and all the drama— it was time to end it. It wasn't working anymore. I can only speak for myself when I say that it wasn't making me happy, and I needed to move forward. I was already starting to work on my solo projects, and I wanted to continue doing that. I am happy that it happened, and I am happy that it’s over, and that is okay.
GW: I understand that. Let go and embrace new chapters.
SE: “Some things serve a purpose for a certain amount of time, and I think this did. Everything from it lives on. The memories and the people. I gained a family from it. And my whole touring music career. I’m grateful for my time with Turkuaz for sure.”
GW: That leads us to 2020, when you came out with your first solo EP Goods.
SE: “Right in the middle of the pandemic.”
GW: It's amazing that you were able to do that, though. So what's different about the two, Goods and Services? What was your inspiration behind the two albums?
SE: “First and foremost, I think most art is reflective of where the artist is at in their lives. Goods is reflective of it being the first time I was putting myself out there on my own. I was still very much like, what is my sound? What is my voice outside of what people know me from? Plus, coupled with the production of Mega as the producer, who is now my husband, his sound of production is very New York. Hip hop beats, and hard hitting. And then there is Services, which is reflective of the LA aesthetic. A lot more ethereal and chill. Mega and I intentionally wanted them to be companion pieces, which ended up working out because Goods was produced in New York before the pandemic— all hustling and all New York. And then Services was produced in LA, right after the whole world changed. So those differences are reflected in the two pieces.”
GW: So, what was it like to go from New York to LA? Did you already have a lot of connections there, or did it take you some time to break into the scene?
SE: “It is hard. I think it's still taking time. The first year of the pandemic we were in our house, so there wasn’t really much to do, which was great for writing and for creating, but as far as networking and getting in the scene, it was tough. We knew a few people, but not a ton of connections within the music scene. Most of my career has been spent in the jam funk scene, which in LA isn’t really the main thing. So it's taking some time. I'd like to have some good relationships, but I definitely feel that it is hard when you're out on the road all the time. You can't really spend all that time cultivating it. So, I'm excited to be here more and break into the LA scene, which is already happening right now. I have some time off, which is cool, so I'm trying to spread some seeds in LA.”
GW: It seems like the pandemic pushed a lot of artists to collaborate in different ways that they never could before. It made people get really creative. Have you been able to collaborate with people that live outside of LA?
SE: “Yeah. During the main part of the pandemic, it was all about live streams. Remember, everyone was doing that? We did a live stream once every couple of weeks to make money, and it was actually really great that we figured that out. We would have different guests come on and pre-record stuff. I think that has faded out a little bit more, since we can actually play together in person now, but it was a cool opportunity to figure some stuff out, and ask people that you wouldn't normally be working with to get involved. And then with the writing of Services, the collaborators that wrote most of that album with us got involved by coming over and hanging out once a week. We were like, oh let's do some writing, and now we have an EP.”
GW: Anything else you’d like to tell people?
SE: “I am just really excited for everyone to hear the music, and I think everyone who knows me from Turkuaz is going to be pleasantly surprised about what this is. I'm excited for people to get down with it and listen to it. I think there's a real place for this, especially in our scene. There's not a lot that is targeted specifically towards women in the jam scene community. It is very male heavy, so I am excited to get in there, and show people that we can really take over this shit.”
In James McMurtry’s latest album, The Horses and the Hounds, the acclaimed songwriter backs personal narratives with an elegant, yet no-bullshit approach. McMurtry recorded the album with legendary producer Ross Hogarth (Ozzy Osbourne, John Fogerty, Van Halen, Keb’ Mo’) at Jackson Browne’s Groove Masters Studio in Santa Monica, California, a world class studio that has housed such legends as Bob Dylan, David Crosby, as well as Browne himself for I’m Alive.
The Horses and the Hounds was released in August 2021 on New West Records. “I first became aware of James McMurtry’s formidable songwriting prowess while working at Bug Music Publishing in the ’90s,” says New West president John Allen. “He’s a true talent. All of us at New West are excited at the prospect of championing the next phase of James’ already successful and respected career.”
“James writes like he’s lived a lifetime,” said John Mellencamp back in 1989, when ``Too Long in the Wasteland'' hit the Billboard 200.
Stephen King once referred to James McMurtry as the “truest, fiercest songwriter of his generation.”
“James McMurtry is one of my very few favorite songwriters on Earth and these days he’s working at the top of his game,” says Americana singer Jason Isbell. “He has that rare gift of being able to make a listener laugh out loud at one line and choke up at the next. I don’t think anybody writes better lyrics.”
This past week, James McMurtry sat down with the Grateful Web for a candid chat. Read on below for an in-depth view into the stoic and ever-so-wise mind of the legendary songwriter.
GW: As an educator, I really appreciate that you have what I consider to be a classic educator philosophy. Teachers are often told to remain unbiased. To not have a strong opinion, or to not share it if we do. I have always felt that this fails to prepare students for critical thinking. To challenge authority in an appropriate and productive way. I really admire the fact that you speak the truth so candidly. Can you talk a little bit about that?
JM: “I don't think we teach critical thinking. It’s all about scores. I stumbled on that many years ago when I was still trying to be a student. It is one of the reasons I dropped out of college. I took a philosophy elective, and we're in there trying to study concepts, and we would come to these discussions, and nobody wanted to know about the concepts. They just wanted to know exactly what was going to be on the quiz, which was connected to their grade, or fulfilled some kind of humanities requirement, so that they could go on and be lawyers or whatever. And you know, I get that because they're coming from an economic standpoint. It was a state university, but they were giving us Descartes and Aquinas, and I didn’t understand any of it, but I wanted to at least get something out of it. So I would show up and ask questions about the concepts, and nobody else seemed to realize that if they understood the concepts then they could also pass the quiz. You don’t need to know the exact question. You can deduce that through critical thought. It's just not how these people were trained. They were trained to memorize the answers.”
GW: Obviously your father Larry McMurtry went on to become a widely respected and successful novelist and screenwriter, but weren’t both of your parents educators at one point?
JM: “My mother was more of an educator. My dad got out of it as soon as he could. It was the Vietnam era, and most of the time he was teaching creative writing to people that really didn't care about that. They were trying to stay out of Vietnam, and he didn't mind that, but they didn't want to be taught, and that was a problem for him. My mother would push through it. She'd find the ones that did want to be taught. He [Larry McMurtry] worked as an educator in order to pay the rent. His books didn't sell until Lonesome Dove, which was 1986, and he had been putting out novels for a long time. He did get some fame for the books that were made into movies, and he got a foothold in the screenwriting world with the last movie. The novels didn't sell, but he could write the first draft of a screenplay for forty thousand dollars. He'd immediately get fired because his forte was using the book as the first step towards becoming a movie. He didn't know the cinematic side, where he'd break it down shot for shot like a director, but he was really good at taking that first step. So they'd hire him, and they'd fire him. The first draft was good money.”
GW: It sounds like your father was the visionary type. I enjoy the role of writer, director and alchemist myself. As far as capturing the perfect shot, where everybody looks good and the lighting is perfect, I admire people who can do that, but that's my thing. Not yet anyway. It can be challenging to be an artist without that knowledge and skill set right now.
JM: “Well, Larry [McMurtry] just had a knack for knowing what to cut out of a novel in order to squeeze it down for a movie, while still telling a story. He was a story guy. You are talking about the perfect shot. I was a child actor in Peter Bagonov’s production of Daisy Miller. Peter was one of those cinematic guys. He wanted the perfect shot. It was the second day I worked and they had this one shot that covered eleven pages of the script, which is insane. Usually, it takes maybe a quarter page, and then you cut away. Not only that, but it was in a room full of mirrors, with foreground action in front of the camera, and background action in the mirrors, so you had to have a whole crew. It was a dolly shot, so you have a crew with dollies, booms, and lights, and actors have to hit. They're blocking perfectly, so they show up in the mirror at the right time and none of the booms or any of the equipment can show up in the mirror and get in the shot and ruin it. It took fifty-seven takes to get three prints. Back then there wasn't any digital way to send film to the lab, and if something happened to one of your prints then you’d better have a backup. We got the shot done, but it wore everybody out because it took all day. If you watch that movie, which very few people did, because it flopped— except for I believe it got an Oscar for costume design, and it really did have great costumes— but if you manage to watch that movie, and you see that shot, it's in a villa in Rome, and it goes by so fast that you don't even notice it. This one shot was a masterpiece and nobody notices. It took fifty-seven takes. I blew about sixteen of them myself, just looking into the camera.”
GW: You know, somehow that translates as a play production director. I am able to visualize it on stage, but the camera stuff? I leave that to other people.
JM: “Peter [Baganov] watched a lot of movies. He would cut school and go watch them in the fifties in New York City. There was a movie theater on every block and he'd cut school to go see whatever was coming along. So he really had a cinematic sense the same way Larry had a literary sense from reading. Larry was a voracious reader. I didn't do either of those. I listened to Kris Kristofferson and John Prine, and figured out how to write verse.”
GW: Well, I think it's impressive that you tell such excellent stories in your songs considering the fact that you aren’t a voracious reader. By the way, as somebody who analyzes poetry and who walks students through that process, I do really notice the rhyme, meter, alliteration, and all of the poetic devices that you're using, and it makes me so happy. My students and I discuss whether or not song lyrics are poetry all the time. It is hard to find a lot of depth in song lyrics these days.
JM: “Song lyrics can be poetry, in the sense that poetry can get us outside ourselves. The thing with songwriting is that you're writing for an instrument. You're writing for your voice and for your vocalization. So you want to write words you can sing. You want to avoid anything that's going to tongue tie you. Poetry doesn't have to do that. It might not ever be spoken. You can just sit with it. So the thing that has improved my songwriting the most is taking voice lessons. Not that I was trying to be Pavarotti, I just didn't want to lose my voice on the road. You learn exercises to keep your voice warmed up, and eventually it helps expand your range a little bit. Also my voice coach taught me to watch out for diphthongs and weird vowels that are going to be hard to sing so now I try to make it easy on myself.”
GW: I was going to say in regards to your voice, I grew up listening to Johnny Cash, and I was wondering if you were influenced by him at all? I also hear a little bit of Irish folk.
JM: “Yeah, you got that? Well the Irish folk probably comes through bluegrass because I grew up in Virginia, and we heard a lot of bluegrass and old time played around there. A lot of that's Gaelic oriented. I was a big Johnny Cash fan starting from around age five. Actually the first live concert I ever saw was Johnny Cash with the Carter family, Carl Perkins, and the Statler Brothers. It was a big package. I remember John Carter Cash had just been born a couple months before, and when Johnny sang “A Boy Named Sue,” he gets to the end of it, and says, ‘If I ever have a son, I think I’m going to name him, and you expect him to go, Bill or George or anything, but this time he gets to the end of it, and says, “If I ever have a son? I think I'm gonna name him John Carter. And the crowd just erupted.”
GW: Oh, My Grandpa used to sing that song all the time. Okay, this makes sense. You grew up in Virginia, and I grew up in Southern Ohio. Much of what you write about, and the stories you tell through the voices of different characters and narrators, impresses me on so many levels. For example, I grew up in the Appalachian region and was surrounded by generational poverty, and all of the things that trickle down from that. I really appreciate your ability to tell stories of similar people with similar struggles in a purely authentic and simple way. No stereotypes, gimmicks or judgments. You speak the truth and I think our country really needs that right now. There is so much division.
JM: “I've heard that the words ‘under God’ in the pledge of allegiance were inserted by the Eisenhower administration to make us feel superior to the godless communist, and it throws off the symmetry of the whole thing. It used to be that the stress was on ‘indivisible’. I took it as a warning to unreconstructed Southerners not to pull that secession because that pledge was written in 1892.”
GW: Yeah, that makes sense. Wasn't our national anthem originally a British pub song?
JM: “Yeah, the melody was a British pub song, and they took out a lot of lines. There were lines in it about, ‘No refuge could save the hireling and slave from the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave.’ And actually, we didn't have a national anthem until 1931. Think about that. You know they didn't play that, and the Union didn't play that during the Civil War, they played the battle hymn of the Republic.”
GW: And it has certainly been a slow process of nationalism and division ever since.
JM: “People get scared. They get nationalistic and racist.”
James McMurtry Tour Dates:
Wednesday, December 7, 2022 Oklahoma City, OK The Blue Door - SOLD OUT
Thursday, December 8, 2022 Fayetteville, ARK Starr Theater: Walton Arts Center - SOLD OUT
Friday, December 9, 2022 Little Rock, ARK White Water Tavern - SOLD OUT
Saturday, December 10, 2022 Little Rock, ARK White Water Tavern - SOLD OUT
Known for bringing one of film’s most legendary characters to life (“Ponyboy” from The Outsiders) Tommy (C. Thomas) Howell is thrilled to debut his third single “Pony Girl” on December 9, 2022. The song is based on “My Pony Boy” by Bobby Heath and Charley O’Donnell. It is Tommy’s lullaby version of a story about a cowboy searching for the love of his life.
Read on for an in-depth interview with Tommy (C. Thomas) Howell, as we discuss the release of his new single, “Pony Girl,” the debut of his upcoming Netflix series, Obliterated, and so much more.
This conversation has been edited for conciseness and clarity.
GW: You have a new show coming out on Netflix. Can you tell me about that?
TH: “I am on a new comedy show called Obliterated, from the creators of Cobra Kai. Sony and Netflix are producing it. It's like The 24th meets The Hangover. I play a member of an elite group of soldiers who have been rallied together in order to locate a nuclear bomb. It is a dirty bomb, and the government has tracked it to Las Vegas. I am the guy who takes the bomb apart. We did eight episodes. In episode one we find the bomb halfway through the episode, and I dismantle it. Then we party like we've never partied before. Everybody gets annihilated, only to get a call two hours later to be told that it was a decoy bomb, and we have five hours to find the real bomb. Everybody is totally destroyed. That’s the premise of the show. It was one of the best experiences I've ever had with some great actors and actresses. The writing was phenomenal. We did about five months in Albuquerque at Netflix Studios, and about a month in Las Vegas where we got all the exterior shots. I don't want to give everything away, but my character is the most free character I've ever played. He is the least judgmental and loving guy. This role really challenged me. I'm at the age now where I don't want to do stuff that doesn't challenge me. I've been turning down a lot of work because I'm focusing a lot on my music career, and that has given me purpose, reason, and artistic satisfaction outside of Hollywood.”
GW: You’ve done other television shows before this one, right? What was it like to be a part of Southland?
TH: “I did a show called Southland for five years. Playing that same role for that amount of time was the first time I'd ever done that. There's a certain comfort that happens between an actor and a writer when you start to really get to know each other and trust each other. They start to write for your voice, and you start to get things that are easy for you to do and say. Things that make sense for your character. It becomes like a tennis match. You can really grow. Until you hit the end and you're like, ‘Well, shit. We're done. What are we going to do now? Time to kill Walter White’”.
GW: What was it like to be in a comedy series? Have you done that before?
TH: “It has been a long time since I have tried comedy. When I was younger, everything seemed like a shot in the dark. Now, having experienced pain and agony, I can understand irony. There is something about irony that really plays to one's favor in comedy, when done right. Being older gives me an edge. I used to be the youngest in everything, but now I am the patriarch of the cast. I embrace it because my history opens the arms to a lot of artists who grew up with The Outsiders, or Red Dawn, or however else I may have crossed their path. It’s always fun to see where the reference comes from after spending a lifetime in film, whether I’m a kid, or an adult actor. It could be Criminal Minds, Southland, or The Walking Dead. I'm certainly not that guy from The Walking Dead, but some people see that, or feel that. There's something to be said about having your life documented on film.”
GW: What is the best part about not being as involved in Hollywood as you once were?
TH: “I'm a guy who likes to joke. I made a living saying the wrong thing at the right time, just to get us through. There is none of that anymore. You have to really mind yourself, and not really say much, or else somebody will get offended and call somebody else, and you'll have to explain yourself to complete strangers over the phone. That hasn't happened to me yet, but I know people who it has happened to. Some probably warranted, but many were not. A lot of people who spend a great deal of time in Hollywood become jaded, which is a tough spot to be in. That doesn't really happen to me. I have a policy that if I take a gig, I give the performance as if I am being directed by Steven Spielberg doing E.T. II. I don’t half step anything. I go all in on everything, and because of that, I'm careful now about what I commit to. I don't want to work with people who don't do the same thing. It gets frustrating, but I do like being a team member, and I do like being on a series.”
GW: Is there anything else that frustrates you about Hollywood?
TH: “Being an actor full time when you're not a bonafide superstar can be tough. You go through peaks and valleys. Even the biggest stars go through that though. Look at what Johnny Depp has gone through. One would think if you did fifteen Pirates of the Caribbean movies, one might be alright, but that guy is suffering just like the rest of us. It's funny what we go through both personally and publicly. And now with the internet, nothing is private. And with this new generation, everybody wants everybody to know everything. I come from a generation where privacy was valued. We didn't want you to know who we were voting for, or our sexual preferences, or whatever the hell. It's a very different world now. I'm just sitting back like that popcorn eating emoji, just watching all of this, and trying to learn and grow. Letting everybody be who they want to be.”
GW: What other changes have you noticed in the entertainment business?
TH: “I grew up in the business. I've spent forty years doing this. I have been a part of Hollywood during the Golden Age. I did a film with Elizabeth Taylor, I did a film with Anne Margaret. I worked with a lot of greats like Harry Dean Stanton, Dennis Hopper, and people who came from the gilded age, when it was still special. We shot on film, and there were red carpet events for everything. When you got hired for something, it was a big deal, and it was expensive. Now there are movies made on iPhones for five bucks, and there's never enough money for anything on sets anymore. It's really changed a lot. I think people have a lot more opportunity. There's a lot more talent that can step up and make a movie. They could put it out on YouTube, and there's something to be said about that. I don't know how many good films are made that way.”
GW: How do you determine whether or not art is good?
TH: “It's a weird thing. Talent and taste. What makes something good? I don't know. For the first time in my life, I am feeling poised for a new level of work, and I don't know why I'm feeling this way, but the music has given me a sense of value that I haven't had working solely as a performer. Back in the day, everybody had to be a triple threat. You had to be a great dancer, singer, and an actor to be anything. Now it's like if you have a sex tape, you're in. It's challenging when you have spent forty years in the business, and you have one hundred thousand followers on Instagram, and somebody shakes their ass on Tik Tok, and they have a million followers. What the hell! Where are we? What's going on? People are struggling because there is a new sense of values, and change is in the air, and that's challenging people who want to hold on to their old sense of values.”
GW: Do people want to be famous more than they want to create art these days?
TH: “I go to a lot of seventh and eighth grade classes to speak about The Outsiders, and every single time I get a kid who inevitably holds his hand up, and the first thing out of his mouth is, ‘How can I become famous quickly?’ It always sets me back, because not a single kid will raise their hand and say, ‘How can I do the work that will lead me to the path of success?’ And my next question to them is, ‘Why do you want to become famous?’ And there's a pause, and they all say, ‘I don't know’. They just know that they want to have a million followers and all the likes. They don't even know who they are as people. They just want to get to the end of it. Nobody wants to go through the journey. And that's a really great example of how my music experience differs. It is all done in house. My girlfriend takes all the photos. My buddy does all the artwork. I write all the songs. We do everything. We distribute them ourselves. We record them ourselves. We do everything ourselves.”
GW: So what are the benefits of that?
TH: “Well, it allows me to maintain ownership of all my masters. It gives me real insight, firsthand experience, and education on all aspects of it. I'm not just bubbled and clueless. I know every aspect of the business. I feel like we're in a tiny bit of control of our own destiny. If you like it, it's our fault. If you hate it, it's our fault. I'm not blaming another company because they didn't promote something. I'm not mad because I didn't get put on the bill with Tim McGraw and blah blah blah. The real truth is that It's been a beautiful experience. I never intended on having an album. I never intended on touring. So, everything is a gift, and in approaching it from that aspect, I cannot lose. Even if I get a billion bad reviews, and I am booed off the stage, I cannot lose. I'm not looking to make my money here, and I am not looking to become famous. I am not looking to please people. I am looking to connect with people.”
GW: How have you grown as a person over the course of your career?
TH: “I am far more patient. That's the one thing I didn't have when I was younger is patience. Now, when I work with other people who don't have the experience I’ve had, I allow them to go through their own process in a way that is beneficial for the art at hand. That has become a little easier for me. When you are young, you haven't experienced the agony of defeat in life. You haven't gone through a break up. You haven't been fired. You haven't owed money. You haven't lost a loved one. Those experiences, when we go through them, throw us into this hyperspace. It's like a quick link to the truth. When we survive something like that, suddenly we are ready to get real. It’s sad that it sometimes takes life experience to that degree for it to happen. Hopefully we're conscious enough, and it doesn’t take a near-death experience to realize we need to make changes. The truth is, we can all be what we want to be. We don't have to force it on anybody else. We don't have to get caught up in the fight. We just live our lives. The only thing we can do is work on ourselves, because we have to be that beacon for ourselves and for those around us. With my music career, I don't have any pressure, because I'm not trying to become a superstar musician. I am just writing songs and telling stories that make me happy, and some people are reacting to that in a positive way. I really have nothing to lose like one does at twenty-five years old, trying to please everybody, and “make it”. I don't care what other people think. I care about what I think, and I have much higher standards than most other people when it comes to this stuff that I am doing. Once I figured that out, and I stopped trying to please other people artistically and professionally, my life got a lot better, and my work got a lot better, and I started to grow as a person, and as a performer at a much quicker rate. And that's what changed my life for the better.”
GW: So, is change something you tend to embrace?
TH: “For me, as an artist, change is the most incredible thing. My greatest life experiences have come when I finally just step through the threshold of fear that I was not wanting to go through, only to walk into a room of amazing brilliance. Once you realize the benefit of leaping into the void, and trusting the process, you do it first as an artist, and then it becomes a life tool. It can be scary because we don't ‘have control,’ which is all fake bullshit anyway. People who think they have control don't have control. They're just wasting a lot more time doing shit that doesn't matter. I'd rather just make myself a better person, and whatever happens happens. If we take care of the here and now, the future has a way of working itself out. The past is gone; the future will sort itself out. Many people have a hard time with change. They’d rather be— even if it's just a tiny bit miserable— it’s better than being alone. Well, I don't know, is it? I really learned to love myself and love my life and treat myself right when I was alone. Instead of skipping out on a meal, I take that extra step and take care of myself. I try to live a little better, and make people's lives around me better, and that has led to a more authentic self that can talk to a group of people, and tell a story in a way that is more honest. I've never done that before, mind you, because I've always hidden behind a role, or a camera lens, or makeup, or whatever, and now as a singer, or a storyteller, I am on stage with no cloak. It's me, and so the reaction is immediate. It’s a two-way street most of the time. I’m there to see the audience, just as they are there to see me. It's the exchange that feeds my soul, and that's what keeps me going. Not the money, or the fame. It's the connection with people, and the ability to write something that people relate and connect to.”
GW: How did you break into music and what has that experience been like?
TH: “I have only been doing music for a year and a half. I'm in a professional league where apologies are not accepted. I can't release a song, and say, ‘Hey guys, I've only been doing it for a year, so cut me some breaks’. No. If you are going to mess around with the big boys, then you get punched down by a big boy. So that was a big step for me. I grew up in a home without music. My father and mother weren't musical people. They didn't listen to the radio much. When Covid hit, I knew I didn't want to get on the other side of that with a degree in drinking. I grabbed the guitar when the world started to shut down, and I started playing for the first time. I started with G, then I learned a couple of chords, and the next thing I knew, I hadn't put it down for months. I was in Atlanta working on The Walking Dead for a few months, and this super cool friend of mine, a great singer and songwriter named Kurt Thomas, he and I started working a little bit together. He started showing me how to play, and how to write songs, and what the parameters of songwriting are. It takes a while, but when you start to hang around really good songwriters— for example, Dave Kennedy who I have written with— these guys who all had big songs, number one songs, and songs of the year, they have a scientific approach to it. It's not just grabbing a guitar, and blurting out some lines, and seeing if something rhymes. These people taught me how to write songs that have a real emotional and psychological aspect to them. Not just trying to make something rhyme, but make something rhyme with a consonant that will make you subconsciously want to sing. These guys are alchemists. They still have heart and soul, but there's a formulaic routine that they understand. It’s like mom’s secret recipe. It's not something they want people to know, and to experience that first hand— my mind is blown. With that said, I have spent forty years in the storytelling business, so it felt like I've been training for this for forty years. It was so natural and unforced. When I picked up the guitar, it wasn’t like I was looking to put together a boy band. I just started playing and writing from my heart.”
GW: So you are a very seasoned “newbie”?
TH: “Where I beat everybody to the punch is that I had already gone through this once, so there are some things I didn't have to go through, in terms of music. The need to please everybody musically to get on the other side of that five years later, just to realize that I shouldn’t have been doing that. I started there already. So you see, my year and a half in music has been like ten years of music. I've worked with people who have said, ‘My God, I feel like you've been doing this your whole life’. Well, I have been. It was just in a different area. It’s almost like I was training as an athlete. It's like when you get these Australian punters that come over to kick in the NFL. You're like, “Oh my God, you're going to be somebody!” Yet they were kicking in the Australian Football League for ten years. It's a similar concept. It's a different game, but I'm still kicking a ball, and for me that was an unexpected part of the journey that has been my saving grace, and has allowed me to be able to write things from my heart. To have so many people connected to that has been powerful. I have kids sending me versions of “Pony Girl” on the flute from band class. I have guys sending me versions of “Whiskey Demon” that they sing in their bar. It's those little moments.”
GW: What other memorable moments have you experienced so far?
TH: “My girlfriend was playing Spotify the other day, and a commercial came on. Then, they played ‘Rose Hill,’ which is my song. I literally stopped in my tracks. That was really wild. I don't get impressed by my own experiences, but that moment, for myself, that was super cool. I can't explain it. I mean when you write something yourself, and you put it out there, and you’re thinking, I don’t know, I could be throwing myself to the wolves here, and people come back with ‘Good job!’ It's pretty remarkable. It is remarkable even when they say you suck.”
GW: Have you ever been met with harsh criticism before? How did you handle it?
TH: “I have made a lot of movies, so I have been through that. It hurts, but you grow from it. I'm sure that's going to happen in the music industry, but we learn from Mama Agony. Papa success doesn't teach us as much. I think we can learn from it, but it has its pitfalls. Papa success, man, I'll tell you what, we really gotta have our shit together to be able to experience success and handle it properly.”
GW: What kind of music do you prefer to listen to?
TH: “I am a southern rock enthusiast. I like that Lynyrd Skynyrd vibe, or even that Stevie Ray Vaughan sound out of Texas. That Texas Thunder Vibe. We don't have that anymore. We have a lot of bro-country, and you know, I can't write that stuff. Those guys are amazing at what they do. We have a lot of pop country, and again, that's not my bag. I can't do that. There's people that do that, and they're winning all the awards and making all the money. They're incredible, but there's a lot of people that miss that down-home storytelling country with a rock vibe.”
GW: What is it about country music that resonates with you?
TH: “I like stories, and I like country people. They like to be told stories, and they like to tell stories. That's still a big part of country culture. What I like about country music is that it is a melting pot of everybody who's come together. The banjo was made in Africa. The fiddles that we hear in country music came from Eastern Europe. The guitars that have a Latin vibe came up from the South, and we've really just made them our own. Whether it's some Marty Robbins song, or someone else, it’s just this incredible alchemy of sounds that have become what's known as American music, and it's based on storytelling. I submerged myself in Nashville, the people, and the history of it, and I want to continue sharing what that is to people.”
GW: Did you grow up rurally?
TH: “My mother and father were divorced at a very young age, and I was raised by my father. I would go to work with him at the age of four, five and six. He was beginning his very young budding stunt career as well as riding bulls professionally. So that was my introduction into life: ‘Welcome to planet Earth! Your father is a tobacco spitting, hustling, bull riding cowboy that’s going to become a stuntman’. I have to figure this out pretty quickly. My father didn't suffer fools. He wasn't a real diaper changer. I grew up very quickly on the road with my father, which did a lot for me. It was heartbreaking, and I didn't understand why I didn't have the nurturing and cuddling, and the love of a mother, who certainly came back into my life. My mom is a sweetheart, and we're good friends now, but at the time, the two of them struggled, and they were young when they had me at nineteen. They were kids. They came from two different worlds. My father was a character. You didn't want to mess with him. He really instilled a sense of work in me that I don't think I could have received in any other place. There is a real “no quit” mentality that comes with rodeo, unlike anything I have ever witnessed. There's a sign over at my father's ranch that says, ‘We don't call 911,’ and we don't. It's either you get it or you don't, and that's the difference. When you're raised in a rural area you have a different mentality. You take care of yourself, and only the tough survive. So, having experienced that part of life gives me a leg up, when it comes to telling a story, or even sitting in front of a camera and playing a role, because I have what I call bass now. Most people are walking around trebled out of their mind. Art works when you are grounded and rooted. Whether you're acting, painting, singing, or any of it. The people we love are all rooted, and they don't give a shit what you think. They are trying to be their own master. And those are the people that we love. To be that way takes a lot of time, and it's unusual for me to even want to be that way in the music industry, but my life experience, and my work in Hollywood has given me a real head start, and I'm able to write things that come from my heart.”
GW: Is the song “Whiskey Demon” about alcoholism?
TH: “It's funny, that song could be viewed as some fun bar song that rattles off a lot of brand name whiskies. If you're at a party, turn that thing up and sing your heart out, but that song is also heartbreaking if you really listen to it. The metaphor when he starts talking about fireball whiskey, when he starts talking about the woman with cinnamon lips and red hair: she will seduce you in the dark, and make you feel like you're getting lucky, but she's looking to make her mark. That's alcoholism wrecking your life, without coming out and saying that”.
GW: Do you ever watch your own movies?
TH: “I don’t really watch any of my work, but when I do, it's usually just a reminder of some fine memories, as well as a real understanding of the growth process that I've experienced. I can watch old projects and remember who I was, and the choices I was making at that time, and reflect upon that in an older, wiser and more experienced state of mind.”
Tommy (C. Thomas) Howell has starred in the films Soul Man, The Hitcher, Grandview U.S.A., Red Dawn, Secret Admirer and The Outsiders. He has also appeared in Gettysburg and Gods and Generals as Thomas Chamberlain, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, The Amazing Spider-Man, Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox and Suicide Squad: Hell to Pay. He played unpredictable Officer Bill "Dewey" Dudek in the TNT drama series Southland (2009) and as the sadistic serial killer "The Reaper" on CBS's Criminal Minds (2005). More recent television appearances include The Glades (2010) (A&E) and Torchwood (2006) (Starz Channel). He has directed a number of films, including The Big Fall (1997), Pure Danger (1996), The Land That Time Forgot (2009), and The Day the Earth Stopped (2008).
Show dates:
DEC. 9, 2022
Nashville, TN
Tommy Howell's "Ponygirl" Release Show & Cowboy Christmas
To those who know Dave Brandwein as the front man of Turkuaz, the Indie-Americana/folk-rock music of Band for Sale might seem like a radical change. But to the multi-instrumentalist and producer, the upcoming album, Sleeping Sun, Waking Moon, represents a return to his musical roots.
Recorded on and off over the past decade, Sleeping Sun, Waking Moon is indeed a revelatory and deeply personal record for Brandwein, who produced and mixed the entire album himself. Blending British Invasion charm with classic rock grit and folk intimacy, it’s a timeless, breezy collection, one that manages to feel both deliberate and spontaneous, polished and raw, modern and retro all at once.
Read on to enjoy this exclusive interview with Dave Brandwein of Band for Sale as we discuss memories with Turkuaz, and the inspiration for Sleeping Sun, Waking Moon, which will debut on December 9, 2022.
GW: So how was the move from New York City to LA? How are you liking LA?
DB: “It was good. It was time for a little bit of a change. I love New York. I grew up in Long Island, and then after going to Berklee in Boston, I moved right back to Brooklyn. The whole band at the time did. I’ll always have a part of me that's a New Yorker, but after 13 years, and then with the last two years being during the pandemic, and with me undergoing a lot of personal changes at the same time, it felt like as good a time as any. And the sunshine and beach are pretty cool. I underestimated how much that would change my mood. In general, it's been really good in terms of having a reinvention period, and looking to the future. I feel like the atmosphere sort of matches that for me.”
GW: Perfect. A new chapter. So, I've been listening to your solo album, Sleeping Sun Waking Moon today, and I think it might be one of my new favorites. I really really like it. Can you tell me the details about the album, and then we can talk about your inspiration?
DB: “Yeah. It comes out on December 9th, but I've been working on it for a really long time. I toured with my band Turkuaz for 150-200 days a year for the last ten years, and I always had these pieces of songs that I’d written. I’d start to record, and then I’d occasionally get motivation, and tell myself: this year I'm going to finish it, I'm going to do it. And I would chip away these tiny pieces. But until the pandemic hit, I didn't have the amount of time I needed in order to get it all done. And of course there are songs from as far back as ten or fifteen years that I've had forever. And then there’s new stuff from the last year or so, and everything in between. So it's a collection of my favorite things, or at least the ones I thought would fit together nicely from the last decade. It has been a long time coming, and obviously it's a pretty personal record for that reason. It is amazing how many things that I wrote ten years ago that can be equally relevant, or almost more relevant now. I tend to do that a lot with stuff that I write. I write pretty free flowing, or stream of consciousness, and then sometimes, years later, I'll look back at something I wrote and be like, oh, that's what that means. It’s kind of crazy that it almost seems to tell the future at times.”
GW: I get that. Everything that I've been doing, and the people that I have been surrounding myself with, and all of my experiences, have led me to this natural transition into the next stage of my life that I didn’t even know I was preparing for.
DB: “When we are open, and in a period of time in which we are willing to listen, we tap into a lot of things that are all connected. For me, when I isolate and when I am feeling more negative, I'm not there for those things, and they don't connect, and so things seem a lot more hopeless and meaningless. But I think what you're talking about, how that series of events led you to that, or I'll be tapped into something when I'm writing, and it will manifest itself years later... I think that there is, without going into any specific beliefs— and it's not a religious thing— I just think that there's some type of a sphere of awareness that we all have available to us if we listen. And so I am trying to do a lot more listening these days than I had done for a long time.”
GW: You're talking about this collective consciousness, and every artist that I interview, no matter what their age is, the genre or style of music they play, who their influences are, what part of the country they're from, there's like this universal experience that we all share. Even myself as a creative person. I just think that's the coolest thing. You talked about isolation earlier, and while I do enjoy my solitude, it can be too much sometimes. So talking to other artists and creative people reminds me that I'm not alone in these experiences, or the way that I view the world.
GW: I heard a little bit of The Beatles in a couple of the songs. Are you influenced by them?
DB: “Yeah, I mean sometimes I wonder if it’s too much of an influence, but it was my blueprint for all music. I learned how to play guitar by learning from The Beatles. I just learned the entire songbook. Every single song. How to play and sing on guitar. I had a guitar teacher, but in terms of the craft of writing and understanding theory, I got to know it quickly that way. I became obsessed and bought every album. I had three or four solid years that it was just an absolute obsession. And then my consciousness or awareness of other music opened up a little bit, but The Beatles will always remain the backbone for me. So yes, you're definitely correct to hear some Beatles influence in there. And if that shines through, then that's a good thing.”
GW: I love the instrumental intro too. I feel like it really set the tone for the whole album.
DB: “Yeah. It was a risky thing, because people will often put something on and if a vocal doesn't come in within five or ten seconds, or something that hooks them doesn't come in, then it's on to the next thing. But it just had to be the intro. It felt like the intro. I was like, well, let’s really sift out who's ready for this record and who’s not.”
GW: As somebody who has centered my life around words, I appreciate instrumental music a lot. It gets me out of my head.
DB: “Yeah, thank you. Every few songs I tried to put in a little instrumental break.”
GW: Yeah, I love it. So you talked a little bit about this, but I am wondering how this album reflects you as an artist or person, and what makes you most proud about this. You already had a very successful music career with Turkuaz, so what sets this one apart?
DB: “I guess first and foremost is that although there are other really great musicians on this record, it is very much a solo record, which makes it really rewarding, but also has presented some challenges. I am the only person who can push it along. There is no motivation coming from anywhere else to get it done. Other people played and performed really well on it, but it wasn't their project. So that’s pretty notable. When I'm coming from a band of nine people, and traveling with fourteen people on the road for many years, having a project that's just mine, and being able to sit, and make decisions for myself entirely, there's obviously something nice about that. No power struggle or anything like that. Just getting it out. Just myself. I can be a pretty formidable opponent to myself at times, so it’s not without its challenges, but I do feel like this represents more of where I come from as a musician, and the fact that I played most of the instruments, wrote all of it, and mixed it myself, I feel proud of that. It is very personal for that reason.”
GW: What is it that they say about groups of two or more? There's always going to be some kind of power struggle. It sounds like you faced some of that in your former group, Turkuaz. Do you want to talk about that at all?
DB: “You know; we took it to the extreme. I think we were told that all along, and I was told that as a band leader. They would say, ‘Oh, that's never going to work. That is too many people.’ And in the early days, I think everybody was just so gung-ho. We were in our twenties, and we didn’t mind not getting paid and crashing on floors. It’s really when we got to that intermediate level, where we weren’t superstars or pop stars, but we weren’t at the bottom. We were somewhere in the middle. We all deserved to be paid. We had paid our dues, but we weren’t selling out arenas or stadiums, so there just wasn’t enough to go around. And then you add a pandemic on top of it, and that was really the kiss of death. I also think that I shouldn't put it in such a negative way. Even though there were bad things about how it ended, I think it had run its natural course. Creatively, I felt a little maxed out on what we could do with it, and I think other people probably felt the same. So between money, and each person having their own creative vision for themselves, I think it was just time. I actually give people a lot of credit for how much they deferred to me for all those years, and that they had faith that it was always going in the right direction, that it was always going up. But once that pandemic hit, for an operation that size, it just became a lot tenser than ever before. I'm a happier person now that I’m focusing on these new projects. I'm still really proud of the work that we did as Turkuaz, and especially on the albums. I was given a lot of control with that, but I am super proud of not only what I did on the records, but obviously what we all did, and with our great performances.”
GW: I never had a chance to see you guys, but I heard that it was a fantastic show.
DB: “It is safe to say that we definitely turned it all the way up for every performance, so that was what we were known for.”
GW: Nice. Well, I can definitely see how it would be hard to keep a group of nine paid, especially through the pandemic. I don't know if you would agree with this, but I do think that the pandemic forced people to get really creative, and some really cool things came out of that.
DB: “Yeah, definitely. I always worked with people remotely on recording, but it certainly became more of the norm during that time. Everyone who's a musician seems to have their home recording setup pretty dialed in now. So if I want to work with somebody across the country, I can think of almost anyone to play on a track, and I can count on the fact that they will be able to record it themselves at home, and send it. Don’t get me wrong, I much prefer to be in person when working with people on records, and I've been doing a lot more of that, but it is one of the upsides that everyone can do it at home now. And also, speaking of being in Los Angeles, between there and places like Nashville, there's no shortage of content, even throughout the pandemic. That's somewhere that music still has a very big place, and there's an unending appetite for it. Recording music and writing, whether for myself or for other projects, has been my passion since day one, so I'm excited to crank out a lot more of that being off the road for a while.”
GW: So if I'm hearing you correctly, you prefer the creative process, and putting it all together more than the actual performance aspect?
DB: “I guess yeah, but the touring part is really what's hard. I certainly miss the feeling of performing, and I really value what we are able to give to fans. The connection with fans when we perform means a lot to me, and that's what I was most upset about when a bunch of our dates got canceled, and we stopped. That was my biggest concern. I'm happy to not have to tour anymore, but I'm not happy to not be able to give that to people anymore. So I miss that, and I always want to find a way back to it. I just don't know that I need to be on a tour bus, or in a van or airplane 200 days a year to do it. I think I can find more reasonable methods. The music will have to find its way to people in a different way. I’m certainly not a social media or marketing whiz, and I'm not shy about that fact. I think this is going to be a learning process for me, like alright, I don't want to tour, so how do I get this music out to people? And I mean this is part of it. I appreciate you doing this because I think there's probably some Turkuaz fans who will hear this record and be like, ‘what the hell is this?’ (laughs). So this is just about getting it out there, and eventually I'll definitely want to do some shows for this, and for my other project, New Originals, which maybe we can chat about some other time.”
GW: I honestly think that people are going to love this album. Can you briefly explain the difference between the two projects, and who you are working with on each?
DB: My friend Jonathan Smith, and Andrew Burri, who used to be in a band called Lucius. Taylor Shell is on bass for two of the songs. He is my partner in Turkuaz, so we still work together on a lot of stuff. Tim Walsh engineered a lot of it, and also played drums. He used to be in a band called the Step Kids that was really amazing. Matt Musty, who is the drummer of Train. Kurtis Keber, who plays with Grace Potter and the Nocturnals. Kiyoshi Matsuyama (formerly) from London Souls. And then all of the horn and string players that I don't know as well. It was still a collaborative process, but very much me asking them to play on the record. And it's my composition, so it's really a solo project. New Originals is what I do with my production partner, Rob O. Block, who’s based in Nashville. I'm actually going tomorrow to Nashville to work on some stuff with him for the week, and he and I produced one of the last Turkuaz records together, Paradiso, as well as a couple of tracks off Life in the City, which was a few years ago. So he and I had been working together on Turkuaz stuff and New Originals feels like a natural progression for people following the line of the Turkuaz music, in terms of my composition contribution to it. New Originals is where that is continuing a little bit. It's not funk, but it's upbeat music with some electronic elements, so that one's a little heavier. Band for Sale is a little bit mellow, and this first album by Band for Sale, Sleeping Sun Waking Moon is definitely on the mellow side. I might have some more rock stuff coming up soon afterward, but I like that, it's a record you could put on and just relax.”
GW: That was a nice description. Thank you. So you and Taylor Shell started Turkuaz together when you were in college. How did that happen?
DB: “I'd say Taylor and I both come from families of extreme music appreciators. Taylor's sister is actually a great writer, but not professionally. He and I actually made a record for her that’s pretty awesome, and I can send that to you, but otherwise no one in our immediate family did music professionally, or anything like that. I think we grew up in environments that really appreciated music, and both of us were really big on The Beatles. I grew up playing more classic rock stuff, and Taylor did a lot of bay area punk kind of stuff when he was in his early teens, and then he got more into the jam thing before going to Berklee. I got into Steely Dan, semi-jazz inspired. So alternate versions, but similar trajectory. And then when we met, all we ever wanted to play was funk and dance music. We'd play at parties, and it was the most fun we'd ever had playing music. We, along with a bunch of other great musicians, some of which were not in Turkuaz, had so much fun playing. And we had all these other projects with people writing songs, and they were a little more straightforward. We didn't have a funk project with recorded songs, it was just like, oh, it’s fun that we jam at parties, or when we hang out we play, and that is fun, but we hadn't gotten to the point where we organized and made songs. It was like alright, why don't we try that? Why don't we try? Taylor would start making some grooves, and then I would add to them. I'd write vocals over them, and it all happened pretty quick. He’d make a good groove, give it to me, I'd write in thirty minutes, record the thing, and then we had our friends play on top of it. That was it. That was how it started. And then the label at Berklee wanted to sign us, but that was really just for their annual showcase event. We weren't a real band yet. We'd never played live. They heard these songs, and they wanted us to be on their compilation, and perform at the showcase. We accepted, and we threw our friends together, and played two songs at that showcase. That was the first time we ever played, and then we decided to keep going.”
GW: I love that. So the friends that you threw in there, were they the other members of Turkuaz?
DB: “People trickled in over the following months. A year after that we had a couple of other drummers before Mikey. We had a guitarist before Craig. But by the time we started touring, our most recent line up had solidified around 2012. The last change was Shira joining in 2014. So you know it's funny, this is 2008 that I'm talking about. In some ways we didn't really consider it a real band until 2012 when we began touring, but there was this whole chapter before, which was so much fun. Those are some of my fondest memories. Not all of them, but definitely a lot of them.”
GW: I can imagine. Being in your early twenties playing at parties would probably be pretty fun.
DB: “Yeah and we’d do shows at some New York venues, maybe once a month, and that was it. We didn't really have any aspirations beyond that. We were like we're doing it. We made it.”
"And now, tell me and tell me true. Where have you been wandering, and in what countries have you traveled? Tell us of the peoples themselves, and of their cities--who were hostile, savage and uncivilized, and who, on the other hand, hospitable and humane… for a good friend is as dear to a man as his own brother.” -Homer’s The Odyssey
It is no surprise that New York based musician and traveling storyteller, Matt Butler was deeply moved and influenced by Homer’s quintessential hero’s journey, The Odyssey. Like Homer’s protagonist Odysseus, Butler introduces us to the “Reckless Son” in order to remind us that there is power in sharing our stories.
The aptly named Reckless Son EP, which will release on January 27th, is inspired by the people he met while performing in prisons across the country. “Reckless Son wasn’t written for the incarcerated. It was written for those who haven’t had the privilege of meeting these people and hearing their stories for themselves,” Butler explains in a press release.
The moving collection of music and monologues beautifully illustrates the idea that while we cannot know pleasure without knowing pain, there is no deeper pleasure than knowing that we belong somewhere in the world. There is nothing more soothing to our souls than sharing our experiences with other people, and knowing that we are seen and heard.
Blurring the line between fact and fiction, but always preserving a shred of truth, Reckless Son adopts a character for each story that he tells. In a heartbreaking song, “Good Friday,” which debuts today, the speaker turns to his mother for warmth and shelter: “Mama let me in to take a shower/ Mama let me in to clean my clothes/ Mama let me in, to wash away the sin.”
Addiction is the sin that he is referring to: “Your boy is just another junkie on the street/ If this is hell and every angel has to fall/ Then I’ll be crawling home for one more score.”
The mother wears an albatross— a symbol for healing.
To the son, she represents a safe place to land when he is broke, and broken, yet she is a place that remains out of reach: “Under a scaffold, far below/ High as hell, nowhere to go/ I watched her sitting with a book between her hands.”
Ultimately, the speaker must accept that, in the words of Matt Butler, “there are some things even Moms can't fix.”
He concludes, “And I guess that’s why you always tell me no/ Cause you can’t help/ And I can’t help myself at all.”
Candice Dollar from Grateful Web is pleased to introduce readers to Reckless Son. Read their conversation below.
GW: How long have you been writing, storytelling, and playing music? Who or what shaped you and encouraged you to express yourself in this way?
MB: “In a lot of ways I think of writing as a first love – I started trying to write short stories as soon as I was able to read, and I think my first ambition was to be a novelist. Music always seemed inaccessible and people in school that could play instruments had a talent that felt beyond me and what I was capable of, so I avoided playing for a long time. As a teen I felt a pretty desperate need to express myself beyond just words, but with physicality, and eventually got my parents to buy me a guitar and I started my first band within a few weeks. I played really aggressive stuff, I loved bands like Nirvana and Fugazi and The Stooges and from that point on, being in a punk band became my thing. It wasn’t until way later that I got into the whole ‘traveling storyteller vibe’.”
GW: How did you start down this road of playing for the “forgotten”? When and how did you first start performing in prisons? How did that transpire?
MB: “None of it was planned, I can tell you that. In 2016 I was given the opportunity of writing a song for a documentary film about teenagers struggling with substance abuse, and as a result I was introduced to a lot of social workers, advocates and people that work in the non-profit space. I saw a video on Facebook of some men in the Chesterfield County Jail in Virginia singing songs, and I thought there was a chance they’d relate to some of the songs I’d been writing. Fortunately, because of my connections through the film I knew the right people to ask. I didn’t end up at Chesterfield until a year later, but I was given a chance to perform at The Albany County Jail and, as they say, the rest is history.”
GW: Ohio’s Chillicothe Correctional Institute is one of the prisons you’ve spent time performing for, and oddly enough, Chillicothe is approximately 30 minutes from where I grew up. I am well-aware of the unique struggles of that particular region of the country, especially the issues that often lead people down the path to incarceration, but I am curious about what your experience was like, as someone from the “outside” looking in. Any memorable stories and/or experiences? Lessons learned and/or lasting impressions?
MB: “I grew up in Manhattan so I’ve really appreciated the opportunity to spend time in the Midwest and places like Ohio. I talk about that and a particularly life changing experience I had at Chillicothe pretty extensively in a couple of the monologues in Reckless Son. That’s a plug to come see the show, by the way! What I will say though, is that I had the very unique experience of being able to see America by seeing its jails and prisons. I literally went across the country by way of the country’s most shadowy places, and it was quite an education. It was humbling, and I learned that for the most part everywhere you go people all want the same things. They want to work, they want to eat, and they want to spend time with their families. We all have more in common than we realize.”
GW: As someone who believes wholeheartedly in the power of storytelling, and who has dedicated my entire adult life to art and the humanities, your mission to tell the stories of those who are “behind the walls” is deeply moving. Does this mission of yours come from your own personal experiences of feeling unheard? A desire to tell your story?
MB: “Like I said earlier, none of this ever felt planned to me. It was never deliberate but more something I got swept up by. The experience transformed me, and it’s transforming me still. But yes, I believe I know what it’s like to feel unseen and unheard and that’s a pretty terrible feeling.”
GW: Can you explain how you were influenced by Bruce Springsteen’s Darkness on the Edge of Town, musically or otherwise?
MB: “I grew up in Manhattan and I have barely ever been behind the wheel of a car but somehow ‘Racing in The Street,’ a song where the first line is ‘I got a sixty-nine Chevy with a three ninety-six’ seemed to describe my whole life to me. To this day I still don’t know what a three ninety-six is, I’m guessing something to do with an engine, but the point is that that’s how good of a storyteller he is. He taps into things that are universal so well that it doesn’t matter to me if I have no experience of my own with the metaphor, or the vehicle, wink wink, that he’s using. That’s what I’ve aspired to do with Reckless Son. I wanted to make the experience of being incarcerated relatable to people who haven’t had that experience themselves, I wanted to write songs that would allow them to empathize with someone they would normally think they had nothing in common with.”
GW: Which artists (musicians or otherwise) do you admire the most, and why?
MB: “Admiring an artist and admiring their work are two different things, and I do my best never to put anybody on any kind of pedestal no matter how much I love their work. That being said, Walt Whitman wrote what’s arguably the foundational masterpiece of American poetry. But what’s really special is that he stopped writing so he could work as a nurse in a field hospital during the Civil War. I think that’s the kind of thing I admire most.”
GW: When and how did you know that you wanted to produce your own album? Has that always been a dream of yours, or did it happen organically? Can you explain the difference between Reckless Son, which will be released on January 27, and the Reckless Son that was released in 2016?
MB: “The record from 2016 is a different body of work altogether. It’s an album of different songs I released under my own name, whereas this time around I’m releasing the album under the name Reckless Son and giving the body of work an identity of its own. I’m not telling my story; I’m telling the story of the Reckless Son.”
GW: “Time to Be A Man” is about taking responsibility for your own life… It's about saying this is who I am and this is what I’m going to be; I want my life and I won’t throw it away.” Was there a defining moment in your life when you came to this realization? How have people responded to that song since its release? Any surprises?
MB: “Well, performing that song in a jail for the first time resulted in a pretty serious surprise. I was terrified to play it because I was afraid that the guys would think I was talking down to them, being condescending, being just another one of the characters from the story in the song. But the opposite happened – I was playing it in a heroin recovery program of a jail and after the song was done, one of the inmates stood up and said, ‘Hey man, that song really f****d with me,’ and I thought he was gonna kill me right then and there. Instead, he ended up taking a massive risk and came clean with everybody in the place that he’d been faking his drug tests and had relapsed. It was incredible, and what was even more remarkable was that the whole unit, including the correctional officers, rallied around this guy and supported him. It was a moment I will never forget.”
GW: “People who have lost everything or have had everything taken from them are often truly in touch with what matters most.” Wisdom definitely comes with a price. Especially the deeper we go. Any hard-earned wisdom you’d like to share?
MB: “Be kind to everybody. Nothing bad ever happened to me as a result of being kind.”
GW: Best piece of advice you’ve ever received and who gave it to you?
MB: “My father used to always tell me ‘Don’t overplay your hand.’ Over the years, I’ve taken that to mean a lot of different things, but these days mostly just stay humble and grateful.”
GW: “Reckless Son is a hybrid of sorts… You could call it a one-man show with music. It’s a coming-of-age, a vision quest initiation, a rite-of-passage story.” Which books and/or authors have made a major impact on you as a person and/or artist? Why?
MB: “My point of view has been informed by artists across a pretty wide spectrum of mediums. For Reckless Son I was really influenced by John Steinbeck, specifically The Grapes of Wrath. I was also influenced by others you, or PBS, might call American Masters – painters like Thomas Hart Benton, Winslow Homer, Andrew Wyeth. Photography of Dorothea Lange. Bob Dylan. Leslie Marmom Silko and her novel Ceremony had a huge impact on me. More than anything though, Homer. I read a children’s version of The Odyssey when I was little and it changed me forever. I’ll think I’ll be trying to tell my own version of that story forever, too.”
Within five minutes of speaking with Daniel Donato, I knew that the two of us would most likely have a difficult time keeping the conversation brief. Donato has the type of mind that makes me want to stay up all night talking well into the wee hours of the morning. He is the kind of guy who makes me want to start a podcast, or write a book. Carl Jung and his process of self-individuation, the 7 Hermetic Principles, all things philosophy, creativity, and spirituality— these topics light me up.
After our conversation last week, I think it’s safe to say that the same is true for him. In fact, I think it’s safe to say that Daniel Donato is always on fire with something.
Most notably these days is his self-proclaimed “brainchild,” Cosmic Country.
Donato’s debut album, A Young Man’s Country was recorded at Nashville’s Sound Emporium in a mere two days. The record weaves outlaw country, Grateful Dead-style Americana, and first-rate songwriting into a singular form Donato calls “21st-century cosmic country.”
“Ain’t Living Long Like This,” one of three covers on the album, is a song by Waylon Jennings, who was recording at the Sound Emporium the day Donato was born. “Angel From Montgomery,” a song Donato learned on the fly while busking for tourists, pays tribute to the late John Prine. Donato recorded his unique take on the tune before Prine’s death. The Grateful Dead’s “Fire On The Mountain '' is tacked on to “Meet Me In Dallas,” a tune Donato wrote while on the road with Paul Cauthen. The other seven songs, all originals, showcase the promise of a young songwriter coming into his own, one of the highlights being “Luck of the Draw.”
Trouble No More, which includes Daniel Donato, along with Brandon “Taz” Niederauer, Lamar Williams Jr., Nikki Glaspie, Roosevelt Collier, Dylan Niederauer, and Peter Levin, will be performing The Allman Brothers’ iconic album Eat a Peach on Friday, January 6th at Boulder Theater, and on Saturday, January 7th at Cervantes' Masterpiece Ballroom in Denver.
Trouble No More will be joined by Daniel Donato’s Cosmic Country.
Read on below for an in-depth look into the fascinating musings of Daniel Donato, as he and I from Grateful Web discuss Grateful Dead, the importance of truth, and everything in between.
GW: I always start my interview days by listening to the music of whoever I am interviewing. The head space that it puts me in varies from interview to interview, but I feel like it helps me connect with the musician I am talking to. I started the day by listening to A Young Man’s Country. I also listened to Trouble No More live at Salvage Station, I believe? I have been having such a good time, and have been so lost in the music that I have barely taken any notes, which is great. When did you play at Salvage Station? How was that?
DD: “You know, you bring up a very funny point that I've been thinking about with music. As you get farther and farther away from events and records, the time in which they came out, or happened seems to dwindle in terms of importance. I don't remember the day American Beauty came out, but I know it came out sometime, and that's the thing about music. We're making a record right now, and I was saying to the guys before we went into the studio that, ‘every great album or piece of art should be perfect for its time, it should be ahead of its time, and over time it should transcend time itself.’”
GW: It should be timeless.
DD: “That's the idea. Music is one of the only energy sources that, in a literal sense, and also in a rational sense, is timeless. It creates time itself as it enters into our reality, so it would make sense that it has the potential to be timeless. And that is awesome. Thank you for listening to the record today, as well as the performance.”
GW: Can you describe in as vivid detail as possible, what it is like to be a part of Trouble No More and Cosmic Country? How are those two projects different in terms of what it feels like?
DD: “It is easier to describe what's going on with Trouble No More, and then explaining Cosmic Country. Trouble No More is almost like I'm stepping into a major league baseball team of some kind. When I was twelve years old, I was obsessed for months over ‘Jessica,’ ‘Melissa,’ and ‘Blue Sky’ [from Allman Brothers Band]. My God, I just loved those recordings, and I didn't know why. The entire business infrastructure of Allman Brothers Band is the supporting foundation behind Trouble No More. Bert Holman, who used to be the manager [of Allman Brothers Band] comes out to a lot of our shows. And CJ Strock, who worked with Allman Brothers Band for over two decades. So it is like getting to be on a major league Allman Brothers team of some kind, in a very imaginative sense. That's what's going on there, and that's marvelous. There's no original composition there. It's all just taking the catalog, and bringing it back to life, and playing it in a way that is slightly different than the Allman Brothers would do it. We are trying to hit a bull's eye that has already been hit at a certain point in time. Now, that's great fun, and it is very fulfilling, and it is a lot of hard work, which is great. It teaches any musician who wants to partake in a trip that has any influence of American rock and roll whatsoever— it behooves you to learn the nuts and bolts of the Allman Brothers catalog. There's a lot going on there, particularly the differences between Dickey Betts and Gregg Allman (and Duane Allman’s) approach to composition. Dickey Betts— and I'll die on this hill— is one of the best composers who plays electric guitar that America has ever heard. He has a signature touch to his approach, and it has influenced Cosmic Country a lot. So now we can move it over to what it’s like with Cosmic Country. The thing about Cosmic Country is that it is a trip that is being born completely from my own mind, and from my band. It is unexplored territory a lot of the time, which is quite different from the Allman Brothers project. It is my whole brainchild. It is all I think about, and all I really invest my time in outside of Trouble No More. It is a very asymmetrical part of my life right now. That's all I do (laughs). And the great thing about bringing it to Colorado, and playing there in January, is that it seems like there's no better place in America where an audience is more ready to receive and reciprocate energy than in Colorado, when it comes to live music.”
GW: So coming from someone who has never been to a Cosmic Country show, I am curious about what it would feel like to be there in the audience, exchanging that energy?
DD: “I hope it feels very real. I have been to so many shows in my life, and the best shows that I have been to are the ones that I can remember long after they happen. They always seem to compound whatever it is that I am feeling on the emotional spectrum of life. And just to make it simple, you could have a yin and yang of happy vs. sad. Sometimes you go to a show, and it brings this very deep emotion out of you that might be ultimately sad. And then, when you're done with the show, you find yourself back in the middle of the peace and harmony of both. Sometimes you go to a show and you're there with friends, or you're not there with friends, and you're dancing, and you lose yourself in a song, or you may not even know what the song is. You lose your mind in a song, and then you find yourself, and all that is wrong in life, and it brings you into this ultimate happy polarized state of, this is the best feeling ever. And then it brings you back into the middle. That's what I want. I want our shows to be as real as they can be. That's what I feel is very real. It doesn't seem like life is one-sided. It seems like you go from the polarity of happiness, to the polarity of sadness, and then you hopefully find yourself back in the middle. A state which allows you to go about your life in a harmonized manner. If our shows can help create that energy, both mentally and physically, then that's the deal for me. And that whole thing might sound very hippy and abstract, but I don’t think those kinds of thoughts and philosophies are as abstract as people think they are.”
GW: That actually makes so much sense. This concept of “liminal space” has been rolling around my brain for three years, and I didn’t really know why until recently. I had a sense that my role or purpose had something to do with the creative potential that exists in the in-between spaces, but I am just now starting to see this idea actualize, in a more tangible sense. It is a complete departure from polarity. I suddenly have a very clear vision of what all of it means, as it relates to my own life.
DD: “I guess that's what it's all about. That seems to be what this whole trip is. If you have this vision of what can be, then you have a much better time in the process of becoming. It seems to me that living equals becoming. That's all we're doing is becoming something. While we are also already fully realized in some sort of metaphysical part of ourselves, our whole deal is that we are always becoming. We are always changing. It seems to me that the more of a vision that you can have for the future, the more it directly influences the process of becoming. And that's the great prospect that America has given to its residents and civilians. One of my English teachers in high school, one of my two favorite teachers from high school, gave me a book called The Way to Wealth by Benjamin Franklin. One of the things Benjamin Franklin talked about is the importance of having a vision for the future, one that is much more ideal than what you have now, and to hold that in your heart with a faith that is equal to any proper down religion of any kind. A sensation of feeling and believing. And do you live in a place where you have the freedom to pursue that? Yeah, and that is amazing. And that's what Cosmic Country is for me, and that's what Liminal Space is for you. And that's why I love connecting on that level. So thank you for sharing that with me. That's beautiful.”
GW: That is what the past few years of my life have been about. Getting clear on my vision. Shedding layers. Getting crystal clear on who I am, and what I want. And what I want is to spend all day reading, writing, researching, and discussing art and music. I just want to eat, breathe, and sleep all of that (laughs).
DD: “That's why I love doing the Lost Highway Podcast. I love just talking about things. My God! You learn so much just through Improvisationally speaking. That's a lot of what the music is for Cosmic Country. A lot of it is improvised, and you learn a lot through improvisation. The podcast is a similar platform, because a large percentage of it is improvisationally having a dialogical conversation. Even if it's just you on the microphone, it is dialogical in some way. You are speaking to a listener, and so I very much can relate to wanting to research, speak, and discover at the same time.”
GW: So is the Lost Highway Podcast something you are taking a break from? Any plans to ramp that back up?
DD: “This year was a big year of growth for me, the band, our crew, and really just our whole team. I ultimately wasn't born to be a podcaster, so I had to realign my values internally. It’s not that the The Lost Highway podcast is done, it's just a matter of when I can have a producer for it, and when it can be more of an automated process of editing, offloading, and distributing. Also, curating guests. That'll be it. If it's just me, it will take up way too much time, and then my music suffers and that can't be happening. So that's an easy fix. Podcasts aren't going anywhere. Year after year, they keep growing. It is one of the fastest growing media platforms, which is actually really good because it totally dispels the belief that people have short attention spans. We have incredibly long attention spans. What we have is short consideration spans. We are given so many opportunities, and so much content to engage with. More so than ever. We have so many outlets. Our consideration span for what we like is actually very short, but our attention span is marvelous. People send me messages all the time like, ‘I listened to six hours of Cosmic Country today,’ so it is clearly not our attention spans that are short, it's what we consider important enough to actually give our long attention span to. The Lost Highway podcast will be back in action when I can find the right people to delegate some responsibilities to on the production side. And I would love to have you on it. One day we could talk about Nebraska. Do you ever turn on Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Nebraska,’ and drive around?
GW: No, I should. Oh, my God. There are definitely challenges to living here, but there are also a lot of great things about living here too. As a creative person, Nebraska is untapped territory in a lot of ways.
DD: “You haven’t done that yet?! Springsteen went to Lincoln, and I don't know if he recorded it there, but I think he wrote a lot of it there, and it sounds the way Nebraska feels. I like it. I've driven to Nebraska, and I love it. I love driving through there. It's very recharging. It's very American. I grew up in a town that was very much like that place. Its value centers on having a continuity of identity, and also an approach to creativity. Spring Hill, Tennessee, which is an hour south of Nashville. If you don’t fit right down the middle, not only do the kids not know what to do with you, the staffing at school doesn’t really know what to do with you either. It can be a trip for a young person. That's where I think one of those Hermetic principles is so fascinating: ‘as above, so below.’ It seems like this is where the whole American ideal is such a genius idea in many ways. The more you realize and perpetuate the individuation of your own identity, and your own trip in life— it seems that the frequency and overtones of you living your life in that way is heroic and true enough to inspire others to do the same thing. The more that you do right by yourself, in a way that is equitable and not selfish, of course, it actually inspires other people to live their life in a similar fashion, and that creates the opportunity for this value structure to compound and emerge in many people's trips in life. And that's the deal.
GW: Did you have anyone who modeled this for you when you were growing up?
DD: Mr. Chester, my English teacher. I think I had him for three years as an English teacher. He and Mr. Anglin, my history teacher, were some of the most influential teachers, in terms of schooling. He [Mr. Chester] showed up every day in a three-piece suit with John Lennon looking rimmed glasses. He would listen to John Coltrane every morning, in the middle of Spring Hill, Tennessee. Not a lot of people knew what to make of that guy, but I did. We got along really well. And he would always tell us, ‘Listen, guys. You can be Tennessee Williams. You can read John Steinbeck. You can read Jack Kerouac. You can read Virginia Woolf. These people are all using the same language. But how? How is everyone so incredibly different? How is that so?’ He would say, ‘When you give me your papers, I'm not just judging you on how much you know in a literary sense, or how correct you are, I'm judging you on your individuality. I am judging you based on whether or not I can tell who is writing by their individualized voice. He would always give me an A plus on my voice. He would write it in Red Sharpie: ‘True Voice.’ That was just so inspiring to me.”
GW: Wow. I love that. One of my students gave me the best compliments last year when he said, “You know Ms. Dollar. We can really just be ourselves here.” Made my whole year.
DD: “That's amazing. I think we really have a dying, burning, urgent responsibility to be ourselves. I don't think it's a luxury, or something that you do on the weekend. I think it's something that we have an urgent responsibility to do at all times.”
GW: It seems that you are familiar with Carl Jung. In my experience— from knowing, befriending, and dating a lot of musicians and other creatives, it seems to be extra challenging for creative types, so to speak, to find the balance between the feminine and masculine. Maybe since creativity and creative flow is so feminine, but it seems difficult, particularly for male creatives, to integrate their masculine in healthy ways. And speaking for myself, I had to spend a lot of years in my masculine— working, achieving, succeeding, building, and it was only fairly recently that I discovered the importance of embodying the feminine more, so that I could healthily integrate both. Can you relate to that at all? Have you found that to be challenging as well?
DD: “Oh, yeah. God, what a challenge it is. As it should be. You know it was Carl Jung who said, ‘Suffer well.’ The arc of personality is, I think, the only measurable field in a human's life that doesn't stop developing. Our body stops developing; our frontal cortex stops developing; and we do actually start to experience atrophy at a certain level. We do physically experience atrophy, to the point that a physical being ceases to operate at a certain place in space and time, inevitably. And that seems to be the case with 100% accuracy for any mortal that's ever walked this planet, so far as we can tell. You're going to die, but the personality doesn't stop developing, and so the whole concept is that one of the prime goals for a male is to integrate his feminine, otherwise known as the ‘anima’ into his personality. And a female can do the same thing in the arc of her life, which is to integrate her ‘animus’ into her life as much as she can, so she too can get the yin and yang harmony going. And that's what a lot of this deal seems to be for me. It's the trip, man. I would be surprised if you met anybody who was inquisitive, and who wanted to fulfill the adventure of that, and they were to say that it was an easy time. I just don't think I'd believe them. And thank God, it's not an easy time. We don't want an easy trip, I don’t think. That's why I don't buy it when people say they want to be happy. I think people actually want meaning, and meaning implies that there's a lot of shit that hits the fan, and that things can go very sideways, and that you actually embrace just as much darkness as you do light in life. So, yeah. It is tough for me. All of that is incredibly challenging, all of the time. So much so.”
GW: And what does that look like in your life? The challenge of integration.
DD: “I was on my couch last night, thinking about some of the things coming up this year. Some things that are incredibly challenging. One of the hardest things in my life is to figure out the balance of all these things, especially touring with 6 guys all the time. The more that we're on the road together, the more that it gets to be incredibly masculine. I'm always trying to bring everyone back to the center in some way, and so does Peter Levin, our keyboard player. He does an amazing job at this. He's one of the most integrated gentlemen who I've ever had the pleasure to work with, or be a brother too. He just naturally figures that out, but he's also a Cancer. I'm an Aries, so I have a very hard time integrating the feminine. My mom would agree, and some of my ex-girlfriends would agree too. If you read it, and open yourself to these kinds of things, it really opens your mind in such a marvelous way to how things could be. I could talk to you about Carl Jung all day. He inspires me just as much as Jimi Hendrix inspires me.”
GW: So I read in an interview that one of your teachers gave you some Grateful Dead bootlegs? Can you tell me about that?
DD: “Yeah, Mr. Raglan. My American History teacher. I don't know if he realized, but that was the biggest lesson in American history he ever gave me. 1968-1995 bootlegs. I am so grateful for that. Honestly, if this country sticks around and we keep developing on this great experiment of self-governance, which I think is an amazing idea in this part of the world, is to have this great Garden of America be revitalized, and brought back to where it could and can be, but the Grateful Dead epitomize that in terms of musical exploration, more than any other American act has ever had the ability to do. So, continuing along the lines of Carl Jung’s process of self-individuation: The Grateful Dead did that very well. They were very much themselves. And they had every facet locked down to a respectable degree. They had the music locked down. They had the community locked down. And they had the business side locked down. So yeah, I don't know if he [Mr. Raglan] realized that he was giving me the greatest lesson in American history that I could ever ask to have received.”
GW: So how exactly did that transpire?
DD: “That was a crazy time. I was playing down at Robert's Western World, which is one of the last honky-tonks in Nashville. Really, it was one of the first ones. Roberts is special, and it changed my life. I started playing there quite often when I was around 16, 17, 18, and 19, and one day, when I was 17, Mr. Raglan came by, and watched me play. I didn't know this because he was very low key. He's very extroverted and on top of his job when you're in the classroom with him, and he's running the show, which is great, but outside of the classroom, he was very respectable and formidable, and professional. So, I didn't notice that he was at the gig that night. He came by, saw me play some songs that the Dead played, and I guess he had the notion to give me his entire bootleg collection, and some of the non-boot official releases too. The Pizza Tapes with “Dawg” and Tony Rice. Legion of Mary. Rehearsal tapes. Reckoning, live and acoustic at Radio City. Sunshine Daydream, live in Veneta, Oregon. And then in Europe. All 16 volumes, or whatever it is. This was a Wednesday, because I remember I would always get a fried bologna sandwich on Thursdays before I would start gigging at Roberts, and I remember the day after he came to see me play, we were talking about Abe Lincoln. I remember this very well. After he finished the slide, he said in front of everyone, ‘Donato, see me after class,’ as if I am in trouble. I did very well in high school. I had a 4.7 G.P.A, and took all AP classes. I was very on top of my education because I thought I was going to go to school for music law. Everybody was telling me that I needed to be a lawyer growing up, since I love to argue. So that’s good if you’re a lawyer, I guess, but that's not my schtick. But I still wanted to do well, just in case. So I think, surely it's not a behavioral thing. I go stay after class to see what it’s about, and he hands me a binder that must be stacked 10 inches high, full of CDs, and he goes, ‘I need you to take these CD’s, listen to all of them in order, because they're ordered specifically for a reason, and never bring them back to me again.’ I was like, ‘okay, whatever, what's his deal?’ And so I open the binder, and the first thing I see is Dick's Picks Volume I, and I have no context of what Dick's Picks is. I'm showing my friends like, ‘Guys, Raglan just gave me a CD that says Dick Picks on it. Should I bring this to the principal? Is there something going on here? (laughs). Fortunately, I didn't. So I drove to the gig that night— and you know, I never really had girlfriends in high school that I went to school with. No one got me in high school. I was such a weirdo, and fortunately so, but girls did not know what to make of me at all, and neither did most of my male friends— so, I remember putting these binders in my passenger seat, and they stayed in my car for years. They never left. There was never a girlfriend there, and there was never a best friend there. It was like the music was my friend, and it was my muse. It was my feminine and masculine input of energy. It was all that I listened to for a couple of years. It was traditional country music, bluegrass, western swing, and the Grateful Dead. I discovered so much. Like how do you take Johnny Cash's “Big River” and make it 6 minutes long? How do you take “El Paso” and bring it into the context of a whole set of playing it right after ‘Dark Star,’ or before ‘Eyes,’ and ‘Morning Dew’? And the theatrics of these songs— the powers that be set it up perfectly for me to take that information at that time. I can't thank Mr. Raglan enough for that. I don't know if any of this ever got back to him, by the way. He's so professional that he's never reached out in any way. I don't even know if he's still working at Independence High School, but I can't thank him enough. It totally changed the trajectory of my internal and external world.”
GW: That definitely sounds like divine intervention. So not only are you part of the Allman Brothers lineage, you are also very immersed in the Grateful Dead community too. It seems that you are very much a part of the roots of it all.
DD: “It's American music that we are trying to get at. These are people who have, I think, the right idea of what America can be and should be. There is a party element there, to this dichotomy of work and play, and now we live in this economy, in this society, that is all about work, but there is something right about the Grateful Dead trip. It takes a while to get to a place where you can just keep truckin’. These lyrics, you can live your whole life on them. I don't know what I'm going for, but I'm going for it for sure.”
GW: That is exactly how I feel about literature. You know, I was reading Chaucer to my students the other day, and there was a specific part that I was reading, and I could just tell that it was having an emotional impact on one of my students. I could just feel the truth of those words, and I knew that he was feeling the truth too. The same is true for anything. When something or someone is true, we know it and feel it.
DD: “My God, I can't agree with you enough on that. I'd love to evolve that a little more, too. There are three things that come to my mind there. The three types of truths, which are: personal truth, objective truth, and political truth. Personal truth seems to be something that is true to you, and your internal world. My sister was bit by a dog when she was a kid, and because of that, she hated dogs for years. Her personal truth was to hate dogs. Objectively speaking, which is almost like a quantitatively bulletproof cemented truth that you can't really change, that's one kind of truth as well. The objective truth. And then you have this thing that is quite terrifying, which is the political truth, which is the mandability and plasticity of truth being curated through dialogue. So the more you say it, the more it becomes real, which is very, potentially volatile, because we live in a society where a select group of people control the narrative on certain truths, and whatever they say goes. Doch Coin is a great example of that. Its value is based on whatever the dialogue is. And so the political truth might be that the Grateful Dead are a bunch of grilled-cheese-eating hippies, or that they're a bunch of potheads, and demonic LSD trippers, and a lot of people would think that's true. But then you might have a personal truth of it, which is completely different. And the objective truth is that they are one of the greatest American enterprises there ever was, both musically and communally speaking. I'm always looking at the truth through those 3 filters, and the thing that always rings most true to me is—- I pretty much just say screw the political truth a lot of the time with the way things are now; it's hard to trust any trickle-down source. The objective truth, or what seems to have always been, and always will be real. I think the Hermetic Principles seem to fall in line with that. And then my personal truth, which is the beacon dancing on the shore of the unconscious shores of our mind. The personal truth of what is real for you, and this is where teachers and mentors have helped me align myself with my personal truths. One of the other things I want to bring up is multivariate or multi-trait testing. You have different groups of people, who have different traits of personality, and if two people can somehow arrive at the same conclusion, then that means something is true. So say somebody who's, not politically speaking, but just in terms of any dichotomy, you know, one side of a right, and another who is on one side of a left, and they can agree on an observation of any kind, that means something is totally true. That's where great songs come into play, which goes back to the power of music, what we were talking about earlier. I think everybody can pretty much agree that ‘Canon in D’ is a nice relaxing piece of music. Or everybody can say that they have a Beatles song that they like. Those are the things that are worth aspiring to create and go for in life: these things that unite everybody. My God! When we were in my English class, man. We read several pieces of literature that I remember everybody in the class being moved by. People who were raised in different political backgrounds, religious upbringings, and from all kinds of different homes. We could all somehow agree that Lenny dying at the end Of Mice and Men was a completely tragic tale. Or that in Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, there is something very adventurous about that. These are things that are worth aspiring to, and assigning the title of truth to. I think there are a core set of principles. There are a lot of things that are true, but I think there are a lot of things that are floating around in our world right now that are not true that we accept as truth. It is a very shadowy, snaky, slippery time to be talking about things that are true and not true.”
GW: This idea of “truth” and “real” gets back to your goals with Cosmic Country.
DD: “That was also the idea with Cosmic Country. I am trying to channel what is true at all points in time. I think the greatest thing that I've ever consciously said to myself, or the most important idea I have arrived at in life, is to always speak the truth at all costs, and see what happens. You might lose some people in the process, but then you probably had to. You might also end up inspiring people in ways that you could never have consciously imagined. And so that's the thing. I value the personal truth above anything else. I try to embrace and embody it as much as I can. I try to speak the truth, and play the truth, as much as I can. And that is a full time job, because sometimes it hurts. We were recording a song the other day, and we were probably nine takes in, and I knew it wasn't the right one, so I just had to say it. I was like, ‘Guys that's not it.’ And everyone's like ‘God, Daniel, it's good’. And I know personally that it is not. And there's a reason why, so I'm trusting that, and I'm speaking it. And then, sure enough, we went to cut it one more time, and everybody was flipping. They were bonkers. That was the take. So I say: speak the truth and see what happens, man. See how it goes. Serving your internal world on that level, really is the thing that is shaping your external reality at all points in space and time. Let the truth be the cement and the compounding energy for this entire trip of experience. Maybe that's just part of the whole idea. Is that it? You just speak your own truth and live your own way.”
Grateful Web is pleased to premiere Americana singer/songwriter David Starr’s new video “Any Chance of Going Home.” This unexpectedly darker themed song is from his forthcoming EP, Better Me, which is set to be released in early 2023, and features bluegrass songstress, Irene Kelley.
Starr used his long-honed songwriting craft to write a story around a stranger he encountered early one morning. “I watched an unknown older man in my small Colorado town one morning as he very deliberately prepared to smoke a cigarette in the dawn light. I'd never seen him before and wondered what his story might be,” Starr shares in a press release. “Several phrases and ideas from my notebook merged to write his ‘story.’ While he remains a mystery to me, he seemed like a bit of a lost soul. I never saw him again and still don't know who he is."
This past week, David Starr sat down with the Grateful Web for a conversation. Read on to learn more about the humble and kind artist behind “Any Chance of Going Home.”
GW: When I listened to your song, “Any Chance of Going Home” this morning, I definitely shed a tear. Strong imagery. I wrote down some of the images that stood out to me: “he lit the ragged end,” “a tattoo on her thigh,” “when a bitter wind tore holes in childish dreams,” and so many more. I am wondering where your imagery comes from? And also, your storytelling? Is there anything in your background that makes you a storyteller?
DS: Well, I like a good story for starters. You know it's that old, “show, don’t tell” thing. I like to create a palate where people can sort of see where I am. Now, in this particular song, “No Chance of Going Home,” it's interesting that you bring that up, because that is the reason, I like this song a lot. That song came from one morning when I came into town. I live about 7 miles from town, up higher, on a mountain. I come into town to have coffee with some guys every morning, which keeps me centered, and in the know, here in this little town. I’m sitting in the store one morning, in my guitar store, before it opens. It's early. It's barely light outside, and there's a little park bench that a guy built for me. And there's an old man sitting on the bench, and I don't know him, which is odd, because you know in a little town you know folks, right? You see them. This guy was sitting there, and he was literally doing the thing with the cigarette, and he was breaking it off, and doing some— you know, I don't smoke cigarettes, but I know people have their rituals and routines with their habits. Some people have to mix a drink a certain way, and for some people it's their cigarettes. Other people, it's their food. Anyway, that's as far as it got, and I thought to myself, I don't know who that guy is. I wondered what his story was. So then I thought, Write it. Write his story. And in that particular instance, I had pieces, parts, and images. I like to read about the Dust Bowl. I'm currently rereading Timothy Egan's book about the Dust Bowl, and that part about “when a bitter wind tore holes in childish dreams” came from the idea that people all went west to live out their dream, and the winds just took it away from them. Another example is my father, who was not a man of many words. He pretty much kept to himself. But one day I said to him, “You know, I don't even know where you were born.” This was a few years before he died. He said, “It doesn't matter. It blew away.” I found out that it was a town out in Western Oklahoma that did literally just blow away. There's nothing left of it. There's nothing there. Yes, it shows up in Wikipedia as a town that was there, but there's nothing there, so I write down those little pictures in my mind. Those little three-minute movies. I put them in my phone, or wherever I'm writing stuff down, and when that song began to take form after I saw that old man, there were some other little pieces and parts, and I thought, That's his story. I'm going to write his story, which for me was not a breakthrough, but it was a bit of a step up, because sometimes I find— and I’m not the only songwriter, but you tend to write about stuff that's too close to you, and I admire people who can just pluck something out of thin air, and create something, so that's what I did in this case. Where did it come from? I don't know. My grandfather was a writer. He was a columnist, and he wrote books, and some of them were fiction, and some were non-fiction. He was a writer, and yet I never read his books until the last few years. I like to think it's some kind of archetypal thing that's in there, but that's the magic, right?
GW: Can you tell me more about the writing of your grandfather and the influence it had on you? Why didn’t you read his books until recently?
DS: Going back to when I was a kid, he wrote these books, and I was aware of that, but my time with him was spent riding horses and learning about stuff around his little farm in Northwest Arkansas. Going on walks in the woods, and all that stuff. He wrote these books, and he had a publisher, but it wasn't a big publishing deal. Not where there's distribution, and all that. It seems to me, looking back, that he would get this box of books from the publisher, and he'd go to a big antique fair, or a craft fair, or a county fair, or some event where there were going to be people milling around, shopping, and looking at stuff on a fall day, and he would set up a little card table with a chair and a box of books, and he would say, “Hi, I’m! Fred Starr and I wrote this book. Would you like to buy it?” He also had a newspaper column, so a lot of people knew who he was, and he wrote about the people of the Ozarks. He wrote about high hills and tall tales, you know? It was almost a Mark Twain folklorist approach. Looking back, he was doing what we do now as musicians when we go to a gig and sell CDs off the edge of the stage. It's the same kind of thing. So that was his way of getting that creativity out to the world, even at the age of 77 when he died. He had just published his last book. I never read those books because that didn't interest me. I thought that was just something the old guy did, right? Probably like my grandkids think about me making records. Someday they'll see it differently, I'm sure of it. But one day, about eight or nine years ago, I read the last book that he wrote, and I was taken again. Like what you said about the imagery— I was taken by the landscape, the people, the pictures he painted of these people, and their lives. And then just human nature. The humanness of how we mess things up when we shouldn't, and we make one decision that sends everything off a cliff. That takes everybody with us. And so I read that book, and that's when I went to John Oates and I said, “You know, there are songs in here.” And he read the book, and he agreed. My idea was to give that book to some writers and say, “Let's all write songs inspired by the book.” But again, it started with imagery. He would paint a picture of the yellow grass on the sandy soil with the sun going down, and I thought, Man, that's beautiful. That's poetry to me.
GW: I find it very impressive that he was so committed to his art, to his writing, especially being a man of that generation, living in a rural area. Creativity wasn't always encouraged, especially back then.
DS: He had a paper route. I'd get up with him at four in the morning, and they'd bring the papers by, and we'd fold them all up, and then we would get in his car, and go put them in the paper boxes before everybody got up. So, he did a lot of things because he had to to make a living. And I think all of it supported his writing, which is classic starving artist stuff, but it never seemed like they were starving. They grew up during the depression, and were very— we always had leftovers, you know?
GW: Can you tell me a bit more about your childhood in Arkansas?
DS: I hung out with my grandparents a lot. They had a farm, and I pretty much grew up out in the country. We had forty acres, which seemed like a million acres to me at the time. My dog and I would roam that all day long. I had buddies, and we'd get on our bicycles and ride into town, and our parents wouldn't see us for ten hours, and then we'd show up at dinner time. It was a different time, probably a safer time than it is now, or seemingly so. On weekends, I would hang out at the guitar store, so that's where that seed was planted. I just liked being around the instruments, the people, the stories, and the older guys talking about playing gigs. It was an interesting time in Northwest Arkansas, because Walmart was a brand-new thing, and that's where it started. Tyson Foods was a young company. My father worked for them. As somebody who's always had one foot in the business world a little bit, even as a young person, watching my father in business, I was aware that there was this momentum or inertia, in Northwest Arkansas. There were people around us who started out with Sam Walton doing nothing important, and wound up very wealthy. There was a lot of that. It was a time when there was a lot of growth in the area, so that was kind of cool. But at some point, my first wife and I, who had known each other since Junior High, it was kind of her idea, she said, “We should go somewhere else for a while and get out of our comfort zone,” and that's why we moved to Aspen. But Fayeville, Arkansas, when I left there in 1981, the town was, I don't know, under 30,000, and it's 95,000 or 100,000 now. And that's just the town limits. That entire area has just boomed. A lot of it is Walmart, and Proctor and Gamble is there now. And some people in Northwest Arkansas have really put a lot of money into the arts. There's a museum there that's second to none. Alice Walton. You know Rosie the Riveter, the painting by Norman Rockwell? She owns the original. It's there in that museum. That's the kind of stuff that's in that museum. Not a poster, but the real deal. There’s millions and millions of dollars being plowed into that part of the state, in the name of the arts. You know I've got grandkids there, and I'm glad they're able to grow up around all that.
GW: So in your song, “Any Chance of Going Home” this idea of more than likely dying alone, and losing the chance of ever going home— it is so sad. Where does the theme of losing a home come from?
DS: Getting back to my grandad's book, and leading up to your question, the name of his book was Of What Was, Nothing is Left. I think sometimes we're longing for stuff, and it's this undefined, free-floating anxiety about what it is we really want, and a lot of times, particularly as I get older, I think it is home, but you have to reconcile with the idea that home is something else now. It's not the house with the broken swing you played on. It's not the house where you learned to walk as a little baby. It is something else. Now, you have to make home for yourself. But in that song, I think the character, or the protagonist was looking back on decisions made. Maybe somebody that he loved, and she's gone. Whether she's still living or not, I don't know. Maybe she's just somewhere else, and he just has to reckon with the fact that whatever that home was, is not there anymore. So he has to figure out some other place to be. And things can change in a home. Maybe your parents die, or maybe they split up, and that home never feels the same again. There’s a line in there, “Sometimes circumstances lay waste to best laid plans,” meaning you can have these plans, but life is going to come at you, and it's going to do what it's going to do, and you can only control so much. I think the character in that song is just reckoning with that. You almost have to do that on a daily, or weekly basis, because it's changing all the time. He seems like a sad character, and maybe that's me a little bit. I don't know, probably.
GW: Even the image of the dog hit close to home. My boy has been with me since 2009, so he is getting up there in age. I have been thinking about that lately. Wondering what I am going to do without that companionship.
DS: I had this discussion with my older brother who lost a dog early this year. He had this little dog that sat on his lap a lot. My brother retired, and then it was with him constantly, and it didn't really want to be with anybody else. I don't think I ever really got to pet the dog. It wasn't all that socialized for other people, but that was his friend. We were talking one day, and he just said, “You know dogs take on a lot in a house.” Dogs absorb a lot, and they know what the mood is in a home. If the kids are rowdy, they get rowdy. Dogs are so special. My wife and I have one right now. It is interesting that you say that it affected you because I've gotten more Facebook messages, and more emails, just in the few days that the song has been out about it affecting people. And it seemed almost unfair to put that out of the holidays, because it's kind of dark, but the holidays aren't bright for everybody. They just aren’t.
GW: So, you’ve got Irene Kelley doing vocals on this track. How did you start collaborating with her?
DS: Well, the people who run the PR agency at Richlynn Group who do PR for me— several years ago, there was a guy working there, who has now moved on to something else in Nashville, but he was sort of my contact there at the agency, and one day he said, “Do you want to do some co-writing? And I said, “I'd like that, but I don't really know anybody in Nashville to do that with.” It was not brand new for me to do co-writing, but it wasn't something I felt as comfortable with as I do now. Anyway, there were three or four people, and one of them was Irene, and we agreed to meet up. We went over to her house, because she lives in Nashville, and I took a guitar and legal pad. When you go to something like that, you want to have several ideas, and then the other person has several ideas, and hopefully you meet in the middle and come up with something you can agree on, and make some magic. I got there, and the very first day I met Irene, she had just gotten a puppy, and found out that it was terminally ill, and she was not in a good frame of mind. Obviously, for good reason. She was very sad about that. So I said, “Well, maybe today's not a good day.” And she said, “No, I need this. It'd be good to take my mind off of it.” So we wrote a song, and I don't think either of us have ever recorded it yet, but in that particular instance, things clicked pretty well. She's really good with melody and music. I always show up with lots of words, maybe too many words. A little more verbose. So between the two of us, we managed to write that song, and then every time I've had a project, I've said, “Come on, write one with me, or sing on it.” There is one of the songs called “Highway Back to You” that was on one of her Bluegrass records. She's quite a good singer, quite a good artist, and there's an earnestness in her voice that I thought this song would really benefit from.
GW: Can you tell me how you started working with John Oates?
DS: First of all, I lived in the Roaring Fork Valley, which is close to where Aspen is. It's not that far, as a crow flies, but it's kind of hard to get there through the mountains on a snowy day. I didn't meet John when I lived there because he moved there after I left, but he's got a home over there, and has been there for a long time. Everybody in the valley knows John, and he tours from out of there. Some friends of mine were in his band that he would use as a backing band when he and Darryl weren't out on the road doing the Hall and Oates thing. So they knew him, and they knew me, and one day they said to me, “We should get John to come over and do a gig.” One thing led to another, and he agreed to do it. We got together and did that gig with a full band. Then we did another one down in my hometown of Northwest Arkansas. Fayetteville, Arkansas. He actually had roots there, because he had an uncle that I was aware of when I was growing up. This uncle of his, who was a doctor in town, always talked about little Johnny, his nephew. Very proud of him. So anyway, I did a show there, and then we did a couple of shows just as a duo, which originally was his idea, and I was thrilled at that. One day I said, “I’d sure like to write a song with you.” So we did that down in Nashville one day. As time went on, I said, “I would love it if you would go into the studio with me and help me produce something.” So we did, an EP called The Head and the Heart. I was really honored to be able to do that. He's such a library of knowledge. His vocabulary of chords. His encyclopedic knowledge of the music biz. He thinks in sort of a pop format, because even though it was a very Americana record, we did want to get it on the radio. We wanted people to hear it, so he would add some things that I hadn't thought of, some twists and turns. When I read that book of my grandads I thought, You know, I’m pushing my luck to ask for another record here, but I threw it out there, and he was very receptive, and if I remember right, he said, “You know I didn't want to do another record just to be doing it, but this seemed like a cool project.” It was a concept. There was an idea behind doing it. He's extremely generous with his time. Brutally honest when something needs to be done differently, and more than anything, he has been a really good vocal coach. I think my singing improved when I started working with him. I thought more about my vocals, you know. So when I'm in the studio now, and he's not there, he's on this shoulder (gestures to shoulder) a little bit.
GW: I had a musician tell me that taking vocal lessons was the one thing that improved his songwriting the most? Would you agree with that?
DS: He didn’t give me formal vocal lessons, but I'll give you a little story. We were working late into the night one night when we did that first record, and I'd been singing all day long, and he said, “Can you keep singing?” The guys had all gone home, and it was time to redo the vocals, and I said, “Man, I'm good.” We got to the very end, and I was singing well, and I felt good about the whole thing, and I came out of the vocal booth, and I said, “That's it, that's the one,” and he looked at the engineer, and it was 9 o'clock at night, and he said, “You thought that was okay?” I said, “Yeah.” He goes, “Let me ask you a question. When you wrote that song, what were you thinking? How did you feel?” And I said, “Well, I was pissed off.” He said, “Oh. Go back in there, and do it one more time.” I went back in there, and it had just a little bit more grit and urgency. He just planted that seed of oh, yeah, that's what I was thinking. He didn't tell me how to sing. He just reminded me of why I wrote the song in the first place. I'm just honored to call him a friend and a collaborator. He’s one of the good guys.
GW: Can you tell me about your guitar store, Starr’s Guitars? How is it doing?
DS: I started in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1998. I had just spent about eleven years in the financial services business when I moved back from Aspen to central Arkansas. I left Aspen to slow down a little bit. I played five or six nights a week, and worked a day job, so I was worn out. My first wife and I had a baby. It was a very difficult pregnancy, and it was dangerous and scary. Everybody's okay, but it was a good time to dial it back. The nightlife for somebody in their twenties can be hazardous territory. So we went down there, and I got a normal job. Never quit playing, but I didn't play as much. I had a little home studio and began writing. I left that job, and did a couple other things working with some guys that had a video production company for a couple of years. One day I'm sitting around, and I had this room where my studio was in my home in Little Rock. I had like 50 guitars. I had a pretty good collection, some worth money, some were just different ones I liked, and I thought, why don’t I just open a little shop, and see what happens? I knew enough to be dangerous, and I’d been around this all my life, but running a store wasn't what I knew about. I did that for three years there, but always wanted to be back out west, so I moved the store here to a little town called Cedar Edge, Colorado in 2001. It’s a small enough town that when you walk in here you'd look around and go, “What is this store doing here?” But that's precisely the point. It's a destination, and just like people who are into antiques, golf, guns, or fishing, they'll go find the cool stuff. There was a guy in here before I came on this call who said, “This store's got a good feel.” And I thought, that's what we want. So it's a little boutique shop in the middle of nowhere. And how's it doing? Never good enough, but it stays on the right side of things, and I've got a good manager that helps me when I’m on the road, and helps me when I’m here, and so I feel like I can go away for a couple of weeks if I need to get out and gig, and when I come back, things are still in in place.
GW: You and your wife were instrumental in the development of the Grand Mesa Arts & Event Center. Can you tell me about that?
DS: My wife is president of the board, and I was vice president for four years. Now I'm just on the board. But the idea was that she would travel with me, and she'd sit in the back of the room. I'd play in primarily listening rooms. I'd be telling a story, and she’d see people nodding to each other and saying, “Oh, yeah, I hear what he's saying.” She would watch the reaction, and one day she said, “We need a place in town where you can do that, and other people can do that.” There was a building across the street that was an old 1906 bank building, and it was divided down the middle. It had been an old hardware store and a dry goods store, a hair salon, and a lot of other things. So we got a bunch of people together who thought the same thing, and we formed a nonprofit. The building was remodeled. Half of it is dedicated to the visual arts. There's a gallery and some teaching space for kids, classes, that sort of thing, and then the other half is a live performance venue, where we can seat 160 or more people in folding chairs, and then during the week it's used for yoga and dance. There's a group who works with developmentally challenged adults. They come once a week and do yoga and art classes. We have a local theater group. We do a lot of stuff for kids. So the idea was to build this hub for the arts right here in the middle of town, and it really, in my humble opinion, has changed the way people feel about their little town. John Oates will come play here, Karla Bonoff, and John McEuen from the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, all these other singer-songwriters that I know. I'll sum it up this way: Somebody said, “Who's going to be the first artist?” And I said, “I am.” And it was a packed house, and everybody was excited. Somebody pulled me aside at intermission, and said to me, “I now see what's possible.” It gets to me everytime I think about it, because that's what they needed to see. They just needed to see that it could be done. And now we're 5 years into it, and the non-profit has bought the building. It’s a beautiful thing.
GW: Any experience in the performance arts?
DS: I was in the Nutcracker when I was 5. That's one thing I remember, but no. There is a community group that does silly fun plays they write. It is loosely based on people in the community. It's sort of a melodrama kind of thing, and it's silly, and local people are in it. They write me and my wife into it every time. So, I usually get maybe three lines, and I have to dress silly, and it's uncomfortable for me, and I'm not very good at it, but it's fun, and people get to laugh at us. We are trying to get a movie made for this record, which is based on the book my grandad wrote, and well— to be continued. I have a script written, and we're working on that.
GW: So I heard that you performed more than 50 times this past year. Which performance was your favorite, or most memorable?
DS: They're all cool, and they all have their high points, but for the last seven or eight years, my wife and I have gone and toured England, Scotland, and Wales. Last year we went over to Ireland for a couple of gigs. That’s always fun because it's such a beautiful place, and it's different. It's cool now, because we have friends there that— you know you walk into a room, and all these people are from a faraway land, in a way, and they're your friends, and they'll always be your friends. That's always a high point, but this year, in particular, Eric Stucky, who plays with me quite a bit, and plays mandolin and sings, he and I got to open for America over in Grand Junction, which is about an hour from here, and any time you can open for an iconic band like that, in front of a sold out house, that feels pretty good. And even though it's only an hour away, a lot of those people had no idea who I was. It was a chance to make new fans, and we got a standing ovation at the end of our set, which for an opening act, that's what you want if you can get it. It was a good match because America’s crowd was people who had been listening to them for 40 or 50 years, and I'm that age. They liked my music, and it made sense to them, because it was a similar genre. I'm influenced by all that stuff. So those shows are always fun. But every gig is cool. I do a lot of house concerts, and small listening rooms, where you get to connect with people one-on-one, and they'll come up after the show, and say, “That one touched me,” or “That one made sense to me,” or “It reminded me of my childhood.” I don't take any of them for granted, and I'm grateful for all of them. And to do 50, I think it's 54 shows, to do 50 or 60 shows, and then to be home, running a guitar center, and helping with the Arts center and all of that, it’s a lot. I like to be busy.
GW: Can you tell me about the new video for “Any Chance of Going Home”?
DS: The video was done by Solar Cabin Studios. We recorded it at a place called Addiction Sound Studios, and that's a studio that John Oates introduced me to about 7 years ago. That’s where he had started working and doing some stuff, so that's where we recorded it, but Jason Lee Denton is the one who does the video work, and he has this company called Solar Cabin Studios. I basically turned that song over to Jason, and said, “Make it about going home.” And he's really good at taking the lyrical content and matching it. I think he's a really talented young man.
GW: Any future projects in the works?
DS: I've got a studio at home, and I want to record an album that is just me playing acoustic guitar and singing. Nothing else. I want to resist the urge to add a bunch of junk to it. A stripped-down acoustic album. So when people say, “I just heard you play by yourself, do you have an album? I can go, “Yeah, right here.”
GW: How do you refuel or replenish your creativity? What do you do outside of music that helps you continue creating?
DS: Lately I've been reading more. It fills my head back up with really good images, and reminds me of things I meant to write about, or reminds me of things I've seen and done. So lately reading does it. Also, I'm really motivated when I drive. I do a lot of traveling in my motorhome when I gig. I'll do 2,000 miles in a 3-day weekend, and while I'm doing that, I'm seeing things and lines will come to me, or I'll listen to something on the news, and I’ll hear a line, and go, “That could be something.” When I went to write the song we're talking about, I went through my phone, and I found that little thing about the dog, and I thought, that guy could be the guy with the dog. You never know when it's going to come back and be useful, so you have to write it all down. I don't know how many times I've thought of something in the middle of the night and didn't write it down, and it's just gone the next morning.
GW: Well, I think the main goal of every good writer is to evoke emotion from people, and your song definitely does that, so well done.
Established in the Shenandoah Valley, Palmyra explores the fusion of traditional folk string instruments, three part harmonies, and foot percussion. In 2022, Palmyra made their Newport Folk Festival debut, were named the FloydFest 2022 On The Rise Winner, and performed over 200 tour dates on acclaimed stages up and down the East Coast. The trio, whose sound is a nod to Appalachia and Midwestern Americana, consists of three Virginia natives, Teddy (he/him), Manoa (he/him), and Sasha (they/them).
Following the release of “Medicine,” and “Presence,” Palmyra unveils their latest single with accompanying music video, for “Nothing Sticks.” The song is an introspective folk ballad, and comes from their latest EP, Sill and Glade Sessions. Drawing from the ancient wisdom and beauty of their natural surroundings, the group recorded the EP at Sill and Glade Cabin in Mount Solon, Virginia— an isolated cabin, overlooking the Shenandoah Valley. Illuminating the influence of presence and place, the three songs are infused with an innate power that, according to bassist Manoa Bell, comes from having natural space to breathe— both in the songs themselves, and for the group who finds themselves called back home to the Shenandoah Valley.
Grateful Web was pleased to sit down with the warm-spirited Manoa Bell of Palmyra. Read on as we discuss what it means to be from Appalachia, and so much more.
Also, be sure to check out the song and video “Nothing Sticks,” as well as “Medicine,” and “Presence,” all three are available everywhere now.
GW: When I searched for “Palmyra” earlier, I learned that there is apparently a village in Nebraska called “Palmyra.” I didn’t know that.
MB: Yeah, I feel like in every single state, someone tells us that there's a Palmyra. I guess it's just a common name. We chose it based on a song by a band called Houndmouth. They have a song titled “Palmyra,” and that's how we were introduced to the name, but yeah, we keep running into other Palmyras.
GW: So, you have a background in classical training, is that right? Can you tell me more about how your background influences your music today?
MB: I started playing the cello first. I think I was three years old. So, I've been playing most of my life, and that is definitely where a lot of my inspiration, or just the language that I bring to the instrument, comes. And then our guitar and banjo player Teddy, he's completely self-taught. He started learning singer/songwriter covers on guitar when he was a small kid, so that's the world he's drawing from. Our third member Sasha, who plays mandolin and guitar now, but was also a bass player initially, in classical music, they are self-taught on guitar. They’ve only been playing mandolin for a couple of years, but they play both guitar and mandolin in the band.
GW: A great combination. You three just had a new music video come out, well two actually, “Medicine,” and “Presence.” All I can say is, wow. There is so much power in those songs. I watched “Presence” first and I thought, Oh so this is who I am interviewing. Wow. Okay. Can you talk about what it was like to record those videos?
MB: We recorded them at this little cabin overlooking the Shenandoah Valley, in Virginia. Mount Solon is the name of the town, but it's pretty much a non-existent farmland area. It is a place that the three of us have been going to for a while. We all met in the Shenandoah Valley, and that cabin was somewhere that we would go to write music, so it felt like a good place to record those three songs. The songs are introspective, and it is interesting that you use the word “powerful,” because I would say that they have a lot of natural space in them, which is maybe where the power comes from. We just let those songs breathe. We wanted to play them in that cabin because it looks out over the valley, and it feels like the natural space that those songs have in them connected well with the surroundings. We are really excited about them. Thanks for asking.
GW: The Appalachian region is an area that is ancient, not only in terms of age, but it is also an area that somehow feels very ancient to me. I am wondering how you were influenced by Appalachia— whether that be the mountains themselves, the people, the culture, however you want to take that. There is a particular sound or quality to your music that resonates with me as someone who grew up in the Appalachian region.
MB: Yeah, totally. There's wisdom to that area. You are able to get out of yourself, and feel like you're connecting with, not only the location, but all of the people that love that place. Appalachia is so unbelievably beautiful—- The woods, mountains, and all the valleys. “Presence,” the song you brought up, is about that exactly— Sitting and connecting with your place in the world at that moment, and also your journey along the way— Where you've come from, where you're going, and that spiritual idea that Appalachia, specifically, makes you confront. It’s like, Where am I right now? And, How did I end up here? And reflecting on all the people who have been right there as well.
GW: It’s a beautiful and magical place. And you know, it is interesting that it is also very harshly stereotyped. It is the birthplace of bluegrass music, and look at the influence of bluegrass music. Would you consider Palmyra a bluegrass band? Can you talk about how you have been influenced by bluegrass?
MB: Yeah, I mean the instruments we play are bluegrass instruments, so we all play bluegrass. If we are playing a long set, and we decide to put some covers in there, we will often play bluegrass covers. The canon of music that is bluegrass, and the traditions around it, we definitely love and internalize that. And, like you said, it comes from Appalachia, specifically Kentucky, of course, but I mean all parts of Appalachia are influenced by bluegrass. It is funny to hear you bring up the stereotypes around Appalachia. I think a large internalized goal of our band is confronting those stereotypes. Like, “What does it mean to be from a rural area?” I have no problem with Appalachia being misunderstood; I think most places are misunderstood; The thing that I take issue with is that a lot of people view Appalachia as less sophisticated. That region has such a deep cultural center, and level of intentionality, and the people— they love it so much. It is a very misrepresented community, and I would say that our band is about highlighting what it means to be from Appalachia, and trying to show the world that it's not this hokey— whatever stereotype that so many people believe it is.
GW: I definitely miss the mountains, as I am located in the middle of the country right now, in Nebraska. Oddly enough, I sometimes feel like I had to come here in order to find my way back home to the mountains again, if that makes any sense.
MB: That's so cool. I love the idea of going somewhere else, and you know, “Here I am in the middle of the country, and it's finally given me a moment to really appreciate the place that I was before,” and it teaches you something about it. We are always learning. That's really cool.
GW: Definitely. All these places and experiences are what give us our own unique style, or flavor. What would you say is your signature style as an artist? What is your distinct sound, or flavor?
MB: I don't think I've ever been asked this question. So now I want to do a good job. I think Palmyra as a band, our signature sound is a larger than three approach. There are only three of us, but I think that we're able to create energy that feels really big, and it's kind of a maximalist approach with minimalist instrumentation. That is the thing that a lot of people take away. Personally, I think that I come across as an instrumentalist. I do write songs in Palmyra— we all write songs, and we all sing as well— but my training is as an instrumentalist, and I think that my musical voice is probably in how I'm playing the instrument. I guess I would say that my signature sound would be lonesome. It is true for string music in general, but the bowed string instrument has a very deep yearning feeling to it, and I think it works really well in the music that we're playing. We have talked so much about Appalachia, and I would say that Appalachia has that same feeling. It's just this deep connection with the history of a place, and I would say that I try to evoke it through my playing.
GW: So outside of rest, and tending to your natural environment, how else do you recharge? How do you refill your cup so that you can keep creating?
MB: Recharge. That's a good word for it. I'm not very good at it, but I just started trying to consistently run. It's kind of a silly thing, but I'm a very adventurous person, and the adventure that is running has been really inspiring for me. I'll wake up and go on a jog, and then come back, sit at my desk, and just freewrite for a little bit, and that's been wonderful. I have never done that before. It sounds like such a simple thing, but that's been working for me. Everyone has different things in the band. Teddy does a no technology thing. Before he looks at his phone, he writes, so I think the early mornings are really good for him. And then Sasha's creative practice is— they need to be alone. They're very good at expressing, “Hey, I'm going to go be alone,” and then they're incredible. They can sit down with a guitar and come up with a song in ten minutes. It just pours out of them. So once they make the choice to be alone, they're able to make that happen.
GW: Last question. What do you currently have going on, and what are you most looking forward to right now?
MB: So, this is early December, and we're kind of on a break. We played 200 shows last year, and we toured full time. We also do all the booking. We do everything ourselves, which can really wear you out. So, we intentionally decided to take time off, and we're all doing different side jobs, just to make ends meet, while the band is taking a break. But when the new year comes, we're starting back up, and we're going to be doing a tour that's going to cover the whole East Coast, and out toward Tennessee, and up the East Coast through Massachusetts. We are definitely looking forward to that. We've been writing so much music, and I feel like when we get back together as Palmyra, there are going to be at least 1500 new songs (laughs). So, I would say the thing I am most looking forward to is this new creative energy of feeling inspired, and feeling so grateful to be with each other again, after having had some rest. The energy of the new year is going to have this great fresh feeling to it.
Based in New York City, nineteen-year-old Brandon Niederauer, nicknamed “Taz” for his ferocious guitar playing, has had the opportunity to play with many of his musical idols. In recent years, he’s shared the stage with multiple members of the Allman Brothers Band, including Gregg Allman, Derek Trucks, Warren Haynes, Butch Trucks, and Oteil Burbridge, as well as a variety of other notable musicians, including Buddy Guy, Stevie Nicks, Lady Gaga, Slash, Jon Batiste, Dweezil Zappa, Eric Gales, George Clinton & Parliament Funkadelic, Dr. John, Gary Clark Jr., Col. Bruce Hampton, Eric Krasno, George Porter Jr., Robert Randolph, Karl Denson, Doug Wimbish, and John Popper. He has also performed with Tedeschi Trucks Band, The String Cheese Incident, Umphrey's McGee, The Revivalists, Dumpstaphunk, Blackberry Smoke, Galactic, and countless other bands.
Since making his national television debut on The Ellen DeGeneres Show at just ten years old, Brandon has appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Good Morning America, and The View.
In 2018, Brandon reunited with Andrew Lloyd Webber, performing in January with Sarah Brightman at The Phantom of the Opera’s 30th Anniversary celebration, and in April alongside Sara Bareilles, Alice Cooper, and John Legend in NBC’s live broadcast production of Jesus Christ Superstar. Brandon is currently featured in Spike Lee’s Netflix series, She’s Gotta Have It, and performs concerts for audiences across the country and around the world.
Trouble No More, which includes Brandon “Taz” Niederauer, along with Daniel Donato, Lamar Williams Jr., Nikki Glaspie, Roosevelt Collier, Dylan Niederauer, and Peter Levin, will be performing The Allman Brothers’ iconic album Eat a Peach on Friday, January 6th at Boulder Theater, and on Saturday, January 7th at Cervantes' Masterpiece Ballroom in Denver.
Trouble No More will be joined by Daniel Donato’s Cosmic Country.
Grateful Web had the opportunity to sit down with “Taz” before the show this weekend. Here is what he had to say:
GW: When did you start listening to the Allman Brothers and how/why did their music resonate with you?
BN: My father is a huge Allman Brothers fan and has been playing that music for me since I was born. He took me to my first Allman Brothers concert when I was nine years old, and I was hooked by the improvisation and the journey that the songs took me on.
GW: Aside from the Allman Brothers, who were the artists/musicians/people who inspired and influenced you?
BN: There are so many and I will miss some, but here goes: Jimi Hendrix, Derek Trucks, Otis Taylor, BB King, Jon Batiste, Colonel Bruce Hampton, Dr. John, The Meters, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Stevie Wonder, and on and on.
GW: How did you end up linking up with the members of Trouble No More?
BN: My agent CJ Strock of Mint Talent Group had the idea of putting together this lineup. I know the Allman Brothers Band catalog, and my brother Dylan is a bass player. Pete Levin played with The Gregg Allman Band for many years, so that was a perfect fit. From there CJ reached out to the other players who have played with us before, and Trouble No More was born. Each of us has other projects, but it is working very well.
GW: Major lessons so far?
BN: Play hard and leave nothing on the table.
GW: Challenges?
BN: All of the musicians live in different parts of the country. It causes some logistic issues with coordination, but nothing we can’t handle. Also dealing with different backline at various venues can be a challenge.
GW: What is your most memorable moment, or a specific standout experience from your time with them so far?
BN: Playing a sold out show at The Beacon Theater where I first saw the Allman Brothers was surreal. This time, I was on stage looking out at an incredible audience, seeing the spot I stood as a spectator during March madness. It was unreal.
GW: What do you have coming up and what are you most looking forward to as a group?
BN: After these two shows in Colorado, we will play Jam Cruise in February, and then we will hopefully announce some special shows in the spring.
GW: Can you talk about your creative process?
BN: The creative process manifests itself for me onstage. The connection between the audience, and me as a performer is paramount. It is a spiritual event as I create and the audience absorbs. There is a telepathy that happens, and the more we give each other the better it gets.
GW: What is it like to create as a group? What does that process look like and what role does everyone play?
BN: As a group we collaborate equally. At rehearsal we learn the songs the way they were played, then we let our creativity take control and put our own interpretation into them. Pete Levin creates the set lists and we usually work through some new songs during sound check.
GW: What would you say is your signature style as an artist?
BN: I do not think I have a signature style. I blend rock, jazz, blues, soul and gospel music in my playing.
GW: What is your biggest strength?
BN: One of my strengths is the fact that I have been playing on stage since I was eight years old, and have been mentored by many amazing musicians who shared their stage with me. I am truly grateful to all who have helped me.
GW: Who has been your favorite artist or group to collaborate with so far?
BN: Everyone I played with is my favorite. I am blessed that I have played with many of the most amazing musicians and artists on the scene today.
GW: Do you have any other solo projects/ideas currently in the works? Can you share with us what you are currently working on or planning to work on in the near future?
BN: I am currently a sophomore at Yale University studying Economics. I continue to play shows with Trouble No More, and my own band. It is difficult to manage but it is worth it because I feel education is important, and I need to keep both sides of my brain exercised. I am also writing and recording music, working with producers in NY and LA for my first music release. In fact, I am heading to LA after the shows in Boulder and Denver for a week to record prior to returning to school at the end of January.
Cervantes’ Masterpiece Ballroom is a hallmark Denver venue featuring a unique wrap-around balcony and two rooms that offer live music simultaneously: Cervantes’ Other Side. Each room operates independently of the other, but they are connected, which gives patrons the freedom to venture back and forth between each room.
The history of Cervantes’ Masterpiece Ballroom dates back to the Cotton Club days of the 1930s when jazz greats such as Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and Benny Goodman toured through Denver. Named “The Casino Cabaret” at the time, Cervantes’ hosted acts such as James Brown, BB King, Ray Charles, Ike & Tina Turner, and countless others.
Continuing the musical legacy since opening in January 2003, Cervantes’ and The Other Side have hosted thousands of live shows including intimate performances with Chris Robinson (Black Crowes), Derek Trucks, Dr. John, Pretty Lights, Bassnectar, Nas, Big Boi, STS9, Sam Bush, Jeff Austin, Page and Gordon (different shows) of Phish, Branford Marsalis, and Warren Haynes— to name a few.
Grateful Web was thrilled to sit down and chat with Cervantes’ owner Scott Morrill in celebration of their 20th year anniversary this month. Read on below to hear from Scott as he reflects on the history of Cervantes,’ the important role that live music plays in creating thriving communities, and much more.
GW: Let's talk about Cervantes’ Masterpiece Ballroom before we get into you. This place is going on its 20th year. Looking back, what makes you still want to do this twenty years later?
SM: Luckily, I still get the same pleasure from live music as I did on day one. I think I even love it more. I also love helping musicians accomplish their goals and providing a space for music fans to forget about their everyday problems and let loose with their friends. So many people contribute to building this music community in Denver, and it’s very fulfilling to be a part of it. It also feels good to carry on the live music tradition in Five Points in the venue that was known as the Casino Cabaret from the 1920s through the 1990s. The venue and the area has such an amazing history and has hosted so many legendary musicians over the years. It is truly countless, but names like Ray Charles, James Brown, Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, and the list goes on and on.
GW: What was the first band you booked that made you high five yourself?
SM: Soulive. They were one of my favorite bands before Cervantes’ opened and still are. I booked them the first year we were open in 2003. Seeing one of their shows in New Orleans at Jazzfest in 2000 made me decide that I wanted to open a live music venue. I was going to open a music venue and book Soulive. So when I actually did it, I was definitely giving myself a high five.
GW: What were the last couple bands to come through that you didn't really know a lot about, but they kind of blew you away?
SM: Domi & JD Beck – Jazz duo that are 19 and 23 years old. They were playing jazz to a sold-out Ballroom and you could hear a pin drop, everyone was so engaged. It was really cool to see such young musicians playing jazz at such a high level. Neal Francis who just came through and sold out The Ballroom on New Year’s Eve definitely blew me away. He has a very vintage 70s rock n roll vibe, while simultaneously having his own sound.
GW: When did you truly discover your passion for music?
SM: I loved music growing up as a kid, but really discovered my passion for live music in college at The University of Kansas. They had a great music scene there and I fell in love with experiencing live music with friends. Especially discovering new bands. I remember seeing Lauryn Hill for the first time with The Fugees at The Granada in Lawrence. She came out singing Killing Me Softly and my jaw hit the floor. I was 19 years old and I was just starting to understand the power of live music. I had a great group of friends, who I’m still friends with today, who would take road trips from Lawrence to various places to see bands like Widespread Panic and Phish. I loved it. I started to learn about how music can create community then too. So many of my old friends share a common bond of live music.
GW: What do you believe is the value of live music, both to you as a business and to your customers or audience?
SM: I believe live music helps create community. Community is a feeling of fellowship with others, as a result of sharing common attitudes, interests, and goals. I also think it helps people forget about their worries and hopefully achieve some moments of Zen where they can see the good in the world and not take life so seriously. It does that for me. It also forms lifelong relationships and gives artists a way to express themselves. It brings people together and creates a common bond amongst people all over the world that don’t even speak the same language. As Friedrich Nietzhche once said, “Without music, life would be a mistake.”
GW: What kind of energy and atmosphere can a guest expect on a night you’re having live music?
SM: One of the great things about Cervantes’ is that there are many different kinds of energy that fans can expect on any given night. There might be a raging hip hop show at The Other Side with a cerebral chill jazz show in the Ballroom or maybe a dual room EDM show where you can see 8 DJs in one night and dance for 6 hours straight. The atmosphere to expect is welcoming and friendly. The fans that come out typically take care of each other and look out for one another. So many of the patrons and staff know each other by name and it creates a family atmosphere. The staff play such a big role in all of this and I’m very grateful to be a part of such a great team.
GW: Did you have a background in hospitality/the events industry before opening Cervantes’?
SM: Not particularly, besides working in restaurants and throwing lots of parties (laughs). I was always the person at the parties that wanted to DJ and play new music for people and many times they were parties at my house. But before opening Cervantes’ I worked in commercial real estate as a financial analyst. That was another catalyst for opening Cervantes’ because I was not happy or fulfilled doing commercial real estate. I knew there was something else out there for me that I was supposed to do.
GW: Why did you originally open Cervantes'?
SM: I was in love with live music and got it in my head that I had to open a music venue. I really paid attention to the venues where I saw live music and would take mental notes on things I liked and didn’t like and got it in my head that I had to open a venue where there were none of the things I didn’t like. I always hated when venues would turn on the bright lights right at the end of the show and tell everyone to get out. I didn’t understand why they would do that. I would think, I’m not doing that when I open a venue someday. I’m going to do it better. Something inside me told me I could do it and I dedicated myself to create a venue where people could feel free to express themselves in a setting that genuinely cares about them.
GW: When was your first major renovation and why was that the perfect time to make some major updates?
SM: We renovated the building that is now The Other Side in October 2004. It had been vacant since the 1980s, maybe longer, and was two separate rooms that were previously an old pool hall and a narrow bar, which back in the day was called The “Ex-Serviceman’s Club,” which was run by Benny Hooper. We knocked out the wall and built a stage and brought the building back to life. My partner at the time, Jay Bianchi, really led the charge in wanting to have two venues side by side, which is one of the best parts about Cervantes’. It gives people two choices/reasons to come to Cervantes’ and many times will expose them to new bands or DJs they haven’t heard of yet when they wander over to The Other Side. It’s also a big reason that we are a venue that has regulars because there is more to see with 2 shows going on at once.
GW: How were you able to stay afloat during COVID?
SM: We started out doing shows with 50 capacity in the Ballroom because that is what we were allowed to do after six months based on our square footage. We did two shows a night selling 50 tickets to each show. We were soon able to move that capacity up to 100 per show. We sold tables of four to eight people and patrons had to stay at their tables for the whole show. That still didn’t pay the bills, but it was nice to be able to have shows again. I’ll never forget how thankful people were to be able to see live music and how thankful musicians were to be able to play live music after not having it in their lives for so long. It helped me not take things for granted and made me appreciate what we have more than ever before.
GW: What are your biggest takeaways and lessons learned from being a venue owner?
SM: Don’t panic there is almost always a solution, and when there isn’t, there is nothing you can do anyway, so escalating a situation only makes it worse. Lead by example. If you want a staff that is considerate to everyone who walks into the venue, you need to be the most considerate person in the room. No one is more important than anyone else. Everyone is on the same team and working together to achieve the common goal of making the best experiences possible for each and every person that walks into the venue. Another takeaway is how difficult it is to be a professional musician. It takes so much hard work and talent and luck, and even with all of those things, nothing is guaranteed. Helping musicians grow and helping them to fulfill their dreams is one of my favorite things about what I do.
GW: To you, what is the most memorable event Cervantes’ has hosted to date?
SM: There are so many, but I remember the first time Pretty Lights sold out the Ballroom and did a 3.5 hour straight raging dance party. People were dancing so hard for so long and listening to this new style of music that Derek (Pretty Lights) had created which was coined electro soul. I was Pretty Lights’ first manager and I was able to see him go from no one knowing who he was to selling out Red Rocks in a pretty short amount of time. That Cervantes’ show was a pivotal moment where I felt the power of live music when everyone in the room is together smiling and dancing as one unit. It was contagious.
Single Sonic Seven is the self-titled debut album of a collective of musicians on all seven continents. Two years in the making, it is alive with soul, punchy beats, catchy hooks, penguins, and a turbulent backstory. Its roots are found in quarantine-era Berlin, while its final path was deeply shaped by a personal connection to the war in Ukraine.
Supported by a grant from the City of Berlin, electro producer Ethan Miska launched the initiative with a handful of friends from Berlin’s community of international musicians in the fall of 2020. “It was a Corona baby,” says Miska. “We wanted the album to be a reminder that we’re all in this together, and given the polarized state of the world today, we think that message is still relevant.”
Over the following two years, a remote global team evolved to plan, compose, and produce Single Sonic Seven, united by a belief in music’s power to transcend borders. Its main contributors are Usama Siddiq, Clementine Esquivel, Ikiedemhe David, Espin Bowder, Andrea Dixon, Ivan Imkhong, Nick Martyn, and Daneik Ashley, who collaborated from locations ranging from Ibadan, Nigeria to the South Pole.
The project’s path has been anything but smooth. While working remotely with the featured artists and other core team members, Miska produced much of the album while living in Kharkiv, Ukraine. On the eve of Russia’s invasion in February 2022, he abruptly relocated to his former residence of Berlin amidst dire warnings from family and friends. “To say the least, when the war broke out it kind of threw off my ability to nudge along the project for a bit,” recalls Miska. “A lot of us were battling with how seemingly insignificant and irrelevant it felt to be working on a creative endeavor.”
Feeling mostly unable to tangibly help out, Miska and the team decided to dedicate the album to Anna (name edited for safety reasons), a close Ukrainian friend who had become trapped in Russian-occupied Donbas. “It was a pretty chaotic time in my life and for S.S.S., so dedicating the music to someone really important to me, and who was incredibly supportive of this album, was the only thing that made our finishing it immediately relevant,” Miska notes. Throughout the spring of 2022, the Single Sonic Seven crew composed feverishly, ultimately finishing the music in May, within days of Anna’s escape after three harrowing months of occupation.
Single Sonic Seven, spanning seven continents and genres ranging from pop to experimental, Went live on Friday, January 13th 2023 on all streaming platforms. All revenue from streaming and album sales will be donated to Helping To Leave (helpingtoleave.org/en), an organization which has aided thousands of Ukrainian civilians— including Anna— in fleeing areas of active conflict.
Closing the conversation with Ethan, I asked him to grab the closest book he could find. Holding The Adventures of Tintin, a famous comic series created by Georges Remi, Ethan explains, “Before I could even read, I would look at these pictures and follow along. I like a good adventure, and it's always some kind of adventure with these Tintin novels. It’s the same emotion that I go after when I'm making the music that I make; I want to create something that makes my heart pound.”
Read on below to learn more about Ethan Miska and his mission to make heart pounding music with a whole lot of heart.
GW: So tell me about you and this project.
EM: For the last million years (it feels like) it has been all about Single Sonic Seven. The elevator pitch for it is that it's an album I composed with various other musicians, including a featured musician on each of the seven continents. That is the connective tissue of this project. Single Sonic Seven is something that has been following me around for the last two plus years, and at some points it has felt like the coolest thing in the world, and at some points it has felt like this big, heavy sack that I've been dragging around with me wherever I go— mostly during the period when I'm not working on it as much. When I am in the thick of it, it's really nourishing. As for the first part of your question about me— I'm the guy with Single Sonic Seven (laughs). It has been my identity lately. Maybe a bit more than I would like it to be. I grew up in the San Francisco Bay area, but for the last five years I was living in Europe, mostly in Berlin, Germany, which is where the project, Single Sonic Seven came about. It was during the quarantine in 2020, and I wanted to do something radically more collaborative than I had done before, within the confines of being in my room and not going to too many places. So, that is me. I make beats. I collaborate with different kinds of musicians. And I am re-adjusting to life in the United States, and to being back in a place where I’m not exotic for being from California, which is probably good, since it's silly how far that can go in some places.
GW: I know what you mean. It’s also easy to be considered “exotic” when you are a transplant living in the middle of rural Nebraska (laughs).
EM: I often feel that cities are overrated. I love cities, but I feel like in the 21st century, with the availability of means of collaborating and just engaging with other people beyond the immediate physical realm, I just don’t feel like we all need to live in Berlin, L. A., New York or Paris in order to do a lot of the things we're trying to do. At least as far as creative collaboration goes. So more power to you for being in Nebraska, because I feel like it's evidence of that. And also it's what I’m telling myself right now since I am living in the town that I grew up in, and there are around 60,000 people. It's not a musical mecca, but I feel like I'm plugging away just as much as I was able to when I was living in places that are better known for having a music scene. As far as collaborating, I do feel like the in-person thing is important in some aspects, but otherwise, everybody's just everywhere. I feel like there's a crucial ten percent, where it’s really helpful and refreshing to develop the “boots on the ground,” but the other ninety percent, it's like, “well here I am on my computer again.” And yeah, at least for me, I don't feel severely restricted.
GW: So how does the collaborative process work? I mean, how do you even connect with artists in Antarctica?
EM: There has been absolutely no formula or consistency with anything in this project (laughs). We have tried so many different systems and approaches. It has all been this big collage. I’ll use this as an opportunity to answer your question about Antarctica— that was actually, in some ways, the easiest continent to find people to collaborate with. There was no second guessing who we were going to work with, because it's like, “you're a musician in Antarctica? We would love to work with you!” And we ended up working with a really cool musician who works at the South Pole station playing glockenspiel, which is something that was just completely outside of my creative palate. So we had the honor of collaborating with the southernmost glockenspiel player in the world. How often does that kind of thing come about? Some of the collaborations, including that one, were just sending emails back and forth, and not even a whole lot of emails. I do actually like zoom calls to figure out how to structure a song, or which hook to use, or whatever, but in some cases it was just like, “okay, here's a couple recordings. Have fun. Let me know if I can help with anything else.” And we just took it and ran with it.
GW: How did you know who to contact?
EM: We just reached out to anyone we could think of who has any sort of connection to Antarctica. And, by the way, the “we” that I keep referencing is me plus a handful of core people who have been involved with the project in some way or another for the last couple of years, sort of like the organizing team. So it was basically an elaborate strategy of emailing people we knew who might have some kind of connection to Antarctica. And through that we got in touch with Andrea Dixon, our collaborator down there. It was actually a similar process for some of the other collaborations, but it was also a real mix. In some cases we had an idea of like, “oh, we're familiar with this person's music, we checked it out, it sounds great, and I think it would work really well with this existing song.” And then in other cases, it was collaborating with existing friends, or friends of friends.
GW: Anything else outside your creative palate that you were introduced to? Any other new instruments?
EM: New instruments. I will add that if people hear “seven continent album,” and they're expecting to hear bongos in the Africa collaboration, or didgeridoos in the Australian collaboration, or pan flutes in the South American collaboration, they're probably going to be really disappointed. It doesn't sound like that. It is electro--- and that is such a nebulous term for a genre, but it goes all over the place. There's some stuff that's a bit more— I don't know, not quite avant-garde, but it's not sound art, and it's not “world music,” whatever that means. There's a narrative connecting thread, in addition to the musical connecting thread, so as far as music instruments that I got exposed to, the glockenspiel is pretty much it. We were using guitars and samples from vocalists. Penguins did make their way in the Antarctic song, but as far as the other sounds go, we worked with conventional types of sounds that one would expect to hear in contemporary electronic, or alternative electronic music. Just had to throw that in there.
GW: I love that you threw that in there. I didn’t even realize that I had this preconceived notion that it would be “world music,” and I am sure you get that a lot.
EM: Yeah, it wasn't so much about making a bold choice. It's more just like, I like making the kind of music that I like listening to, and I'm a sucker for international, remote collaboration, so how do I combine those things? But I think it's important for me to clarify. Not really for the sake of setting this project apart, but more for the sake of not being accused of false advertising, or not getting people to expect one thing, and then being disappointed when they get something that's vastly outside of their musical tastes. I think I used the word “avant garde,” but in retrospect it's more like alternative electro, and that covers quite a lot of ground, and every song could conceivably be considered a different genre, but there are still some commonalities. People should just listen to it.
GW: What is the best way for people to do that?
EM: We went live on all streaming platforms yesterday, which was Friday the 13th. January 13, 2023. So the album is available in non-physical form— bandcamp, soundcloud, stuff like that, and we actually have something else coming soon, and it’s actually related to the Antarctica song, and it has something to do with penguins.
GW: I am so excited! Penguins are my favorite animal.
EM: It has a lot to do with penguins. To say it has “something” to do with penguins is a gross understatement. Actually, if you'll hold on for a second, I will show you something.
EM: I will not give you any context for this now.
GW: Perfect.
EM: There's this little guy (shows a penguin puppet). And there's the super sized version (shows a penguin costume). More to come soon.
Singer, songwriter, guitarist, and owner and founder of the successful music school, The Music Factory, Ari Joshua announces the release of his latest track, "Meeting of The Minds," featuring Billy Martin on drums, John Medeski on keyboards, Ari Joshua on guitar, and Jason Fraticelli of Cyro Baptista and Matisyahu on bass.
“Meeting of the Minds” is just a small window into the unique body of work recorded in this session. The track is due to be released on February 9th, 2023.
Grateful Web had the opportunity to sit down with Ari Joshua before the release of his new track. Read on below for a summary of our discussion on the inspiration behind the album, what it is like to collaborate with creative supernovas Billy Martin, John Medeski, and Jason Fraticelli, and so much more.
Inspiration behind Meeting of the Minds
“The inspiration and creative process for this album evolved as it was happening. I composed a fresh set of 20 new songs one week before the recording date, which is something I tend to do, but while we were together in the room, we found a lot of joy through improvising and being present in the moment. There was even a phrase flying around the room at the time, ‘You gotta let that dove fly.’ In other words, settle in with the imperfections of the art, and embrace the fact that as long as you are honest and raw, you will discover something more amazing than you had planned. This album is a free expression album. I think everyone in the room was able to take risks and was completely supported and listened to. I was able to embrace tones I never knew I could make, from whale calls to various sounds that came out that sounded nothing like the instrument.”
Collaboration with Billy Martin, John Medeski, & Jason Fraticelli
“I first asked John and Billy if they would be able to make music together many years ago when I was in college. I was in New York and would see them at Tonic and other various clubs in the city. They were playing a wide variety of rooms, and I resonated with what they were doing, and what they were saying musically. I was a big dreamer, even back then. I was young and trying to do everything I could. I would check in with John every so often and share my recordings with him, but this one particular time— the stars aligned. I had some gigs and family in New York, and it all just clicked into place. This song in particular, “Meeting of The Minds,” is a snapshot of the first notes we played together as a quartet. I even left the dialogue there in some sections.”
Deep Waters
“To be honest, I knew these guys were deep waters, but there are certain things one can only learn through osmosis. We are all influenced by similar artists, so there was some solid ground. Billy is a force of nature, a creative supernova. He is a feeling guy, with a really deep concept. Pretty much everything he said resonated with me. It seems that he really wants to lean into the unknown. He wants to create genuinely expressive art. We tried out material from the pile of songs I had, and then we would do one to three takes, making sure there is a 50/50 mix of improvisation and composition. Billy, John and Jason were all like, ‘Hey, we are all here. Let’s do what we do!’”
Applehead Recording, Woodstock, NY
“The session was at Applehead Recording in Woodstock, New York. The studio is a one-of-a-kind, really special place. The owner lives on the property, as well as the engineer. It’s a big barn with a mix of old and new construction. The control room almost has a Star Trek shape and feel to it. Jason Fraticelli was the first to arrive at the studio. He was playing with Cyro Baptista in Boston, and it was on his way home to Pennsylvania. Jason and I have played together for years, and he collaborated with me on some amazing recordings from a while back that I have been releasing. I love that guy. He impacted the session by giving me a sense that there was someone there who understood me and supported the trajectory.”
Meeting of the Minds Artwork
“The artwork was created by one of my dearest friends, Burgandy Viscosi. She is a genius, if I can say so, and she is really tuned in to the cosmic. Everyone absolutely must check out her art. She has painted a few murals at my music school, The Music Factory, and she also has a mural at Alex and Allison Grey’s new facility, The COSM (Chapel of Sacred Mirrors). Alex and Allison are also two of the most brilliant artists alive today, and Burgandy was able to set me up with a personal tour of their property. That tour was part of the album’s flavor. To see their two story paintings, and learn about their ideas— Meeting of The Minds, the artwork, the barn, the players, and who they are— it all melted into a flavor, a taste, and a sound. To be clear, this album of 27 tracks is just the tip of the iceberg as far as what we did in the few days we had. This is just the introduction. Maybe 5% of all that really happened in the session. It’s like a handshake, or a first impression. It is the launchpad, and the foundation.”
Setting the Tone
“You know when you meet someone, or a group of people, and you just hit it off, like you can tell that it is going to work, and that it is going to be a lot of fun? This was like that. I think a lot of what made us able to meet there, and create right out of the gate was the spirit of the music, and the spirit of all the great artists who came before us. Thelonius Monk, John Coltrane, even Picasso, and Van Gogh— each of them with their own unique voice. That spirit is what Billy and John facilitate, and have so prolifically been able to contribute. We opened up the rabbit hole and jumped in. I don’t think we even planned for it to be recorded, but as we were sound checking, we were uncovering some great stuff. It really set the tone for the next few days. We played it back and Chris Bittner looked at me, and we were both like, ‘Alright, this works!’ I am so excited to share this first taste of the quartet and look forward to sharing more.”
Purpose, Mission, and Vision
“My mission is to seek the truth and to take the lessons I have learned from the masters, my family, my ancestors, and from human history— and to find my path from there. I believe that there is profound magic and power in music, and that we live in a society that is struggling to find its own purpose and identity. I think we live in a world where we still need to fight for things that are good, wholesome, and universally key to the collective well-being. My dream is to facilitate music education everywhere, while providing good paying jobs for artists. I want to create, and I want to find people who I resonate with. I want to play from my heart, and for that to resonate with other people who are like me. When I was a kid, I watched artists play and listened to music on records and tapes, and it made me feel alive. I felt like I understood something deep and meaningful. I want to be able to do that for others. Now I can say, ‘Yeah, I am capable of doing that,’ which is really a victory in itself, but there is so much more that I want to do. I want to find the right people who resonate and understand. I want to carry the torch, so to speak, and to be a course of light, and to be a channel for the good energy that is out there in abundance. My vision is to do this as efficiently as possible while I am alive.”
Creativity and Spirituality
“I create because it helps me resonate with my soul and with the souls of other people. When I create, I feel as though I am communicating or resonating with entities that are not physically tangible. With a group setting like this, and with other players who are experienced, there is an element of conversation, and with that comes a sense of being heard. It is a practice in listening. The things we are listening for are partly musical, and on the surface, it would seem as though it’s just about the notes, keys and rhythms, but there is so much more. It becomes therapeutic, to both the creators and the listeners. There are so many personal reasons for why I create that I can’t even begin to detail, but when I was a young kid I had a lot of steam to blow off. I used sports at first, then later when I discovered music, everything clicked. Playing music allows me to rise above words and thoughts. It allows me to go beyond that, and get directly to the feeling.”
Learning From The Masters
“When I learn from the masters, I listen and imitate. I try to access the feeling that they were accessing. You can never really know exactly what that is, but you can get close. When I play my music, I am trying to connect to the source. When I connect to the source, the music, notes, rhythms— there is a subtle way that you can tune in, which allows the flow to come in a way that is almost transcendental. You are receiving a story and telling a story— a story that is really open to interpretation. It can be both the most complex and simple thing. It’s like the blues. It can be painful and ugly, and euphoric and beautiful, all at the same time. When I play music, I feel like I am giving back. I am sharing something that the world needs, while also healing and receiving something that I need so much.”
Outside of Music? Mostly More Music
“I founded a music school for kids and adults over a decade ago. I get a lot of joy watching folks of all ages learn music. I feel like music is my purpose. All the recordings I produce, and the kids I see growing— it’s like planting seeds and growing gardens. I love to be in nature, and traveling. I love warm weather, and taking time to reset. If I am stuck at home, I spend a lot of time resting now. From age 14 to 30, I pushed super hard, even too hard at times. I used to practice 5-10 hours a day, but I don't enjoy it like I used to. Now, I am trying to figure out how to fit into the world as a human. I have been doing a lot of journaling, and something that I will open up more about in the coming years is learning about addiction, recovery, and mental health. I love to listen to great talks and think about philosophy.”
How do you know a project is complete?
“Well, I am the king of not finishing things. I love to start things, but I have learned that there are people who get ideas and start things, and then there are people who take that idea and finish. While I am getting so much better at finishing, I love to collaborate with people so I can watch and listen to their processes. Once I have spent around $2000 on a single piece of music, I know I need to at least start to think about wrapping it up. You can see why that could be a problem. I have 300 tracks that I need to finish, and I just can’t afford to get it all out there, but once you put all the paint on the page, and then you do the mixing and overdubs— and there is a whole art to that— then you find the album artwork and you pick a date. My dream is to someday be able to hire and work with a team who can help me share more music.”
Like a Volcano
“Every single human is unique in their own way, and is capable of more than they imagine. What sets me apart is my story, and the time I have dedicated to playing my instrument, and to sharing the gift of music. I was born in Cape Town, South Africa. We moved to the states, whereas legal aliens, I went from New York, to Pennsylvania, to Seattle, Washington. In the 90’s, I witnessed the grunge music explosion from ground zero, as well as seeing the start of Phish, and the later years of The Grateful Dead. I was able to see all the living jazz legends, to meet them, and to study with many of them in NYC. I was able to really mature during what I would call a strange time in the art world. I am persistent and steady in my pursuit of happiness through the arts. When performing, recording and touring weren’t providing the fruits I thought they would, I opened a music school. I am as dedicated to the arts as I can possibly be, and I also know I have so much more inside myself to offer. When I play music I get a tingly euphoric feeling, one I have found that a lot of other creators and humans feel. The feeling is a gift, but it is one that many don’t understand and cannot see. I am in the unique position of being halfway through life, with a dynamic history of pleasures and pains propelling me forward. I have a lot of dreams to get to, and a lot to say. I feel like a volcano that is full of melting liquid, the stuff of substance, and I am ready to leak it out.”
Proudest Moment
“At this moment? I am alive, and I am here, and I feel a depth of clarity. I know what I want, and I know a thousand ways not to do things. For example, I am not wealthy in the material sense. I am doing the work. I have the knowledge to keep going, and the wisdom to know that I don’t really have a choice. I have put in at least 50,000 hours to move in the direction that I want to go. I have invested a lot of time thinking in certain ways that I now realize no longer serve me, and I am ready to continue moving forward in the best ways I know how, despite the fact that it can and will be incredibly frustrating and hard. This is the most memorable and proudest moment right now.”
The Music Factory
“The Music Factory is a music school that teaches life lessons through music. The building we have now is physically based in Seattle, WA, but we also offer lessons online and through zoom. We have been a brand for 20 years and we have been offering music lessons for at least 15 years. We have taught over 70,000 lessons and employed over 50 local artists. We teach lessons to students of all ages, levels, and styles. Students anywhere on the planet can access the knowledge of our staff, and around 15% are online. I am open to growing, building, expanding, and anyone interested in teaching, or in an internship in PR or marketing, or if you want to open a franchise for example, you can email us at [email protected], or sign up at www.musicfactorynw.com/sing-up. Our way of teaching is to meet each student where they are. Our teachers are capable of teaching anyone from total beginners to the most advanced students. We focus not only on the mechanics and rudiments of the medium, but also on building mentorships. I would encourage anyone that is interested in learning music, or if you have kids or friends that want to learn, call or email us. Also, if you believe in the mission of music and what I stand for based on the music I am making, streaming my music and supporting my mission that way is a great way to participate.”
Jake Smith, also known as The White Buffalo, is a talented singer-songwriter known for his storytelling through music. He has gained recognition for his inclusion in popular TV shows and films, such as Sons of Anarchy, This Is Us, and Californication, among others. His unique style of dark blues and light Americana-roots-tinged folk has earned him critical acclaim, with NPR calling him an "amazing storyteller" and the Los Angeles Times praising his baritone voice. He was also nominated for an Emmy Award for his contribution to the soundtrack of Sons of Anarchy. Currently, he is on a headlining tour in support of his latest album, Year of the Dark Horse, which is available for download via Snake Farm Records here:
Year of the Dark Horse is a collection of twelve musical stories that flow together, and is based on the changes that occur, and the shifting of seasons. Smith's storytelling allows the listener to play an active role in the experience. The album is The White Buffalo’s most well-rounded album to date, and includes tracks such as "Kingdom for a Fool,” "52 Card Pickup,” and "Donna.” It was recorded in Nashville with producer Jay Joyce (Neon Cross Studios), and features bassist Christopher Hoffee, in addition to keyboardist, guitarist, and drummer, Matt Lynott.
The album includes a companion art film for the album, featuring a video for each song, and is now available for viewing:
Grateful Web had the privilege of speaking with Jake Smith, also known as The White Buffalo, about his role as a conduit for musical creativity, and the impact of recording in a unique location with skilled producer, Jay Joyce. Read on below as we delve into The White Buffalo's artistic journey and perspectives.
GW: Hi, there. How are you?
WB: A bit rushed. I forgot, I scheduled my first vocal lesson today, which I've never had in my entire life, so I'm trying one out today.
GW: I totally understand being overscheduled and busy. I am enjoying it right now though. I am in this very exciting creative flow right now where it's all just coming at me at full speed, and it's awesome.
WB: I'm trying to get there.
GW: Well, I mean, come on you, I think that you are already there (laughs). Can you tell me what you have going on, or what it is that you're working on that you're excited about?
WB: Right now I am focusing on touring, playing, and trying to figure out ways to bring those to the people, as far as the production, and how we can do it live, as opposed to how we did it on the album. That's the main focus right now. Getting out and playing, and bringing the new songs to people, but also giving them the old classics as well.
GW: So, who do you work with on this project? Is this completely solo?
WB: On this last one?
GW: Yeah.
WB: My band is Matt Lyob, who is the drummer, Christopher Hoffee, who plays guitar, bass, keyboards, all kinds of stuff, and I'm a multi-instrumentalist. We recorded with Jay Joyce at Neon cross Studios in East Nashville. Jay produced, as well as played, a bunch of stuff on the album. So he was a big part of the process.
GW: I am always very fascinated in the production process. Can you tell me more about that?
WB: We recorded that album in East Nashville. It was our first destination album that we've ever done with no distractions, which is crucial, because I wasn't totally prepared, song wise. So it's this whole conceptual thing that's following the calendar year of one man's life. The ups and downs that the seasons bring, our spinning world and how it affects our hearts, minds, and relationships— All these things. So, there is a lot going on with it, and I didn't really have songs written. I only had the very bare bones of songs going in.
GW: Did recording in a destination (Nashville) instead of in your home state (California) impact the process a lot?
WB: Totally. I mean in the past, I gotta come home and be a dad, or go do other things. Regular life is gonna happen. You're gonna have to do things like that. But when you're in a location that you're not used to, you can really immerse yourself in the whole process, and that was pretty necessary on this one.
GW: Can you tell me more about the producer, Jay Joyce?
WB: He's mostly based in Nashville. He has been there for a long time. Amazing Guy. I wanted each song to bleed into the next song for this album. I wanted to sonically abandon the genres. I've always been kind of pigeonholed in either country or Americana, and I really wanted to abandon that and get out of those shackles. Jay was instrumental in that. I basically pitched him on it. He’s worked for Wim Wenders, Eric Church, Brothers Osborne. He has Grammys and all that, you know? We recorded in the Neon Church, which is a converted church. Basically it's a very big open space, and we were all in the room together, with the console right in the middle. He's amazing. He pushed each and every one of us as musicians, and me as a songwriter, on every level. He is like a friend, but also like a father figure. He demands things out of you that you do not think you are capable of. He definitely pushed me and the band to different heights, which I think is really the objective of the producer.
GW: How did Jay Joyce push you?
WB: I wanted to get back to this pure element, and I would send him takes of the very first things that came out of me, which were completely unrealized. Some of them are like, what is even going on here? But I was like well, from 1 minute to 1 minute and 15, that’s where the magic is. Right there. That's what we want to do. But it's completely unrealized. I'm sure Jay has never had primitive demos like these sent to him, but it was an interesting way to record. I mean, a lot of producers are playing music as well, so they also have musicality that they bring to the project, but also it's about pushing the artist and taking them to different heights, and making you comfortable or uncomfortable. Or maybe a happy medium in between those 2 things, in order to force you to elevate your performance, or elevate the song, or elevate the arrangement, or elevate anything that they can in that moment in time, and then to capture that moment in time. I mean he would force me to sing in positions that are not intuitive. He would put me in a chair, and make me slump over where I’m singing between my knees, and the microphone is a foot off the ground, in order to take the physicality out of it, to take my body and power away from it. Because I can sing my ass off, but sometimes he was just like, be cool, chill out, and relax. You don't have to be so fucking intense.
GW: What is your typical process when writing new music?
WB: I've always let songs lead. Whatever the song wants to do, it does it. I've never been a country artist or a folk artist. I mean, my vehicle for writing has been acoustic guitar, which is how I've written most of the time, other than maybe when melodies come swimming in my head, but this time, I got a synthesizer. I started writing with different sounds with the synthesizer— whether it be trombone, violin, or piano—and these are instruments that I don't necessarily know how to play. So I'm kind of moving around, searching for melodies, and for places to land, which also opened me up to something fresh and new. I wasn't confined to my guitar playing. You know, there's little things that happen inadvertently in guitar playing, and you end up getting comfortable with things. This last album was almost an exploration of being uncomfortable in every aspect, and I think it's cool.
GW: Where do you get your creative inspiration for new songs?
WB: Most songs come from silence, or come from places that are not real. I just feel like a conduit, like I am grabbing the ideas. I I think the positive thing, or the gift, is then going back and listening. So I'll record immediately on my phone, or on some kind of little contraption, and out of the gibberish often comes something that's important or vital, or something that's a place where I can use as a jumping off point for a song. And it could be in the middle. I could record for 3 minutes, and there could be only 10 seconds that is worth a shit, and everything else is gibberish, or everything else doesn't make sense, but there's often moments in that, and a purity of melody and lyric, where you're not really involved in it. It’s coming from a different place.
The White Buffalo will be starting their east coast tour in Minneapolis, and will be playing in cities such as Madison, Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland Heights, Boston, Brooklyn, Ardmore, and Washington DC. They will also be opening for Bruce Springsteen in Rome, Italy on May 21 and performing at Bospop Festival in the Netherlands on July 8.
The Get Right Band is a dynamic indie rock power trio hailing from Asheville, NC. With over a decade of musical exploration, the band is dedicated to creating authentic, self-expressive music that pushes the boundaries of genre and speaks to the human experience. The band's sound melds elements of 60s/70s psychedelia, 90s alternative rock, and modern pop/rock into a unique style that is at once nostalgic and fresh.
The Get Right Band was formed in 2011 by Silas Durocher and Jesse Gentry, who have been playing music together since middle school. In 2013, they were joined by drummer Jian-Claude Mears, and the trio set out to create a sound that was uniquely their own. Durocher, a trained composer, brings his technical expertise and swagger to the guitar and microphone. Gentry's virtuosic bass playing is a force to be reckoned with, and Mears' powerful drumming provides a foundation that is at once precise and emotive.
Over the years, The Get Right Band has shared the stage with a variety of notable acts, including Dr. Dog, Everclear, Cracker, and UB40. They have been featured on NPR's World Cafe and WTF with Marc Maron, and have played at major venues and festivals across the country. The band's music has been praised for its infectiousness, intelligence, and weight.
With four studio albums and a live album under their belt, The Get Right Band is poised to release their newest LP on April 7th, 2023.
iTopia explores the impact of technology and social media on our lives, personalities, and relationships. The album is a concept piece that tackles globally relevant issues in a catchy, accessible way.
With iTopia, The Get Right Band has positioned themselves as one of the few modern bands writing music that speaks directly to the anxieties and challenges of our time.
The band’s first single “Hell Yes Refresh," which was released on January 26th, is a mesmerizing synth-filled track that delves into the collective human addiction to social media and the constant need to refresh. Lead singer and guitarist, Silas Durocher, intertwines the subjects of technology and love, emphasizing the song's message that these concepts are often interchangeable in today's world.
The band's accompanying visual, directed by Durocher and animated by Rodrigo Salazar, sets the tone for iTopia. The video, created in collaboration with artificial intelligence, is a vibrant portrayal of the concept of technology and its impact on human connection. The band chose to use AI art as a way to communicate the album's message of finding the balance between the “miracle and the mess of technology." Durocher explains, “We wanted the first music video from iTopia to really say a lot about the whole album, not just the single." With “Hell Yes Refresh" and its accompanying visual, The Get Right Band offers a captivating preview of what's to come.
On February 16th, the trio unveiled their latest single, "Generation Happy or Dead," along with its lyric video. This song from their upcoming album focuses on the desire to stay informed about the world while avoiding falling into apathy.
In addition to the singles "Generation Happy or Dead" and "Hell Yes Refresh," iTopia will feature 15 more tracks that touch on themes such as self-discovery, mental health, and the search for truth in the digital age. The album promises to be a dynamic and cohesive body of work that showcases The Get Right Band's unique blend of rock, funk, and psychedelia.
The upcoming tour will give fans a chance to hear the new material from iTopia alongside some of the band's classic songs. The tour is set to kick off on March 11th in Asheville, NC, and will make stops in cities such as Washington, DC, Philadelphia, PA, and Brooklyn, NY. More dates are expected to be announced soon.
Recently, Silas Durocher from The Get Right Band sat down for an interview with Candice Dollar from Grateful Web to discuss their upcoming album, iTopia. In this interview, Silas and Candice delve into the creative process behind iTopia, the band's upcoming tour, and their unique approach to blending genres to create a sound that is both fresh and nostalgic.
GW: Can you tell me about what it was like to produce the album?
SD: Yeah. So, it’s all self-produced. Everything we've ever recorded has been self-produced. We have a lot of strong ideas about arrangement, effects, and things like that. We really like to be hands on. With this album, and the last one, we went into Echo Mountain, which is a really nice studio here in Asheville, and we recorded the drums. Then we recorded everything else at home in a— you know, half-assed home studio.
GW: And this is album number…?
SD: iTopia is our sixth album.
GW: So you mention a “half-assed” home studio. Can you talk more about the difference in recording at home vs. in a professional studio?
SD: The four albums we did before these last two were done more traditionally [in a studio] and we really felt like we were fighting against the clock. Just paying by the hour. We aren’t really looking to capture our live sound in the studio. We're looking to use the studio as a totally different medium. To use effects and to experiment, and that experimentation takes a long time. You gotta go down a rabbit hole sometimes, and chase an idea for six hours, and then at the end of that go “Oops! Nope, that wasn't cool,” but you have to chase it in order to find out that it wasn't cool. Or, sometimes you're like, “Oh, shit! That was it!” We never would have had that time if we were stressing about paying by the hour. So for iTopia, we tracked almost the entire thing at my house, and at a couple of other people's houses. Then, we mixed it partially by ourselves, and partially with this guy named Matt Settle in Charleston, South Carolina. We had some good back and forth with him, and he really brought some cool energy to it. We really love this process. It takes a whole lot longer doing it the way we do it, outside of the studio, and doing a lot of the engineering, production and some of the mixing on our own, but we just feel like the end result is something we're a lot more excited about.
GW: So it sounds like you are really looking forward to this album release.
SD. Yeah. I'm really looking forward to this record coming out because we started working on it when we are all locked down in quarantine. We released our previous record, which is called Itchy Soul, and pretty much immediately started working on this one. That was one of the nice things about this process. Even though quarantine was obviously rough in a lot of ways, it was also the first time in ten years that we were not on tour for an extended period of time, so we had a lot more time to write. Anyways, I guess that makes it about two years between when we started, and when the record will come out. So it just feels like we've been working on this for forever, and it's really exciting to have it out. I'm really proud of what we did, and definitely through the writing and recording process, we were very focused on what we think, what we want to make, what we are trying to express, and what we want to hear. But then it starts to shift towards this point in the process where, like now, it starts to get really exciting to share it with people, and you hope that people are going to hear it and go, “Oh, I feel that way,” or “Oh, I also like things that sound like that,” or “That hits my heart in the same way that you're singing about it hitting your heart.” So this part of the process is exciting. It's a little scary, too, I guess, but mostly just really exciting.
GW: What else are you looking forward to?
SD: We're gonna be touring a ton when the record comes out, so all spring and summer will be the album release tour, and I am looking forward to traveling to all kinds of places, and working hard to spread this thing around.
Overall, The Get Right Band's iTopia promises to be a thought-provoking and engaging album that explores the complexities of the modern world. With their unique blend of rock, funk, and psychedelia, the band is sure to continue to captivate audiences and earn new fans with this new release.
iTopia (LP) Tracklisting
1. Black Holes of Negativity Part 1
2. Generation Happy or Dead
3. Good Luck Kid
4. Hell Yes Refresh
5. iTopia
6. Praise the Algorithm
7. Moonlight Maze
8. Trust Me
9. Turn Myself Around
10. The Outrage Machine
11. Don’t Feed the Trolls
12. Black Holes of Negativity Part 2 (The Monster is Me)
Jesse Lynn Madera has added her unique touch to the iconic track "Unchained," famously performed by Johnny Cash and produced by Rick Rubin in the late '90s. The song marks the production debut of renowned singer-songwriter Dan Navarro (Lowen & Navarro), and was engineered by multi-GRAMMY award-winner Jim Scott, who has worked with iconic artists such as Tom Petty, Sting, and The Bangles.
Dan Navarro was full of praise for Madera. “Jesse possesses a voice and vision that burrows deep into the heart of things. She owns it, and, in short order, owns you. It was a rare gift to work with her, he explains."
“Unchained” serves as the first taste of what fans can expect from Jesse Lynn Madera's upcoming album, Belle Sent Me, set to be released in 2023. The song showcases Madera’s remarkable talent for seamlessly blending various genres, including pop, Americana, jazz, and soul. Her piano-driven compositions are imbued with passion and allure, featuring a distinctively dramatic and ethereal tone that borders on the otherworldly. Drawing comparisons to the shape-shifting brilliance of Kate Bush and the confessional pop style of Tori Amos, Madera's “Unchained” is a truly captivating listening experience that offers great rewards to the audience.
The song will be available on all streaming platforms and is being serviced to Folk, Americana, and Non-Comm radio.
Recently, Jesse Lynn Madera sat down with Grateful Web to discuss the recording of her highly-anticipated album, Belle Sent Me. During the interview, Madera offers insight into the creative process, and shares her excitement about working with Dan Navarro and Jim Scott.
GW: How did you end up working with singer-songwriter Dan Navarro [of Lowen & Navarro]?
JLM: So this crazy thing happened. I'm gonna see if I can tell this right. But my manager was like, “You need to get in touch with this guy, Dan Navarro,” and I'm like, “Okay. Alright.” But the pandemic was happening, so I was like, “Okay, I will, I will.” I think we tried to have a couple of calls, but we just couldn't line up our schedules, and this went on for like a year. And then finally, she’s like, “Okay. Dan is having a two night birthday party/concert at McCabe's guitar shop in Santa Monica, and you should definitely go. And I'm like, “Okay. I'm definitely gonna go” (laughs). She goes, “By the way, Dan's major gift to the music world is that along with his partner Lowen, they wrote ‘We Belong’ for Pat Benetar.”
GW: Your face just lit up when you mentioned that song. You are so excited!
JLM: That was my first favorite song on the planet! Oh my God! And when I met Dan, I told him this and he's like, you know, he hears that all the time right? But it's hard for me to express to him how big these feelings are about this song, you know? So he's like, “Oh, yeah, yeah. Women tell me all the time they used to sing with their hair brush in the mirror,” and I'm just thinking to myself, it is so much more than that (laughs). They used to ask me what I was gonna be when I was a little girl, you know? They would say, “What are you gonna do when you grow up?” And I'd say, “I want to be Pat Benetar.” And they’re like, “You can’t be Pat Benetar, but you can be one of her backup singers” (laughs). But I was just obsessed with this song, and so when I met him, I was just gushing about all of that, but we ended up working together, and he has produced two songs for me so far. One is called “Unchained,” and the other is “Ten Miles Down” with Jim Scott engineering. Jim is in this documentary called Sound City.
GW: What is Sound City?
JLM: Have you ever seen Sound City? You need to watch that. It's a film [produced and directed by Dave Grohl] about a famous studio. The joke about it was that it was really run down, and not in a great part of town, and it wasn't very aesthetically good looking, but it had a vibe, and some of the best recordings ever came out of that studio. And actually, Dave Grohl now has the console that was there.
GW: I would love to build a little destination studio here someday. Where do you do most of your recording?
JLM: Well, I just went away for the first time to do some destination recording. The studio was in a barn outside of Seattle. I stayed in a tiny one bedroom cottage. It had a bedroom, bathroom, a little kitchenette, and a deck. I was there alone, so when the owners would leave, it was just me out there in the middle of the woods of Bear Creek, and I loved it. I would order food from postmates, and then go down the long driveway to meet them in the dark, and just be like, ‘Oh, God! Oh, God! Please survive this! This is the end!’ (laughs). But I mean it was such a great vibe. I went there in the summer, and there were bullfrogs singing outside of my window, and it was amazing. I would just walk across the little deck, walk in, get myself some coffee, and go to work in the morning. It was so great. What a life that was.
GW: I imagine it takes a long time to produce an album. Did you record anywhere else?
JLM: We were working at this studio called Plyrz Studios in Santa Clarita, and it's only a 45 min drive from my house, which is cool. That means if something needs to be added, or fixed, I can just drive over there, and you can’t put a value on that. Oh, my gosh. You know it's funny, Plyrz Studios actually has a lot in common vibe-wise with the Bear Creek studio, even though Plyrz is not a barn. It's a huge warehouse, and when he [Jim Scott] first moved in there, it was really just going to be a temporary thing. Jim was going to build a studio in his backyard, and while they were waiting for all the permits to come in, his console arrived, and he said to his friends, “Maybe I could just put my console in your warehouse, since it's pretty much empty. They said, “Sure!” And then, he ended up getting a call like, “Can you mix my album?” And he goes, “Well, if you're willing to be my guinea pig, sure!” (laughs). And that's how the studio began. And so he's like, “Oh, man. I gotta do something about this fluorescent lighting,” and so he puts tapestries over the fluorescent lighting. That's the first thing he did. That's what he told me. The first thing he did was put tapestries, or scarf-like things over the fluorescent lighting, and it was an instant game changer. And then he ended up doing that all over all the walls around the studio, and then the studio itself.
GW: How big is the warehouse?
JLM: So, there are three different parts. There's the big room that you walk into, and it's just this huge warehouse space, and he's put a bar in there. His wife got him a bar, and he's got a little kitchen, and then it's just this huge hangout area that has every instrument that you could possibly imagine, and almost all of them are in working order; they're ready to be played at any time. He's got drum kits that he turned into light fixtures. He's got hollowed out organs that he's turned into record holders. So cool. And then of course, there's the control room, and there are the booths and the live room. It has a vibe. You should look at pictures of this place. They might inspire you. I feel like you're going to be doing something like that.
ALO, short for Animal Liberation Orchestra, is a band consisting of Zach Gill, Dan "Lebo" Lebowitz, Steve Adams, and Ezra Lipp. The three original members met in Saratoga, California when they were pre-teens and bonded over their shared love for music. They formed a band in junior high, and after years of hard work, dedication, and shared experiences, they have created their best work to date.
The title from ALO's ninth studio album, Silver Saturdays, which was released on March 3 via Brushfire Records, refers to the band's recent penchant for silver attire at their Saturday shows, which also became a costume theme among their fan base and an acknowledgment of their silver "25th" anniversary. The album features ten new original songs, recorded mostly live, that pay homage to the journey, and the artistic process.
Over the past 25 years, ALO has collaborated with many artists, from members of the Grateful Dead to Jack Johnson. However, it is only when the band members come together that their unique sound can be fully appreciated. Their music is described as "jam-pop," with a mix of carefully crafted compositions and improvisational departures that showcase their telepathic cohesion.
Grateful Web recently had the opportunity to sit down and chat with the guys from ALO about the power of intention, collaboration, and the type of patience that can only be honed over time. Read on below for an inside look.
GW: I appreciate your time tonight.
ZACH: It's the most valuable thing we have, right?
LEBO: It's all we have.
GW: That's so very true. Speaking of time. I hear that it is your 25th anniversary? You guys have known each other for a really long time.
LEBO: Yeah, 3 of us members have known each other since seventh grade or so. We're a family organization.
GW: That's awesome.
LEBO: Yeah, can I tell you a secret? It's actually not our 25th anniversary playing together. It's just our 25th anniversary from the first ALO album, but we've actually been playing for like 35 years.
EZRA: I mean, I think the truth of it just doesn't get talked about a lot. We just haven't had many other options in our careers, so we kinda just keep doing it. There's no one else to play with (laughs).
GW: You guys are like an old married couple.
LEBO: Well, on that subject, it would make a very old polyamorous relationship, right? (laughs)
GW: I hope I'm never in an old married coupling like that, but that is kind of the stereotype. It's like, “Wow! We're already this deep in, we might as well stick it out” (laughs). So, to bring it back to this new album, can you guys tell me what it was like to produce that after the pandemic? Do you depend a lot on technology, or is it more important that you get together?
LEBO: I would say, a big part of what we did with it was to get in a room together. After coming out of the pandemic with so much virtual stuff, we were like, “let's get in a room for a few weeks.” We broke it up into two segments, but being in a room together, creating music, recording, you know all that, was essential. On the flip side of that, when we were bouncing mixes around and stuff, we went back to passing stuff around using technology, so we still incorporated some of it, but I do think this conversation it's informed by that too, because as much as we embrace technology, we also really like being together.
GW: Do you have a producer or do you self-produce?
LEBO: We co-produce it as a band. It is all very collaborative, which is cool and sometimes sticky. What are your thoughts guys?
ZACH: The nuts and bolts are, you know, since we have been collaborating as artists, for 30 years, or 20 some as ALO, there are a lot of known factors in the collaborative aspect of what it's like to be in the room together. In the case of this record, everybody contributed songs, so I think each individual sort of led the way with their own songs, and then we relied on our buddy’s judgment that the studio we picked was going to be great. Some of us had seen it. Some of us hadn’t, because we all live in different time zones. Sometimes there's disagreements, and sometimes there's not, but we had a very vibrant spot with vibey gear, and a lot of it is just figuring out like, you gotta eat and live in a spot for a certain amount of time, so how does that work? Ideally, you're in the most creative supportive space, and we definitely had a lot of help in doing that. Not only through helping each other, but also with our managers, and our friend Don was cooking, and it was our friend Ryan's studio space, and I mean, ALO is always a very collaborative endeavor. It’s more like comedy improv. It's a bunch of people improvising all together as opposed to a straight up play where there's the director, and the musical director. I think it's more about bouncing stuff back and forth really quickly, kind of like how this conversation has been. It starts and goes, and it goes to a lot of different places. But we all have our eye on the finish line, which is usually about time. In the end, it comes down to the fact that we had to fit everything on two sides of a vinyl. Everybody's hopes and dreams and aspirations in 42 minutes of music.
North Carolina-based indie-pop band, The Collection, released their newest EP, How To Survive An Ending, on January 27th. The EP centers around the theme of empowerment and encourages listeners to break away from societal expectations and find their own strength to get through difficult endings. The band, which has been compared to The Lumineers, Magic Giant, and The Oh Hellos, has had a string of successes in recent years, including their first chart appearance with their single "Won't Stop Yet," and a viral moment on Tik Tok.
Additionally, The Collection was named the 2019 NPR Tiny Desk Judge’s Pick and has been featured on World Cafe, American Songwriter, and Glide Magazine. Most recently, the band wrapped up a postcard initiative that created a safe space for LGBTQ+ fans to share their messages of empowerment.
Grateful Web recently had the opportunity to sit down with David Wimbish, the lead singer and songwriter of The Collection, to discuss their EP release. In our interview with David, we delve into the band's creative process, and discuss the start of a brand new music festival, which is scheduled to take place later this year in Saxapahaw, North Carolina.
GW: Hi! How are you?
DW: I'm Good! How are you doing?
GW: I'm great. I just had an interview right before you. I've been trying to do 4 to 6 every weekend, but speaking with artists is actually the highlight of my week, so it is very nice to meet you. I appreciate your time.
DW: I appreciate your time as well! Thanks for having me. I'm constantly on the road at the moment, so I am hoping to have enough service in this little parking lot. Life is very hectic for me too. So I get it.
GW: So what are you doing on the road so much right now?
DW: We're actually creating a music festival that's starting this year out in Saxapahaw, North Carolina, which is where I have been living. Well, actually I'm currently about an hour from there, so I'm constantly having meetings in Saxapahaw to get the festival stuff started, especially before we go on tour.
GW: Any chance you’ll be in the middle of the country? I am out here in Nebraska.
DW: We're actually playing in Omaha next month, which I know is not quite the middle, but it will be our second time playing in Nebraska, so I'm really excited. I did a lot of my growing up in Kansas, so I've at least been in similar spaces, to some degree. And it's interesting with my band, because I just have so many good memories associated with Kansas, and I actually love that it is so flat. The planes and how much sky you can see when we drive through. Some of my bandmates are like, “oh, my God! This part of the country…” and I'm always like, “it's so beautiful!” I love it. I have to argue for Kansas with some of my bandmates.
GW: Okay. So you guys just released an album, right? My burning question is always about the production process. What was the space like? And did you have a producer? Who was there?
DW: So I produced the entire EP. For the 6 songs, we recorded them in a little studio in a little town in North Carolina, called High Point. It was this really beautiful studio tha my friend Bill runs. It is a part of their house, but is a very professional studio. That was fun because it's such a comfortable space, being there, and it really felt amazing and sounded incredible. Studios can be really depressing, because there's so few windows normally, and I just need a lot of light to feel inspired. And so it was nice, especially with those songs, doing them there. That studio is full of windows that are paned in just the right way, so that they still sound fine, but there is so much natural light, and that to me is key for being able to not hit a clock and want to take a nap. So, we did 6 of the songs there, and then there are 2 more songs that have more orchestral stuff, and we did those at a studio called Echo Mountain, in Asheville, North Carolina. That studio was always a dream to record in, because so many amazing records have been made there by folks like The Avett Brothers, and Brandi Carlile. It's just a very incredible studio. It's an old church that was renovated, so there's big stained glass windows, and a big church sanctuary building, and really incredible gear.
GW: And that studio was better for the more orchestral sounds?
DW: Yeah, we used this place to record the more orchestral songs so that we could get strings, brass, woodwinds and all sorts of stuff in there. So that was a wonderful and inspiring space with a lot of light too, which is helpful.
GW: So, tell me about your other bandmates.
DW: So there are 6 of us. I sing and play guitar and keys, and I also do all of our ranges for strings and whatnot. And then Joshua Ling plays electric guitar and does some vocals. He's got the deepest voice of anybody in the world. So he does very low vocals that sound like dwarves from the Hobbit (laughs). Sarah McCoy, and she's really wonderful. She's one of the best musicians I've ever played with. She plays keyboard and things. Joshua Linhart plays drums and just smiles non-stop. Graham Dickey plays trombone and trumpet.
TOUR DATES
MAR 30 THU
The Grey Eagle @ 7:00pm
Asheville, NC, United States
MAR 31 FRI
Saturn @ 7:00pm
Birmingham, AL, United States
APR 1 SAT
UNwineD Music Festival 2022 @ 5:00pm
Panama City Beach, FL, United States
JUN 1 THU
Overton Park Shell @ 7:00pm
Memphis, TN, United States
JUN 2 FRI
Barley's Taproom @ 7:00pm
Knoxville, TN, United States
JUN 3 SAT
The Evening Muse @ 7:00pm
Charlotte, NC, United States
The Crystal Casino Band, a four-piece indie rock band originally formed at George Washington University in 2015, has been making waves in the music scene since their debut album in 2021. With their latest album release, Maryland House— produced by Kyle Downes and Jay Nemeyer (Color Palette)— the band showcases their artistic growth and pays homage to their lives as young adults in the DC/Maryland/Virginia area.
In this exclusive interview, Grateful Web sat down with band members Pete Stevens (guitar, vocals), and Jordan Mullaney (bass) to discuss the making of their latest album. Read on below to discover the insights behind one of the most promising indie rock acts to come out of the D.C. area in a long time.
CC: You got Jordan from the band. I know it says Chris, but you got Pete and Jordan. It is very nice to meet you. Thanks for having us.
GW: Yeah, of course. Where are you guys located?
CC: We're both in Washington, D.C. I originally grew up outside Chicago and Jordan grew up outside New York, but the band all gathered at the George Washington University in D.C, and so we've been in the D.C. area for like 8 years at this point now.
GW: Oh, nice! So you guys have been playing together for 8 years?
CC: We’ve gone through some lineup changes, but Joey, who couldn’t make it on the call, and I started the band 8 years ago during freshman orientation. We met each other and formed a band before classes even started. And then, as college went on, we were able to poach Jordan from another band, because we thought his bass playing skills were so incredible that we had to have him in our band. So Jordan has been playing with us for like 6 or 7 years. And then Jared was the final member to join. We had another guitarist before, but he moved to L.A. after graduation, so Jared took over that spot. But the current line up has been around for about 4 years now.
GW: So what do you guys have going on right now that you're excited about?
CC: The album being released on Friday was such a big deal for us. It is something we've been working towards for like 2 years at this point. We're just so thrilled that it’s out there, and we're also preparing for our biggest show to date at the 930 Club in D.C., which holds about 1,200 people. So it's a huge step up for us to be performing there, and we're really grateful for that opportunity. It is a lot of hard work, but we're really excited for that.
GW: And you guys are probably balancing jobs and families on top of working on a new album, so I know how tough it can be to have enough time for your creative endeavors. You know it's rare that you find an artist who's able to get some kind of residency where people pay their way. I have always had to balance both. To have a “real job”. I would like to get to the point where I can pour more of my time and energy into what fills me up.
CC: I would say the same is true for us. Since graduating we've all had jobs, and now being remote has made it a lot easier to balance both, but it's still a lot of time and effort. After we log out at 5:00 or 5:30, we'll be focusing on this until we go to bed.
GW: Yeah, I get that. So would you guys say that the ability to collaborate remotely outweighs the cons of the disconnect that technology creates? Do you do a lot of collaboration remotely, or mostly in person?
CC: I feel like Covid did change the way we approached the record, because of restrictions and because of the situation. We went into the studio every Tuesday. Not all of us were there all the time, so we did have to collaborate remotely at least a decent amount of time. I don't know, I'm not sold yet on remote being the answer. I think it's convenient, and it's afforded us to be able to do our 9-5 jobs, but I do think you need to have human interaction. It's a different thing that hasn't yet been replicated.
GW: So this leads to me what is always my burning question. Where did you produce this album? Do you have a producer? And if so, who is that?
CC: We actually have 2 producers. They go under the production name of Sunday Coffee, but they're two guys named Kyle Downes and Jay Nemeyer of Color Palette. We actually met Jay through Color Palette way back in 2016, and kept in touch with him over the years. During COVID, with all the extra time on our hands, we really wanted to make our music sound a lot better, and step it up a bit, and their production helped so much. We were all self-producing these songs, and the amount of effort that Kyle and Jay put into the songs to make them pop even more. It's just so worth it. We're all truly proud of these 13 songs, and how great they sound, because of their help as well.
The Shootouts were pleasantly surprised to find themselves back in the studio shortly after their Americana album Bullseye achieved Top 10 status. The reason for their return was the involvement of Ray Benson, the renowned frontman and founder of Asleep at the Wheel, who agreed to produce their next record after being introduced to the band by a mutual friend. Stampede, the album that resulted from this collaboration with Benson and co-producer Sam Seifert, came together quickly, but is the Shootouts' most impressive work to date, blending Americana, honky tonk, and Western swing to create a sound that appeals to fans of country music and beyond.
The band's Northeast Ohio roots, which reflect the region's Rust Belt history, are evident in their sound, which incorporates influences from both country music greats and Akron-based acts like the Pretenders, the Black Keys, and Devo. Stampede was mainly recorded at Son of Moondog Studios in Northeast Ohio, allowing Benson and Asleep at the Wheel to work with the Shootouts on their home turf.
The album features collaborations with several notable Americana musicians, including Marty Stuart on the bluegrass-tinged "Better Things to Do," Raul Malo of The Mavericks on "I'll Never Need Anyone More," and Jim Lauderdale on "Tomorrow's Knockin'." Buddy Miller lends his voice to the California-country-rock track "Anywhere But Here," while "One Step Forward" showcases Benson and members of Asleep at the Wheel in a western swing-rooted number. Other standout tracks include the Dave Edmunds-inspired "Run for Cover" and the instrumental title track, which highlights the talents of the Shootouts' lead guitarist Brian Poston and Asleep at the Wheel's Dennis Ludiker.
Despite the challenges of the pandemic, the Shootouts have remained productive, with Stampede being their third album in five years. They have also toured extensively, performing with a variety of artists and receiving critical acclaim for their music. Bullseye, produced by Chuck Mead, spent over 18 weeks on the Americana Music Association Top 30 album chart, reaching No. 6, and also achieved several other accolades.
The Shootouts consist of lead singer and guitarist Ryan Humbert, vocalist Emily Bates, lead guitarist Brian Poston, and bassist Kevin McManus. For Stampede, they also worked with "Shootouts extended family members" Dylan Gomez on drums, Ryan McDermott on bass, and Al Moss on guitar. The album was released on February 24, 2023 through Soundly Music.
Grateful Web had the pleasure of sitting down with lead singer and guitarist Ryan Humbert to discuss the making of the album, their roots in the Rustbelt, and the exciting collaborations featured on Stampede. Read on to learn more about the Shootouts and their journey to becoming one of the most exciting acts in modern country music.
GW: Thanks for chatting with me today. How are you?
RH: We've been swamped, you know, promoting this new record. So it's been good, and we're getting ready to get much busier here soon.
GW: Well, I appreciate your time. I do understand how valuable time is.So, you just released a new album. That’s exciting! Where did you record those songs? And what was that process like?
RH: We recorded the album here in Kent, Ohio. It was kind of a fluke in the sense that we weren't planning on making a record so soon after the last record, Bull's Eye, but a mutual friend connected us with Ray Benson, lead singer of Asleep at the Wheel, and Ray is a country music legend, I mean you're talking, I think 30 grammy nominations and 11 Grammys? He's worked with the best of the best. Dolly, Willie, and members of Bob Wills’ band. So, getting to make a record with Ray was really special. We were actually going to go to Austin to record, but after looking at our schedule, they figured out that we were from Ohio, and they said, “well, where?” And I told them, and they said, “we have some shows that will put us right in that neck of the woods right around a period of 5 days off.” And so it was just a fluke. And so he said, “do you have a good studio there in town?” I said, “yeah, we do. I know a guy that has a private studio that is nicer than most of the ones in Nashville.” And so we went in there and Asleep at the Wheel came to us, which was incredible to even say that. They came to us and we set up in this beautiful studio. My friend Dave, who owns the studio, has a real knack for finding vintage gear. So we recorded the whole thing through a vintage MCI console. I think it came out of a studio in Florida back in the seventies, and he's got that, and he has a sister board to that, and then just mountains of great gear and amps. So no plugins were used during the recording of this record at all. It was all real gear. Real sounds.
RH: I love a good old school feel. How did that contribute to the sound?
JD: The record still has a little bit of a warmth to it, which I think you could attribute to all of that. We did a lot of live tracking. All the basic tracks were done live, together as a band. Of course we would do some overdubs after the fact, and especially to get all the special guests on the record.
GW: Tell me about what it’s like to work with the other group members.
RH: The 4 of us [Ryan, Emily, Brian, and Kevin] are pretty much the core Shootouts, and we are just like a big family, you know? So it’s a really collaborative process, working with this group. We have a drummer as well, but we've had a couple of different drummers, so basically the four of us handle all the press and marketing. We are sort of the face of the band, but it's very collaborative. We like to make sure that we are all contributing and having a say in the sound. We arrange all the songs as a group to make sure that all ideas are getting thrown out there, and I think that's helped us develop our sound a little bit. Everybody's got a little bit of input there.
GW: Nice. So how did you guys get together then?
RH: Brian Poston and myself started the band. We met and he was playing guitar in a project with me, and we bonded over the fact that we both loved real country music, like traditional country music. And we were kind of lamenting that you don't hear it much anymore in a lot of places. You have to know where to look. You have to know where to go to be able to find that type of music. So we decided that we were gonna do it. We were like, “let's just go out and play. We'll have fun. We don't care if anybody shows up.” You know, it was meant to be a side project. That's it.
GW: And what was your first show like?
RH: It was like a bolt of lightning, and everything all of a sudden clicked into place and made sense, and I knew that this was what I was meant to be doing musically. So it very quickly turned from a side project into the main project. And here we are now, 3 records in, getting ready to make our Grand Ole Opry debut, and our South by Southwest debut, and working with some of our idols, and country music and Americana legends. Sometimes you just have to follow your heart instead of your head.
STAMPEDE TRACKLIST
Better Things to Do (Feat. Marty Stuart)
Anywhere But Here (Feat. Buddy Miller)
One Step Forward (Feat. Ray Benson & Asleep at The Wheel)
I'll Never Need Anyone More (Feat. Raul Malo)
Run For Cover
Coming Home by Going Away
Stampede
Tomorrow's Knockin' (Feat. Jim Lauderdale)
Feelin' Kind of Lonely Tonight
Must Be a Broken Heart
Better Things to Do (Acoustic Version Feat. Marty Stuart)
Upstate has experienced a series of transitions over the past three years, navigating through the pandemic and significant life events such as marriages, births, funerals, and spiritual awakenings. These experiences provided the band members, Mary Webster, Melanie Glenn, Harry D’Agostino, and Dylan McKinstry, with a much-needed break from the demands of touring and allowed them to create a record that reflects on every aspect of their lives with honesty and authenticity.
For the past eleven years, Upstate has been known for their genre-bending arrangements, showcased in their previous albums, A Remedy (2015) and Healing (2019). The band has grown in size, toured nationally, and supported prominent acts such as The Felice Brothers, Marco Benevento, Lake Street Dive, Mt. Joy, and The Wood Brothers. They welcome multi-instrumentalist Dylan McKinstry to their team, who engineered, mixed, and co-produced their third full-length album, You Only Get A Few, alongside Mary Webster.
Recorded in Marlboro, New York, at The Building and completed at Greenpoint Recording Collective in Brooklyn, You Only Get A Few features the contributions of family members, including Webster's husband Conor on piano, McKinstry's father Steve on Hammond B3, and the film photographs taken by Harry's father Louie and Conor that grace the album's cover and credit photos. The LP delves into uncertainty and collaboration, offering a darker and moodier sound that remains true to the band's identity.
The album begins with the introspective “Lovers & Friends,” setting the tone for the intimate, friend-driven project. Upstate's attention to detail is evident in the field recordings included in several songs, drawing listeners into the space where the songs were created. “Catalpa” is a poignant reminder of memories and the fleeting nature of time, while “Auntie” serves as a contemplative piece urging listeners to trust their intuition. “Patty's Diner,” written by bassist Harry D’Agostino, tells a fictional story about a grieving sister's determination to fulfill her late sibling's dream.
Glenn's “Befriend” is a standout track that showcases the band's expansive sonic palette and the addition of clarinet, piano, and organ. You Only Get A Few is a testament to the band's creative process and ability to adapt to change while remaining true to their sound.
Grateful Web had the pleasure of chatting with Harry D’Agostino about the release of Upstate’s latest album, You Only Get a Few, which was released today, March 31. Read on below for an inside view.
HD: My name is Harry D'Agostino, and I play double bass, electric bass, and a little guitar with the band Upstate. We used to be called the Upstate Rubdown, but we cut out the Rubdown. We have been a band for about 11 years. The original members all met at State University in New York at New Paltz. We were all college students, and it was one of those things that kind of snowballed. Part of the reason we had the name we did and we made the kind of music we did was that none of it had ever really been intentional. We were never the band who said, “We're gonna be a band, and it's gonna sound like this, and it's gonna look like this.” It always took on a life of its own. We weren't always steering it. So, we had a lot of different instrumentation, and that wasn't by design. We've had mandolin, saxophone, and cajon as the percussion, instead of a traditional drum kit, and that wasn't because we set out to have that be the instrumentation, it was who we had around us, and who got drawn to play music with us.
HD: The original members are myself, and the two singers, Melanie Glenn and Mary Webster. We've been writing songs together now for 10 or 11 years. We have changed a lot of what we're doing sonically throughout that time, and for a long time we had a certain kind of relationship to the crowd. A lot of the music we were playing, and even just the way we were arranging the songs, really fed off of this live aspect. We were playing shows constantly, three or four nights a week, and we were constantly on the road, and always playing in dive bars where there was such an intimacy with the energy of the crowd, and that really bled into the music. There is a relationship there, which I think is a really good school for knowing how music communicates. It can also be a vice if it starts to water down how deliberate you are in what you're doing. There is a lack of deliberation, and you can get stuck in a little feedback loop of that.
The Evolution of Upstate: From Playful to Mature
HD: For our first record, we wrote really eclectic stuff, because we weren't trying to be anything specific. We just thought, Oh, why not? We ran to stuff that was sort of unusual, and we had fun with it, and I think the songs were less mature songs, because they were born in a certain way. There's a certain childishness and playfulness to them, and there is something charming about that. The second record we made was a lot more deliberate. We had another songwriter in the band at that time, Allison Olander, who was our third singer, and for a long period in the band, we had three part vocal harmony, with women up front. We tried to whittle down the songs to only what was necessary. Like, don't get cute, don't have these two minutes where all of a sudden you're playing a Latin groove that doesn't have to do with what you are doing, only do what serves the song, and so the material was maybe a little more mature, broader, and more contemplative. But it still had life and bubbliness to it. We were on the road, like 200 days a year touring for that record, and then the pandemic hit, and everything shut down. It was like a train hitting a wall, and everything kind of scattered a bit. It was up in the air whether or not we were going to keep doing it. Two of us got married. Mary had a baby. So we are all at different stages of life, but we made the current record that's about to come out in that time, during the pandemic, and one of the things that I think really marks it is, we made it only because we really love these songs, and we love each other, and we weren't sure what else we were going to be doing with it. Nobody knew what was next, or how we were going to come back together. I think there's a particular wholeness to this record. There is a sparseness to it, because our lives at the time were a little more sparse, in terms of paring down to the essentials.
HD: We had members leave, and we brought in a new member, Dylan McKinstry, who's a really talented multi-instrumentalist guitar player. He produced the record, with Mary collaborating. So, this was all in house too. The new album is not quite marked in the same way by the live, give and take aspect, although we're excited to see how the songs develop now that they're going to be played live. In this different stage of life, we're contemplating the edge of things a little more. Life, faith, love, and death, all the big ones, all the things that you can't shy away from. So that's what we're attending to both inside and out. We are very different people, and we always have been to a certain degree, but I think because we're more whole within ourselves, this record is marked by that in a particular way.
The Light and Dark Sides of Fandom
HD: I always think about this. It is weird to have a job, where the boundary between the personal, the practical, and the transactional, all get porous. As an artist, you have a relationship with the people who listen to the music. You're relating to them in more than one way, and you don't want the practical— selling tickets to the show— to step on the more personal relationships, but also there's a distance to it too, because you don't want it to be too personal or too intimate, because it can squelch how they engage with what you're trying to do with the art. So I don't know, I think boundaries like that are difficult.
HD: It's definitely the case that people have a really ruptured relationship with their mortality, and with just being a human person, but even just on the basis of, we want to love and be loved, and we want to love things in common. We want to have objects of common love. So fandom can be really great. I love that band, and you love that band, and it’s a pillar for a relationship that's not just free floating. It has this external quality. Sometimes people put a little too much weight on it, but the root desire is a really good one. You share your love with somebody, and then their affection makes it more visible to you in some other way. You see something about yourself and someone else who loves the same thing.
Parting Words: “The basis of art is truth” -Flannery O’Connor
HD: You have to follow what feels right in here (gestures to heart). Trust that first and foremost, right? You know when you're right with yourself, and what you're putting out there is authentic. You just hope that the right people can resonate, and understand what it is that you're trying to say. And ideally, they will help reveal to you what it is that you're communicating. We discern exactly what it is that we're talking about with others in communion. But the other thing is, there can be a false humility, that's really just a fear of vulnerability, because when you write and you say, “Okay, this is what I think,” it's like open season, or it makes you vulnerable in a particular way. Art does too. But with art, there's a little guarded element to it. You don't want to be seen or understood, but at the same time, you're putting the truth out there. The truth is always the most important thing. It's at the core of it. Find out what the truth is, and then you have to speak it. It’s like the Flannery O’Connor quote, “The basis of art is truth.”
You Only Get A Few Tracklist
Lovers & Friends
Catalpa
Auntie
Patty's Diner
Befriend
Metaxy
Sally
I'll Come Around
WYDFL
Everything Changes
While many bands starting their career in Los Angeles struggle to achieve their goals, Fencer is one of the exceptions. The band was formed in February 2017 by former actor Field Cate on vocals and guitar, and lifelong musician Cameron Sauve on drums. They aimed to perfect their unique and transcendent sound, but something was missing. The missing piece of their trio was found when they discovered Cameron's brother, Scott Sauve, on bass. They quickly formed a strong bond and secured their permanent lineup.
After years of midnight writing and being featured as a KLOS' NeXt2Rock Finalist, Fencer released their debut EP, Growing Up Selfish, in 2019 after a successful run opening for Badflower on their OK I'm Sick tour. The EP was produced by Josh Katz, the lead singer of Badflower, and the songs were mixed and mastered by Zach Fisher from Big Bad Sound LA, who has worked with bands like Weezer, Rancid, and Bad Religion. While their lead single "Junebug" was an instant hit and their breakthrough into the music industry, the band is eager to change it up and blend their sound even more remarkably.
Despite the pandemic putting a hold on live shows, Fencer spent the last two years redefining their sound and experimenting with different styles of songwriting. Their triumphant return to new music, “Fishfriend,” was featured almost immediately on KROQ's Locals Only. The song showcased a folkier side of the band, while their latest singles, "Buena" (a Morphine cover) and "Sleepcount," are closer to their newfound sound. The band's spirited dynamic, made up of Field's erratic yet melodic vocals, Scott's heavy sonorous bass lines, and Cameron's hard-hitting percussion, sets them apart from the rest.
Fencer's unique take on songwriting allows the band to resonate with fans in multiple ways. Each member's talents are used to cultivate the iconic Fencer sound, with Field's distinctive approach to lyricism and Scott and Cameron's instrumental reinforcements. The band's discography centers around Field's determination to break the stigma surrounding mental health and its struggles. Field also fully embraces his synesthesia in all writing efforts, and the motto "everything must sound blue" is evident throughout Fencer's overall sound and visuals. While some may call it a coincidence that all the members' zodiac signs are water signs, the band believes it's fate. At the end of the day, "if it's not blue, it's got to go."
Fencer's self-titled album is their most authentic work to date. While Field's emotive vulnerability is seen throughout the songwriting, it wouldn't be Fencer without Cameron's production skills. After spending most of the pandemic learning how to self-produce, Cameron was able to perfect the band's brand-new sound just in time for their first-ever record. The trio kicked off 2022 with a co-headlining tour with Crossing i's Dotting t's and have no plans to slow down. Even though Fencer has already achieved over two million listens across all streaming platforms prior to the release of their debut album, they're determined to prove themselves as rock's newest novelty.
Having an affinity for water signs myself (as a fellow Pisces), I can relate to the desire for everything to sound blue, a sentiment shared by Field Cate, the lead vocalist and guitarist of Fencer. I was also delighted to discover that Field's name bears resemblance to my daughter's name, Finley Cate, who is also a water sign (Cancer). In this interview, we take a deep dive (pun intended) into the world of Fencer, featuring an exclusive interview with Field Cate. From the band's early beginnings to their latest self-produced album, we explore the journey of this exceptional band and gain insight into their creative process.
GW: Hi! How's it going?
FC: Good. How about yourself?
GW: I am great! Thanks for asking. So first of all, your name, Field Cate, I had to ask your publicist if that was your real name. My daughter's name is Finley Cate. I just thought that was cool.
FC: Oh, how bizarre and cool. My mom would love to hear that she's obsessed with names.
GW: So where did your name come from?
FC: My parents are just hippies. They wanted to make up something cool. I don't know. My brother's name is Springer, so there's some strange names throughout, but I dig it. I like it a lot.
GW: Oh, yeah, me, too. Can we start with you telling me a bit about yourself?
FC: Yeah, definitely. So my name is Field Cate. I am the singer and guitar player of the rock band, Fencer. We have been doing this for six years, and we have just released our first album, which we are super excited about. We had a big sold out release show in L.A.
GW: That’s amazing! How would you describe your sound to someone who is unfamiliar with your music?
FC: I guess if I had to describe it, I would say it's pop-ish garage rock. We try to get as heavy as we can while still being competitive and catchy.
GW: Have you always been a musician?
FC: I was an actor for a decade growing up. That was pretty much my whole childhood. So doing that from such a young age, of course I evolved as a person. I have been singing my whole life, and I went through a few different bands, which is how I met our current drummer, Cameron. He and I kind of broke off and started our own thing. I quickly learned how to play the guitar, because we didn't have a guitar player, and we started writing songs, and ultimately his brother Scott, who's our bass player, we all kind of just figured it out. The three of us clicked and we've been doing it since then. Since early 2017.
GW: When you're actually recording making the music, can you describe the space that you're in? However, you want to take that, it could be the physical space or something else.
FC: Yeah. So I mean, we've worked with many producers, but this is the first album we completely self produced, and we're really proud of that, because we've put out EPs and stuff before, but this was our first full-length introduction to putting our discography out into the world. And yeah, we have our own little studio we call Fencer Headquarters. It’s this little studio we've built up, and it's all saturated in blue lighting.
GW: Why blue?
FC: Our whole thing is blue. I'm not sure if you know, but everything we do is blue. I have this thing called synesthesia.
FC: So the three of us have been meeting every day for the last couple of years, and we would just get in the studio and work on tracking. Cameron, our drummer, engineered the whole thing, so he would be setting up all the mics, but we all co-produced it together. Everyone had input on everything. Of course I'm the singer, so I have a lot of input, and I'm the only guitar player, but it was basically like whatever anyone thought of, or however they thought of something that was being played, or a take of something, we just all brought our opinions in and everyone had ideas to add things. It was our own little thing, and it was just the three of us in there the whole time. We have a great guy named Henry, who mixed the whole album, but as far as the recording process goes, it was just the three of us. No one else is there, and I think that's really cool.
GW: Okay. So there's a lot that is very fascinating. You see color when you hear music?
FC: Yeah. So there's this thing called synesthesia. I didn't even know it was a thing, but I guess it's this brain association with color, words and letters. I've had that ever since I was in kindergarten. I would just associate different letters with colors and stuff. So when Cam and I were starting Fencer, we wanted it to have some kind of aesthetic or color scheme.
GW: And you decided on blue.
FC: Yeah! I was like, let's just do blue, because the first batch of songs we have, they are all blue. Since then it's gotten completely over the top, like we only write songs that I feel are blue now, otherwise we'll shelf them.
GW: Who writes the lyrics?
FC: I write all the lyrics, but we're all involved in songwriting. It'll usually be like, Cameron and I will bring in some kind of riff or idea, and we build off of that. But I write all the lyrics, and everyone contributes to the music. However, they want to do it.
GW: Does it start with the lyrics?
FC: Never. Lyrics are often the very, very last thing. I remember we would be recording and be like, “Oh, hey! Vocals are up for the song,” and I'm like, “I haven't written any lyrics. I don't have a single word.” Often, there will be a song title far before there are lyrics, and sometimes song titles inspire music for us. But yeah, usually the lyrics are based around whatever kind of vibe the music is giving me. I don't know. I just like to write lyrics as late as humanly possible.
GW: What are you most excited about right now?
FC: The big thing is the album. Go listen to it. It's out.
Fencer Tracklist
Come On, Keep Screaming
Couch
Buena
Sleepcount
Fishfriend
Sanitarium
Velvet Jetski
Joseph Courtney
You're The Prey
Bad Bet
Meltt is a Vancouver-based band that creates a multi-faceted sonic experience by combining shoegaze guitars, otherworldly keys, and evocative vocals to produce an ethereal and entrancing sound. The band members - Chris Smith, Jamie Turner, James Porter, and Ian Winkler - draw inspiration from both music and visual art, particularly Japanese cinema, to create a cinematic sound. Their 2023 EP, Another Quiet Sunday, represents a departure from their earlier work as it features a more experimental and evolved sound. The EP's tracks were written separately and then developed during a month-long stay in a remote cabin where the band members experimented and created new sounds.
The track "Blossoms” is a tribute to communing with nature. Then, there’s the title track “Another Quiet Sunday.” James initially composed the music for the title track “Another Quiet Sunday” by syncing it to clips from his favorite Kurosawa flicks.
Guitar encircles steady percussion as vocals echo unbridled emotion in the distance. The energy overflows as a distorted riff takes hold in one final catharsis of resounding guitars. “I lost my dad to cancer six years ago,” James says. “The song is like trying to connect with someone in another world or place, but you both have to keep moving forward. You’re pushing through this big barrier and reuniting with someone. There’s a brief moment where you two meet in the middle. It happens musically with the big solo sections between each bridge. Sundays were always a nice time for my family at home. On one hand, Another Quiet Sunday means it’s a typical Sunday where my family is together. On the other hand, my dad is not there, and everything is so quiet.”
The band aims to uplift listeners with their music, to provide a positive message, and encourage people to enjoy themselves and connect with each other.
Grateful Web recently had the opportunity to sit down and chat with the guys from Meltt about the release of their latest EP and more. Read on below for a sneak peek.
GW: Hey, where are you guys? Is that your recording studio?
Meltt: It's the rehearsal and partial recording studio. It is organized chaos.
GW: Yeah. All right. So tell me a little bit about your project, and what you guys have going on?
Meltt: We're a psychedelic rock band. We've been doing it for roughly seven years. We already have an EP, an album, and now a new EP, which will be followed by an album— most likely in September. That's the big picture. Alongside that, we'll be going on tour. We will do a West Coast tour, then head over to Texas for South by Southwest, and then up through Salt Lake City. We're playing a show in Salt Lake City, and then we are playing at Treefort Music Fest in Boise. So, it will be a nice little trip for us.
GW: Have you toured before or is this your first time?
Meltt: It's going to be our second time doing this kind of similar route. Last March was our first ever tour, and our first time playing outside of our hometown area, so it's been awesome to get on the road.
GW: That is very exciting. So how did you guys get together? How'd you all meet?
Meltt: There's a variety of strings there. I've known Jamie for a long time. We went to kindergarten together, then we were in a band in high school, which is when James joined. It got more serious once we were out of high school and into university. James moved back to Vancouver after he'd left for a year, and then things really started going from there, which I guess was 2014. Ian also knew me and Chris from elementary school, since grade four or five. We all go way back and have been playing in bands together and separately for a long time. And then our mixing engineer and co-producer, Kieran, also went to our high school. He's just a bit older than us.
GW: Is your school or community very supportive of music and fine arts? Did you have good teachers?
Meltt: I would say our community is pretty small and not very arts focused. I'd say it's more due to the friendships we made. Our mutual love for certain styles of music. In elementary school, we had a pretty passionate music teacher who got us all involved. I remember the first thing that got me involved and playing in a band and taking drum lessons seriously was in grade five. It was a talent show they were putting on for our elementary school. At this talent show, they needed a drummer, and they knew that I messed around on drums, and my dad was a drummer, so they asked me, and then I started to take proper lessons. It was a year later that Chris came back, and because of that show, we started to play more school dances and stuff. That's really what started the band. So I guess the band was born from a talent show at an elementary school. It kind of just snowballed from there.
Meltt: It is definitely our own interest, ambition, and love for doing it that made it happen. I wouldn't say playing music was normal by any means. There's not a lot of groups around here. I actually do remember, because I'm a little bit younger than these guys, but I remember back in elementary school, I think maybe grade six, and they were in grade seven, there was some kind of talent show. These guys were like a cover band. I distinctly remember them getting on stage and doing things like “Brown Sugar” by The Rolling Stones. I was like, holy shit, I want to do that. I feel like it's almost a prerequisite to be a part of a community that's not super accepting of art and music, right? You have to go your own way and forge your own path.
GW: Whenever you guys recorded this album, was it improv and experimental, like right there in the space that you're in?
Meltt: I would say, for the majority of the music, myself, James, or Chris will come up with ideas independently, and sometimes that does come from improvising with the guitar and jamming out, and refining some details, or getting in the room for an extended period of time with all of us, and then we'll kind of bring that in, and work it all together. This one was recorded during COVID, so we had a lot more individual time. It was maybe somewhat of an even mix between the guys bringing in an idea they had on their own, and less fleshing it out, as compared to us just being in the room making stuff organically by just playing together. This one was a lot more demo based at the beginning, because everyone was individually isolating during COVID, and a lot of those ideas came from that time. Then, we went to a cabin, the four of us alone and isolated, and we just worked through them, arranged them, put them together, and composed them. But I mean, every time we bring it together, we flesh it out in the room anyway, and we play through it, and if we need a chorus or bridge, we'll just put a lot of work into it. We are pretty hard on refining parts. We're perfectionists in a way. We also added a lot more layers this time, so it was a longer recording process; figuring out how to play live is a process as well, because we had a lot of time to play with the music and add stuff. This one is much more complex than the last one. It is pretty densely layered. We took a deep dive into synths and stuff this time around as well, so we didn't consider how to play it live at all, which is good. It's been fun reworking it for live, but yeah, it's very much a studio built album.
Recorded at The Bunker Studio in Brooklyn, NY, "Lights Out" is the latest single from an all-star cast of musicians. The song showcases the talents of Ari Joshua on guitar (Big High, AriSawkaDoria), Eden Ladin on keys (Gilad Hekselman, Avishai Cohen), John Kimock on drums (Mike Gordon Band, Otiel Burbridge & Friends), and Andy Hess on bass (Gov’t Mule, Black Crowes). This is the 9th independent release of 2023 and the 11th overall release, including “Soulmine” and “Fresh” from Color Red Music.
With Andy Hess and John Morgan Kimock creating a powerful and propulsive rhythm section, Eden Ladin's keyboards adding an atmospheric element to the song, and Ari’s guitar playing sitting somewhere between Jerry Garcia, Kenny Burrell, Trey Anastasio, and Slash— the chemistry among the musicians is palpable, resulting in a smooth and laidback track.
The session, a series of 1st takes, has many fruits still to share. Stay tuned for more to come.
Rachael Sage Releases New Single "Whistle Blow" From Upcoming Album The Other Side.
Billboard-charting singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Rachael Sage has released her latest single "Whistle Blow" ahead of her forthcoming album The Other Side, set to release in July 2023 from MPress Records. Grateful Web is thrilled to premiere the release of this dynamic track.
"Whistle Blow" has a distinctly Americana sound with a palette of slide and acoustic guitars. The song is a composite account of women's struggles to be respected in the workplace, at home, and in history books. The song's message resonates with anyone summoning the strength to stand up for themselves and against oppression in any form.
Rachael Sage is a six-time Independent Music Award-winning musician and producer. She is also a John Lennon Contest Grand Prize winner and has released over 20 diverse albums and EPs. Rachael has toured with an eclectic list of artists, including Ani DiFranco, Beth Hart, Howard Jones, and Grammy® winners Shawn Colvin and Judy Collins.
"Whistle Blow" is the first single from The Other Side, and it promises to be a powerful and emotional journey. Rachael's music is known for its inspiring messages and eclectic sound, and "Whistle Blow" is no exception.
Acclaimed field-recording producer, Ian Brennan, has recently released his latest project, The Oldest Voice in the World (Azerbaijan) “Thank you for bringing me back to the sky,” which features the wisdom and voices of those over 100 years old. This album is a tribute to the oldest living people on earth, as Brennan and his wife Marilena Umuhoza Delli traveled to remote villages located just miles from the Iran border to capture their stories.
Ian Brennan is a GRAMMY Award-winning music producer (Zomba Prison Project, Tinariwen) and author of six books. Since 1993 he has taught violence prevention for such prestigious organizations as the University of London, UC Berkeley, and the National Accademia of Science (Rome). His latest and seventh book is Muse-$ick: a music manifesto in fifty-nine notes [PM Press, 2021]. He has worked with artists as diverse as Fugazi, country legend Merle Haggard, Sleater-Kinney, and filmmaker John Waters. In the past decade, Brennan has produced 38 records by international artists from three continents (Africa, Europe, Asia), which have resulted in the first widely-released original music albums from many nations, among them Rwanda, Malawi, Romania, Comoros, South Sudan, and Vietnam. His work has been featured on the front-page of The New York Times, PBS television, and in an Emmy Award-winning segment of 60 Minutes with reporter Anderson Cooper.
The Oldest Voice in the World (Azerbaijan) “Thank you for bringing me back to the sky” is a unique project that features 22 tracks, along with five bonus tracks that include the Kronos Quartet, Tinariwen, Malawi Mouse Boys, Yuka Honda, and The Good Ones (Rwanda). This album is a true representation of Brennan's talent, as he has collaborated with various artists from all around the world.
During his trip to Azerbaijan, Brennan and Delli visited various rural villages to capture the stories of the oldest living people on earth. They found that most of the centenarians were living without indoor plumbing and sleeping on floor-bound mattresses. Despite their living conditions, the villagers welcomed Brennan and Delli with open arms and warm receptions.
The centenarians' stories are incredibly touching, and the album features their voices recorded in their natural living environments. For instrumentation, Brennan used the wood-burning furnace providing heat for the house, a walker, their own footsteps, a broken bedroom door, or the farm flour grinder. The texture of their singing is raw and authentic, and it is evident that these voices feature distortion boxes built by time.
Brennan and Delli experienced raw emotion from the centenarians, with many singing songs about their mothers. Their secret to life is simple: "I was loved." Brennan was blown away by their singing, and he removed his headphones more than once, thinking that there was some malfunction in the machinery. However, he soon realized that he was hearing the singer's pure tone.
The Oldest Voice in the World (Azerbaijan) “Thank you for bringing me back to the sky” is a must-listen for anyone who appreciates authentic and raw music.
The Oldest Voice in the World (Azerbaijan) “Thank you for bringing me back to the sky” Six Degrees Records (April 7, 2023)
Track Listing:
1. My Life Is Good, It Is Like a Flower
2. Mother, Why Did You Leave Me So Soon?
3. Son, Don’t Go There, the Road Is Dangerous
4. My Mother Lived to Be 110
5. Bulbul (Nightingale)
6. Mother, When Will You Come for Me?
7. The Young Men are Sent to Die in the Rich Man’s Wars
8. After My Grandson’s Death, I Can No Longer Play the Flute
9. You Are a Flower Yet To Grow
10. Shepherd Song
11. Memory
12. Desolation
13. The Secret to Life: I Worked Hard & Ate Butter
14. Lullaby
15. The Secret to Life: I Was Loved
16. Pepe, Pepe (Donkey Song)
17. Screaming from the Mountaintop for My Son to Return
18. Since My Son Has Died the Loss Has Been Too Much to Bear
19. There Was Very Little to Eat During the War
20. The Secret to Life: Eat Lots of Butter
21. My Life Is as Long as a Tree, Like a Stone in the River
22. Memories of My Mother
Bonus 1: Talysh Mountain Border, The Oldest Voice with Kronos Quartet
Bonus 2: Prayers Overheard, The Oldest Voice with Yuka Honda
Bonus 3: Ghosts, The Oldest Voice with Tinariwen
Bonus 4: A Lifetime Still, The Oldest Voice with The Good Ones (Rwanda)
Bonus 5: Not Goodbye, The Oldest Voice with Malawi Mouse Boys
Produced, engineered & mixed by Ian Brennan
All photos, video & executive producer: Marilena Umuhoza Delli
Get ready for the release of Bobby Syvarth's latest single "I Like (PineBox Studio Version)," featuring the talented Elliott Peck on vocals. Produced and engineered by Damian Calcagne at The PineBox in Boonton, NJ, this new release promises to be a hit. Damian has been making waves in the music industry, with 5 Grammy considerations for his Hammond B3 playing and engineering work in 2022.
The PineBox has hosted several top-notch artists, including Phil Lesh, Andy Falco, and Nadine LaFond, to name a few. This time, Syvarth has brought together an incredible team, including the exceptional vocalist, Elliott Peck, who has collaborated with big names like Phil Lesh, Bob Weir, and Bonnie Raitt. On bass, we have Johnny Grubb, who spent seven years with Railroad Earth, and on drums, Billy Mutchler, a member of The Samples since 2003.
"I Like" is a fan favorite that Syvarth first recorded in 1997 on his Alive at Sarah Street album. The song has evolved and taken on a swampy, Little Feat-inspired sound, which the band has been performing live for years. Unfortunately, due to COVID-19, the band had to change plans and release a single instead of a full album.
Nevertheless, the song is sure to be a hit and will be streaming on all platforms starting April 28, 2023. Don't miss this Grateful Web exclusive interview with Bobby Syvarth and get a sneak peek into the making of "I Like (PineBox Studio Version)."
GW: Did you play a show last night?
BS: I went to see a friend play last night, an old college buddy.
GW: So, where are you located?
BS: I'm at the Jersey Shore right now, in Belmar. It is two towns south of Asbury Park, which is the more well known music spot, but Jersey Shore is great.
GW: One thing I've noticed is that there are a lot of great musicians who come out of Jersey.
BS: I know. I mean, it's kind of a little local Jersey pride thing. I feel like being in New Jersey is pretty good for that.
GW: Is that where you're from?
BS: Yeah.
GW: Nice. Well, I'm in Nebraska. We are not known for being a huge music state, but luckily there is a little music hub, which is not far for me. So, anyway. I appreciate your time.
BS: I appreciate your time. Hustling music and trying to self-promote— everything really helps.
GW: Oh, absolutely. So, I was listening to your song, “I like it” and I really like it (laughs). It's really good. You wrote the music and lyrics, right?
BS: Yes.
GW: Tell me about working with Elliott Peck.
BS: So, I've had the song for quite some time. I recorded the first version on a live CD in the late 90s, always with the intention of getting it into the studio. Often, when I was doing other studio projects, like this one, this tune just never got back to the priority list, but it's always been a real highlight to play live. It is one of our favorites to play. The keyboard player who I work with, named Damian Calcagne, built a beautiful studio in his home, and after a gig one time he said, “We should play this. We should get into the studio and record this tune”. He had a relationship, musically, with Elliot, and he was the one producing the song, so it was his idea to bring Elliot in and basically turn it into a duet. She sings pretty much throughout the whole tune. So, it was a producer producing, you know? It was his idea, and his connection, and for me that's what a good producer does. They think of things you may not think of as a songwriter.
GW: I'm always very interested in the physical space and vibe of where the recording and production takes place. Can you tell me about that?
BS: Yeah, sure. So it's a detached garage, which is kind of a square building, and the wood inside is all pine, so it smells like pine. He also lives on Pine Tree Lane, so he calls the studio “Pine Box”. He has a little loft inside, but there's no glass, like you often see in studios. The space is just open. He has a little desk in the back corner, and then the drum set. He's a keyboard player, so he has an upright piano, a Hammond B3 organ, a couple of Leslie speakers, and then a bunch of instruments around. It's in a rural part of New Jersey, so it's got a real rustic feel. He really has created a beautiful space for making music.
GW: When did you record this song?
BS: We recorded this one right before COVID hit. The session was in maybe January? Our intention was to do a four or five song EP, but the lockdown squashed those plans, and then this tune was just sitting around, and we were trying to get our schedules to align so we could get back to it. Finally, I was like, “let's just put this out as a single. There is no reason to keep waiting”.
GW: It seems like a lot of people are doing that these days. Releasing singles, as opposed to full albums.
BS: Yeah. It's kind of easy to do now. I'm releasing this tune streaming, so I'm not manufacturing any physical copies. I've been putting out music since the mid-90s, and one great change is the streaming thing. You can get music out for much less of a cost, and for distribution, you press a button, and there it is worldwide.
GW: I am sure there are drawbacks to that. I can see how it might feel like you're yelling into the void at times. Like there's so much music coming out that your music could get lost, or overlooked. On the flip side, if you've got something quality, and you've already got this fan base built, then I can see how that'd be a really good thing.
BS: Yeah. There's good and bad to it, like everything else.
GW: Exactly. So you work with some heavy hitters, like John Skehan of Railroad Earth, for example. How did you connect with him?
BS: He didn't do this single, but he's on the original live recording. The live album I did where that song first appeared had a six- or seven-piece band. We had special guests coming in, but in Northwest New Jersey, where I grew up, and where the music scene was pretty vibrant in the mid-90s, my band had John Skehan, Tim Carbone, and Carey Harmon, who would then go on to form half of Railroad Earth. So, it's not like I got on the phone and called up railroad Earth guys. Luckily for me, they all lived in my neighborhood before railroad Earth ever formed, so these are just local guys who everybody respected and enjoyed working with. That's my relationship with those guys; It predates railroad Earth. I mean, I have pictures of me and John, strumming at a backyard barbecue, wearing cargo shorts and eating hotdogs. We even played together at a Battle of the Bands. John and I go way back. He recorded on my first studio album, and then the live thing that I keep referencing, and I still do some stuff with those guys here and there. Now their schedules are pretty heavily booked, so it's not as easy to get hold of them these days.
GW: What's your connection to the Grateful Dead? Of course, it all circles back around to them somehow.
BS: Yeah, I mean it's mind blowing again, because even with John, I remember working out tunes in his basement when we were in our early 20s, and just hanging out. He was more into the Dead than me, so he turned me on to a lot of stuff, you know, listening to cassettes in his little basement studio. To see him go on in Railroad Earth, and to see him on YouTube playing with Bob and Phil— Wow. Build it and they will come. To see him playing with dudes who I know are his heroes is amazing, and even for me, to collaborate with people who have collaborated with some of the biggest, most influential artists of all time feels like— yeah, you're a part of that energy. When I was a kid, if you would have said to me, “Your pal that you're playing at the local bar with is going to be playing with Bob Weir 10 years from now,” I would have said, “You are crazy. There is no way that could ever possibly happen.”
GW: I know what you mean actually. I don't know exactly how I ended up in the same sphere, but it’s almost like a spiritual community somehow. While also being very American. The Grateful Dead is about as close to “American” music as you can get.
BS: I'm getting goosebumps right now. It really is. It's beautiful. They make such beautiful music. And then completely separate from John, Tim, and the Railroad Earth thing, Elliott has been part of Phil's band as a vocalist. Her band, Midnight North, has some connections to the Grateful Dead too. I can't say I'm a true deadhead, but I have these musicians in my orbit who are truly connected to it. When you're recording, and you are able to get somebody on your project who has some good credentials, or who has played with so and so, it helps build interest. The musicianship is always first and foremost, but it's great to be able to say, “I'm working with somebody who's accomplished great things”.
GW: Can you tell me about Billy Mutchler, the drummer?
BS: So this studio version has a different groove than the live version, and that, we can attribute to Billy. He's a great drummer, and he brought it down, made it a little slower, and a little greasier— almost like a Little Feat vibe. Compared to the first live version, which was a little more bluegrass and alternative country. We call this version “The Groove”. Even now, when we play live, we sometimes do it the original way, or we do it the “Billy way”. Billy is in a Jersey based Grateful Dead tribute band, called This Old Engine, and he tours with The Samples, so he has a couple of good gigs that he's juggling.
GW: Well, I'm excited to compare the two versions. Where can we find the live version?
BS: It's on Spotify. My favorite is on an album called Alive at Sarah Street. It's got Carbone and Skehan shredding at the end. I mean, a real hoedown happens, so if you’re into Railroad Earth, you'll definitely like that version. They tear it up.
Melbourne-based indie folk singer, songwriter and producer Hayden Calnin has released his new EP, A Turning of the Tide: Side A, a collection of emotionally resonant and sonically rich tracks created in isolation in Rye Ocean Beach following a breakup. The EP is available for purchase and streaming on Nettwerk.
In the new album, Calnin strikes a balance between acoustic folk eloquence and otherworldly production. Over the years, the Australian singer, songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist has released projects at a prolific pace, including his two-LP series Cut Love, Pt. 1 and Cut Love, Pt. 2, the 2019 fan-favorite EP A Life You Would Choose, and the 2021 full-length What It Means To Be Human. The latter received a 9.4/10 from Atwood and was named on American Songwriter’s “The 41 Best Albums of 2021”.
The album's lead single, "When The Storm Sets In," is a moody piano ballad that captures the feeling of being overwhelmed by life's storms. Calnin says that the song is about "watching a storm rolling over you, both literally and metaphorically."
Meanwhile, “A Turning of the Tide” pairs his deep intonation with soft instrumentation. Horns pipe up in between glitchy flourishes as he experiences an epiphany, “It’s just a turning of the tide.”
“I connected to it the most sonically and lyrically,” he reveals. “It’s very much about the moment of realization when you’re like, Okay, shit’s changing. I have to deal with it and get it together. ‘A Turning of the Tide’ put me back on track and sorted me out. In a way, it’s my therapy song.”
Ultimately, Hayden comes out on the other side of isolation with an ability to connect more than ever before.
Calnin has shared the stage with the likes of Matt Corby, Tom Odell, and The Antlers. In addition, his music has been featured on a slew of TV series and movie soundtracks, and he has co-written “Falling Up” for Dean Lewis and has produced records for Didirri, Harrison Storm, Riley Pearce, and more. Calnin's music has been featured in various television series and movie soundtracks, including the UK trailer for the Academy Award-nominated film Room.
The album's artwork is also noteworthy, as it was created from embroidery. Calnin says that he wanted the artwork to represent the natural paradise where the album was created and to connect the worlds of music, art, and dance.
In an exclusive interview with Grateful Web, Calnin discusses the making of A Turning Of The Tide: SIDE A and his creative process. He shares how he used his time in isolation to create this album, and how it served as a therapy session.
"I really isolated myself for this one. It was very much a 'non-collaborative' collection. It was made in my brain," Calnin says. "I feel good coming out of it. I think I’ve grown up a little bit, dealt with some things I needed to deal with, and said some things I needed to say."
“When you hear this, I’d love for you to smile,” he leaves off. “My music seemed so moody before. There are moments on this record where I hope you’re strutting down the street—and maybe having a little cry too. I’m probably the happiest I’ve ever been right now. I’m comfortable with where I’m at and where I’m heading for the first time in years. I hope the music shows.”
Hayden Calnin's A Turning Of The Tide: SIDE A is available now on Nettwerk Music Group. Check out Grateful Web's exclusive interview with Hayden Calnin to learn more about the making of A Turning Of The Tide: SIDE A.
GW: Want to tell me about your latest album?
HC: Yes. So it's a collection of songs that I've split into two sides, for various reasons. The body of work was made during a time when all the songs fit together really well, but at the same time, they felt like two different spaces of emotions. So, my team and I decided to split it into two sides in order to give it two very different feels, but as a whole, it works as an album when you listen back to front.
GW: Where was it recorded?
HC: I got this house down on the southern coastline of Australia, and locked myself away for a good 10 months, and just made a bunch of music in order to see what would come out of it. These songs are essentially the result of being in that environment, and seeing where my brain took me.
GW: This is not your first full length album, correct?
HC: No, it's technically my fourth. But the first two were more like a double album, and it was when I was first starting, so it felt premature, I guess. I was still developing as an artist, and still am developing as an artist, of course, but it felt very young and naive. I put out another record in 2021, which is called What it Means to be Human, and that felt like the first body of work. That one felt complete, and I was really happy with it. This next record, Turning of the Tide is the next one that feels like a big body of work, and feels like it should be listened to.
GW: As a writer, I always say “I revise until I die”. Is it hard for you to feel like a body of work is complete?
HC: Absolutely. Every time I think a song is finished, I’ll leave it for a week, because I need to give it time to just sit and forget about it for a little bit, and then I’ll go back and listen to it again and end up changing it completely. Every song goes through a lot of changes. When I think it's done, it's never done.
GW: Did you self produce this album then?
HC: Yes. I had a good friend of mine who helped me with some elements of it, but it was produced in my home. I set up a space in this house, which I turned into a creative space. I just set everything up in there, and didn't use that section of the house for anything other than music, and it felt really good to be outside of the recording studio space for this one. It made it feel like it was in my element, and where I was most comfortable. There’s nothing better than the only distraction being your environment. It pushes me creatively, to not be distracted by people in society, and all the bullshit.
GW: So you were pretty isolated, huh?
HC: Yeah. Before this, I was living down in a different spot, which is in the same area. It was a shared house. I lived there with some really close friends throughout most of COVID, but once the restrictions and everything passed, I decided to live alone for a while. I got this house and dedicated 10 months of that time to being by myself, and really dealing with my headspace, and dealing with my shit, and it was very therapeutic. It was a transformative experience to do that, to test my loneliness.
GW: I can relate to that. I love my solitude now, which is something I was unable to appreciate when I was in my 20s.
HC: I feel that completely. I'm 33, but all of my 20s were very much just about being social and having fun. You know, studying music, and traveling. Life has calmed down now, and I feel like I've got a healthy balance. But yeah, the living alone thing is something I'd never done before, so it felt like the right time to do it. I felt mature enough to deal with myself in my own company.
GW: Yeah. I think that that's what we're doing when we fill all our time with people and activity is trying hard not to face ourselves, right? So on that note, I'm sure that it was probably a difficult situation that led to your decision to isolate for a while. Do you want to talk about that at all? What inspired you to write this album?
HC: Yeah, I am happy to. This is an album I never really wanted to write, and I didn't expect to write. I had just come out of a long term relationship, and I never wanted to write a breakup album. That was not my plan. It turned out to not be a breakup album necessarily, but more of a therapeutic way of dealing with the process of moving on with my life, and finding new direction and comfort with myself. Figuring out what I can bring outward to other people. So yeah, the process was very much about that. I was living about 200 meters away from the most amazing beach ever, a very special spot, so I'd do my day's work of writing and recording and getting things down, and then every day, I'd take myself down to the beach and listen back to the day's work and analyze it. I would make notes and then come back to the house, and keep the creative process going. I would finesse all the little bits that I knew needed changing. I wanted it to sound like the environment that I was living in, so it was very important for me to stay in that pocket of Earth and really give it time to let the songs sit. If they needed changing, or my ideas and mood changed, then I would change them. It was the most natural process of making an album I've done yet, so I'm really happy with how it all came together.
GW: Are you going to tour with this at all, or have you already been touring?
HC: No, I haven't. I haven't done any touring since the pandemic, which is weird, because, pre-pandemic, a lot of my life was touring and playing gigs. That took up a big chunk of each year. So, it's been nice to step back from that world, but I'm just starting to organize and get back into touring. I've got some shows coming up with Ocie Eliot, which are a beautiful duo who are coming to Australia. So, we're going to do a little run around here. And then hopefully later this year, I'll head back to Europe, which is usually a frequent on the tour schedule. I definitely want to make all those fans happy. Ideally, I want to get over to the States and Canada and give that a crack, because that's an area that I've been wanting to explore for a long time.
GW: What would you like people to know, or what would you like to express to people about this album?
HC: This is all about the music. I don't ever want anyone to take things literally, word for word. Let the music guide your emotions, and see where it takes you, and let the lyrics speak to you, rather than me. Interpret them in your own way. I try to make them as open and thought provoking as I can. The only difference with this record is that lyrically, it is very obvious to me what all these songs are about. It's not trying to be too poetic. It's not trying to be full of metaphors and analogies for all these other bigger thoughts. It's very down the line. This is how I'm feeling, and this is how I'm dealing with this stuff, and if you can relate to that, go for it. Let it guide you in some thoughts. Go in with a cup of tea, a cozy spot, and enjoy it. It's not made for a rave cave, so it's a quiet time (laughs).
Tommy Weeks, a saxophonist and music producer from Connecticut, just released his first solo EP titled Strangers, today April 25th. The EP is a fusion of pop, R&B, house, and hip hop music, and features many musicians and close friends hailing from the Connecticut music scene. The EP includes three singles previously released, "Strangers," "Fire In Your Eyes," and "Mission." The EP was written by Tommy Weeks himself and co-produced with Grammy award-winning engineer Mikhail Pivovarov. Other musicians who contributed to the EP include Gabrielle Lakshmi, Billy Ruegger, Paulie Philippone, Jon Singngam, Colin Walters, Chris Chhoeun, Aaron Eaddy, and Mike Marsters.
Tommy Weeks is not new to the music scene. He is a saxophonist in Funky Dawgz Brass Band and Sophistafunk. Weeks graduated from the University of Connecticut, where he helped form his band, the Funky Dawgz. He has performed on stages worldwide, including New York, Los Angeles, New Orleans, and Europe. He has also performed at music festivals such as Sound on Sound, Electric Forest, Okeechobee, Camp Bisco, and the Peach Music Festival, among others.
Weeks has shared the stage with bands such as Dispatch, Goose, Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue, Galactic, Sammy Rae & The Friends, Lawrence, Vulfpeck, Pigeons Playing Ping Pong, Snarky Puppy, The Soul Rebels, Lettuce, Preservation Hall Jazz Band, Maddy O’Neal, Sunsquabi, Manic Focus, and Ryan Montbleau. He has also made multiple national television appearances, including ESPN First Take, and was a house band member for ESPN Tournament Challenge.
In addition to his music career, Weeks teaches young aspiring musicians at an after-school music program in CT called "Project Music." He is endorsed by Theo Wanne Mouthpieces, D’Addario Woodwinds, and TUYA Shirts.
The Strangers EP features unique and captivating album art. The art for the first single "Strangers," was created by Tommy's cousin, Doug Newton, of King Penguin Media. The blue and gold EP cover was illustrated by Tommy's friend Clare Jennings, and edited by his other cousin Lexi Belardinelli of Two Twenty Three Studios. The video loops are by Doug Newton of King Penguin Media, while the "Strangers” Studio Recap Video is by Devon Farquharson of Media Guys Productions.
Tommy Weeks is excited to release his first solo project and share his passion for music with the world. Fans of his previous work can expect a fusion of styles and a unique blend of musical influences in the Strangers EP.
If you're looking for a singer-songwriter with the ability to take you on a journey through the full range of human emotions, look no further than Rachael Sage. A multi-instrumentalist and founder of her own record label, MPress Records, Sage has been crafting vibrant and dynamic music for over two decades.
Goldmine Magazine has described her music as "mesmerizing," "thoughtful, pensive, and flush with an emotional flourish, all carefully and adeptly executed”.
Billboard has described Sage's "keen, ironic sense of humor and quirky sense of the profound" as what makes her special as a songwriter.
BlackBook has called her "one of music's most inimitable iconoclasts”.
Sage has toured with an eclectic list of artists, including Ani DiFranco, Beth Hart, Howard Jones, and Grammy® winners Shawn Colvin and Judy Collins. In addition, she has recorded a critically-acclaimed duet of Neil Young's "Helpless" with Collins.
Sage is a six-time Independent Music Award-winning musician and producer, as well as a John Lennon Contest Grand Prize winner. She has performed at the Edinburgh Fringe, SXSW, and toured globally with her band, The Sequins, from Japan to Berlin. Sage is also a visual artist and former ballet dancer who performed with the New York City Ballet. She has raised money for a wide range of causes, including WHY Hunger, American Refugee Committee, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Hospital, and National Network For Youth (NN4Y).
In 2020, Sage released her album Character, which yielded the Billboard-charting single "Blue Sky Days." Character is a stunning tribute to the resilience of the human spirit. Written during her recovery from endometrial cancer, the album is a song cycle that explores the concepts of gratitude, compassion, authenticity, and optimism. Sage says, "I hope these songs honor just how resilient the human spirit can be, and remind us that sometimes 'it's ok to not be ok'”.
She followed this up with her pandemic lockdown passion project, Poetica, an adventurous fusion of poetry with jazz, classical, and Americana musical elements in the vein of Leonard Cohen and Laurie Anderson. “I was all by myself, totally isolated for many months, so I taught myself to engineer, and I just tried to create this sort of a throwback to the West Coast beatnik poetry style of having jazz accompaniment with poetry. I freed my mind. It is a pure kind of expression, and very different from my pop music,” Sage explains. Poetica debuted in October 2021.
Rachael Sage's highly anticipated upcoming album, The Other Side, is set to release in July 2023, and the first single "Whistle Blow" has already captured the attention of many. Co-produced by Sage with Grammy® winner Andy Zulla and longtime engineer Mikhail Pivovorov, the song features a distinctly Americana sound, with slide and acoustic guitars creating a captivating musical landscape. The accompanying one-shot music video, directed by Jenny He, premiered in Holler, while the song premiered in Americana Highways. "Whistle Blow" addresses power dynamics and boundaries, and Sage uses her platform to spread messages of empowerment, especially for women. The song is a composite account of women's struggles for respect in different areas of life and history, and its propulsive, musically lush sound will resonate with anyone fighting against oppression. According to Sage, the song embodies the courage and focus needed to speak the truth, stand up for oneself, and worry less about people's opinions.
Candice Dollar from Grateful Web had the privilege of sitting down with Rachael Sage to talk about her music, her journey, and the power of healing through art.
GW: Rachael, it's an honor to speak with you today. It looks like you’re in a hotel room. Where are you located?
RS: I'm in Pittsburgh. We just played here last night, and then we're headed to Lancaster. How about you? Where are you?
GW: I'm in Nebraska.
RS: Nebraska is one of the handful of states that I've never been to. Next time, we'll have to recruit you as our guide.
GW: Yes, you have to come here! That would be lovely. You're on tour right now, is that right?
RS: I am. Yes. I just put out my very first single from the album this past Friday, and it's called “Whistle Blow,” so this tour is kind of a pre-release tour, if you will.
GW: Awesome. How is that going?
RS: Since lockdown, musicians like myself, are just so eager to be back out on the road and connecting with our audiences. I probably would have been touring anyway, but it's exciting that I have a new single, and actually, we're playing a lot of the material from the new album. We’re doing things a little differently this time, and putting out several singles before the album drops. There'll be another single at the end of May, another one at the end of June, and then another in July, before we put out the whole meal. We've been enjoying getting back to it. We were on the road, up until a few days ago, with a wonderful act named Annalyse & Ryan, who are also from Beacon, New York, which is where I live now, so it's been fun to be a family of sorts on the road.
GW: Speaking of material from the new album, you recently released “Whistleblow,” Can you tell me a bit about your inspiration for that song?
RS: Oh, yeah. Well, the suggestion was that I hope that anyone who is experiencing any kind of questionable power dynamic in the workplace, or at large, will relate to the song, but specifically, I wrote “Whistleblow” as a composite depiction of a handful of public figures, several of whom I looked to as heroes of a kind, and then having it come to light that they had been less than ideal in terms of how they treated women in the workplace, and on their staffs. A few of these folks have had a very unceremonious fall from grace, in a very public way, and it hasn't been just one person, you know? It has felt like one right after another for the last several years. When you think you can look to someone for leadership, and you kind of project your hopes and dreams upon them, and they are doing good work in one space, but then something comes out where they seem to be a bit of a sleaze, you're like, “Oh no, not them”. It has been that type of a roller coaster these last few years. It just becomes harder and harder to look to public leaders for inspiration, not only politically, but also in terms of their values and how they treat women, so that's really what it's about.
GW: This resonates with me on multiple levels. Without going into too much detail, I have recently experienced abuse and oppression in the workplace, and in my personal relationships, so I really value your message. I am approaching things differently this time, and I'm speaking up, or whistleblowing, if you will, and despite the fact that there has been some backlash, I'm immensely grateful for the amount of support I’ve received, specifically within the music community. As a writer, it feels good to experience firsthand just how powerful sharing stories can be.
RS: I am so proud of you and inspired by you. Wow, thank you for sharing all that with me. You can imagine that as a songwriter, there's nothing more meaningful than having someone share their story in that way. It reminds me how much we are all going through the same issues, and how music can highlight that, and hopefully cast a positive light.
GW: As far as my own personal situation goes, I don’t necessarily think the backlash has anything to do with people not believing these stories. I think it’s more along the lines of them not wanting to be forced to take action or stop supporting the artist. Unfortunately, people don’t understand how damaging it can be to continue supporting a known abuser, whether actively or passively through indifference.
RS: You know, that's part of what I was trying to highlight in the song. It is so hard to believe that people to whom we look to for leadership, and inspiration— whether it's personal, creative, political— that they're not only fallible, but they can be complete jerks, and also just not mindful in any other way outside of their public position. It is devastating, and it's really sad, and it's jarring, but what I wanted the song to convey was the flip side of that— the heroism of people who aren't afraid to confront that and to speak up, even if it means that they won't be well received for doing so. You're very brave, and I'm very proud of you.
GW: Thank you, I really appreciate that. It never ceases to amaze me how small the world really is, and how connected all of us are.
RS: Yeah, and that's a lot of the reason I do music, is to keep making the world smaller, and also to not have to always bear my own specific, personal private truths, but still, at the same time, share insights that I have, and apply them to all different types of scenarios. So that's really where that song was coming from. You know, I could talk about my own relationships on 20 more albums, but the fact of the matter is, the wider world, unfortunately, gives me plenty to dig into as well.
GW: How about Poetica? That feels a bit more personal somehow.
RS: That was the side project I did during lockdown, when we all needed something to dig into to keep us from going a little crazy (laughs). It had been brewing for a while. I've been writing poetry my whole life, and this project has been very different. A lot of people are like, “Oh, you mean just the lyrics for your songs?” I'm like, “No, no, no. Totally different. Different parts of the brain. Different levels of subconsciousness and connection to things that are happening to me, and a different pace at which I write it. It's usually very fast, with a handful of post completion tweaks, but it's not the same kind of wrestling match that song writing can be. I was writing a lot during lockdown. Oftentimes, I would use this self imposed motivational technique of opening a facebook post, and then writing a poem, and then forcing myself to hit post, and sharing it without over editing, and without overthinking it. It became a therapeutic act for me during those times, but I had many poems before that, which I'd always thought, wow, I should put these into a book, or I should put music with these in some way. And so, when I finally had the time, that's exactly what I did. I was able to collaborate with innumerable musicians all over the country, and some around the world, who had just as much time on their hands as I did. I was all by myself, totally isolated for many months, so I taught myself to engineer, and I just tried to create this sort of a throwback to the West Coast beatnik poetry style of having jazz accompaniment with poetry. I freed my mind. It is a pure kind of expression, and very different from my pop music.
GW: How has that been received? I know from personal experience that there aren’t many poetry fans out there.
RS: You know, what was interesting was that some of my music fans came along for that ride. They saw that a handful of the same characters [cellist and violinist] were involved in the project, and they were curious about it. I have had a really great response. When we've done those pieces live, sometimes even at a chatty venue, I just go for a spoken word piece, and there's just a slow drop. Everybody shuts up, and they're like, “What is this?” and suddenly it’s like they're listening to a narrator in a movie, and they're like, “What's going on?” And I've noticed that some folks who say they haven't even necessarily been into poetry before, are queuing in, and they're encouraged to write, so that has been really satisfying.
GW: Do you have experience teaching others to write?
RS: Absolutely. I have trouble teaching songwriting, because half the time I don't know exactly how I do it. It's a muscle that I've been using since I was five years old, and some of it is automatic. I have these mental tricks and habits, and the encouragement I give myself to have that receiver on at all times. To make sure I've got that notebook, or iPad, or voice notes, or whatever it is. In most of the lessons I try to impart the same that I would for playwriting, or poetry, or even visual art. It’s more about that 10,000 hours of doing it, and giving yourself permission to suck. You know? Everything you make isn’t going to be amazing, or maybe it all will be amazing to you, which is awesome, but it's not the point. You keep doing it, and it gets better and better, and it becomes easier to access that flow. If you write every day, it's going to be there for you when you really have something to say, or when something in the world just strikes you so deeply, that you can’t not express something about it.
GW: You are so inspiring. I imagine you would make a great teacher. On top of everything else, you also founded your own record label, MPress Records, which I think of as “Empress” Records, by the way. Can you tell me about that?
RS: That's the poet in me. I really like to pick words and titles that have multiple layers and meanings to them. Yes, I founded MPress Records many years ago now. I was in my late 20s, and it was just before I went on tour with Ani DeFranco, who was a huge inspiration to me, as someone who had forged their own independent path in the biz, and I naively thought, I can do this, no big deal, I'm pretty good at business. It was a big learning curve, and I've kept learning, and I continue to do so every day of this adventure, but I'm so gratified to be able to make my own mistakes and market myself the way I want to. That feels comfortable to me. As you can imagine, as a young, attractive person in this business, and this is something people are telling you, you don't even know this, you're like, “I'm just me,” and then you have all these older, sleazy men in the music business telling you how attractive you are, and how it's so great that you can also do this, that and the other, and you're just scratching your head like okay, when's the marketing plan coming in for the music? When do I hear about how much you love that chorus, and not how much you love my outfit? It’s not that I don't think my outfit is cute (laughs), but there needs to be balance. In my younger years, I went through a lot of questioning the motivation of a lot of folks who were in the wings eager to help, but not necessarily attuned to what my message was, as a very feminist young singer-songwriter, and wanting to entertain, as I always do, and always will. I embrace my quirkiness, as it were, that little bit of an outsider quality to my personality, but I also embrace being an unabashedly strong female. It just seemed like a logical thing to eventually start my own label and put out my own work, and I've had the beautiful privilege to put out other artists' music as well, so that's been a great way to create community too.
GW: So relatable. Someone once said to me in reference to my music journalism, “are you sure these artists aren’t just trying to sleep with you?” which is so insulting to my intelligence.
RS: You and I, all the ladies, we have to kind of develop this super thick skin where other people's irresponsible and unmindful language doesn't have the power to impact us the way it might. Because we know our worth, and we know what we do is important, and we also know who we are and what we stand for. The more I have stories like that in my landscape, the more I'm able now to put them aside, and weed them out, and it really is about surrounding yourself with like minded peers and folks who are your target audience anyway, because you have one now, and how exciting is that? You’ve built that. As we say in Yiddish, “feh,” which is kind of like saying “moving on”.
GW: My daughter wants to be a writer when she grows up and she tells anyone who will listen that her Mommy has a magazine. That is everything I need. “Feh” to the rest.
RS: Oh my god. I got somebody in Nebraska to speak Yiddish. Amazing.
A Poem by Rachael Sage
Winemaker
I remember the first time I heard you play
It was like a chimney that had been hidden
Behind a giant wall-sized painting
Was pilfered away and bless those thieves
Who collectively call themselves obscurity
For lifting that heavy scarlet curtain
I remember so clearly because my family was hurting
The night you took the stage - small, unassuming
Though the venue was, it felt to me like the answer
To the question "what is, what will be, what ever was?"
If that isn't large-scale, I don't know what breathes
I don't know what teases truth out of a group
Whispers loudly "I've got you" and grips, like a fever
Graber Gryass, a collective of musicians from Memphis, has put out an album that's far from your standard bluegrass fare. Their latest release, entitled Waking Up, boasts a peculiar and offbeat character that's hard to pin down. When asked about the inspiration behind the new album, guitarist and vocalist, Michael Graber, shared that the band aimed to push the boundaries even further with Waking Up. "We wanted to stay song-centered, but we also wanted to explore new sounds and styles," he said.
Graber Gryass is made up of Michael Graber (guitars and vocals), Kitty Dearing (vocals and saw), Andy Ratliff (mandolin and vocals), Andrew Geraci (bass), Clint Wagner (12 string and fiddle), Randal Morton (banjo), and Caleb Ryan Martin (high-strung guitar and baritone banjo). For the album, the band collaborated with Jesse Dakota (percussion), Hope Clayburn (flute and sax), and Joe Mahanahan (vibraphone). The album was recorded at High/Low, engineered by Pete Matthews, mixed by Matt Qualls, and produced by Michael Graber.
The group has been making music for several years, and their unique blend of bluegrass, folk, and rock has garnered attention from critics and fans alike. In fact, Glide Magazine has compared their sound to Edward Sharpe and The Magnetic Zeros, while Rock 'n' Load Magazine has likened them to the Basement Tapes outtakes.
The album, Waking Up, kicks off with the energetic and playful "All the Time," which is followed by the introspective "Morning on the Water," featuring lead vocals by Kitty Dearing. "Taproot" follows, featuring saxophone and hand percussion, with guests Hope Clayburn and Jesse Dakota. The title track, "Waking Up," is a dreamy and ethereal song that evokes the spirit of Astral Weeks in Memphis.
Graber Gryass showcases their funky side with "Living on a Faultline," before Kitty takes the lead again on "Hardcore Heartbreak." The album closes with "Faultline," a Carter-family inspired song about living on the New Madrid Faultline.
Graber reflects on the recording process of the album, saying "It was a joy to work with such talented musicians and engineers. We are excited to share our new music with the world, and we hope that our fans enjoy the album as much as we enjoyed making it."
Candice Dollar from Grateful Web had the opportunity to sit down with Michael Graber to discuss the release of their third LP, Waking Up, which will be available on May 11th, 2023.
GG: Hi, Candice. I’m Michael, and they call me Spaceman. I still haven't figured out why.
GW: I bet I can guess. Are you a little out there?
GG: Well, yeah. And sometimes my eyes will roll back in my head when I'm playing. But you know what? While I'm out there, I'm probably the most responsible of all the band members, so it's a great paradox.
GW: I love that. I call it guitar face. I don't know what it's actually called, but when a musician is playing guitar, and they are getting really into it, they make all these crazy facial expressions. It’s great. So, what do you have going on in Memphis this weekend, Spaceman?
GG: Well, this weekend is a little quiet, thankfully. We had three gigs last weekend,and then we got offered a couple gigs for next weekend, but my wife and I already had tickets for Jazz Fest in New Orleans, which is going to be excellent. Then we have our record release, and some parties, festivals and things like that coming up.
GW: I would love to go to Jazz Fest. I didn't jump on it early enough.
GG: You can still do it. There are still tickets.
GW: Well, Nebraska is kind of far from New Orleans. There's always next year though.
GG: Yeah, it's so fun. There’s Jazz Fest, but then there’s also the events that are happening at every single bar, and even house parties all around. It's great. It's only a six hour drive from Memphis. The old saying is that all the crazy people are born in Memphis and end up in New Orleans.
GW: I absolutely love New Orleans. One of my favorite places. My kind of people. Are you playing or just visiting?
GG: We are doing both, but informally. We've got tickets to all kinds of things, which will be great, as well as Jazz Fest, but then some friends of ours all converge there each year. My wife sings and plays a little bit. She's not in Graber Gryass, but we play together too. We also just got back from Costa Rica, where we played. We were the entertainment for some friends of ours from around the country at the Grateful Hotel. So, those folks will be there, and we're going to play. We've already got it arranged on the porch of their Airbnb on Elysian Fields Avenue. So basically, we are meeting up with friends for some jams, but these are professional musicians. They just happen to be there because they are music lovers.
GW: The Grateful Hotel, is that related to the Grateful Dead at all? Are you in that circle?
GG: Yeah. I met all these people Playing In The Sand. When we went to Mexico two years ago, the band didn't show up because of COVID, and so we all got to stay for free. So what are you going to do with 4000 deadheads, 30 of which are musicians? We became the entertainment all night every night. On the beach. Musical orgies. I met these wonderful people, and so now I've got connections all over the country. We just get together and play Dead family tunes, here and there, as well as originals and other things. It's great. I love it.
GW: Lovely. I accidentally fell into this circle, and my entire world has opened up. I have met so many great people, and have been introduced to so many great artists. One of my first interviews for Grateful Web was Peter Rowan, and can you believe I didn’t know who that was? I will be seeing him in Maryland at Delfest this year.
GG: My God. Peter Rowan. We got tickets for next Saturday night to see Peter Rowan in New Orleans playing Old and in the Way material. That will be such a great experience for me. I love all the electric stuff, the Seatrain stuff, and all the wild experiments he did in the 60s.
GW: Yeah, he has really done it all. He’s the man. So tell me about this latest single you just released. And you have an album coming out soon?
GG: The single is coming out first in Glide Magazine and hopefully Grateful Web will run a different one. I also think The Bluegrass Situation is going to run one. This is our third album, and it’s called Waking Up, and it's due out May 11th. We recorded it about a year ago. I've just been sitting on it, waiting for it to hatch, but we're very excited. We have a record release party here in Memphis, which is sort of the premiere spot for doing that, and then some regional festivals, and other things. But “Waking Up,” I'm happy to say, is the title track, and without boring you too much, it is about getting up at like 4:30 in the morning, getting into a deep meditation routine, while at the same time, the microdosing is kicking in, and the sun's coming up, and you're like, I'm a part of all this, this exotic taproot of existence. This is wonderful, and beautiful. It’s one of those moments you try to capture. Almost like John Denver on acid, you know?
GW: Well, I don't find that boring at all. I do this for a reason (laughs). I'm interested in all of the inner workings.
GG: Well, more importantly, I guess, “Waking Up” is about waking up on the planet, and waking up to the planet. The last thing I'll say is that it’s waking up to realize we are the planet. Nature is not another. So as we wake up on planet Earth, we realize that we are planet Earth. We have to take care of this habitat. It is us and we are it, and it's very symbiotic, this relationship.
GW: Have psychedelics always been a part of your life or your creative process?
GG: When I turned 50, I had been kind of abstinent from drugs and alcohol for a long time, and then right when the pandemic hit, I started experimenting with micro dosing mushrooms and LSD and started using cannabis again. I was like, “Oh, shit, I got all these songs, and they're gonna die within me if I don't record them”. So that was the whole genesis of Graber Gryass, and moving to an all organic and original format. Even though I do have to give psychedelics credit. I don't do this for any kind of fame or fortune; it’s just to participate in the flow of life.
GW: Would you say that you are primarily a bluegrass band?
GG: No, and that's why we intentionally spelled the name we did, so we could fuck people up (laughs). Gry-ass, because most people down here, if you go to a festival, they say it in two syllables, right? Plus, I love The Byrds, the old 60s band, and they had the “y”. We have bluegrass instrumentation, and a lot of people mistake us for a bluegrass band, and while I respect and love the tradition— it's how I used to play, in formal bluegrass and old time band— it’s just a little boring to hear what I'll call a museum representation of “Rocky Top” or some of the old standards. I don't really want to cross the street to hear somebody do “Nine Pound Hammer” again. I love the song, but what we do is all original jamgrass music is probably what it is— it's really just organic music. And what I like to tell people is that it's influenced by country music from every country.
GW: Can you tell me more about the influence of country music from other countries and how you incorporate that into your own sound? And how do you set yourself apart from bluegrass?
GG: We record with different instruments. We have a vibraphone on this album, and we had a sax flute on the last album, and a homemade erhu. We're looking for what Bill Monroe called those ancient tunes, but not just with the traditional bluegrass standards. There’s a lot more variety and there's so much more you can do outside of the conventions. And so while I love and respect bluegrass, I find that I'm more satisfied the further we get away from it. I'll just say the staunch traditional bluegrass people hate us, because we have songs you know about drugs, marijuana, and about alternative lifestyles, and then we also draw from all types of things. Grateful Dead is kind of the template. They took from bluegrass, old time, jazz, avant garde, classical— they didn't filter their influences. They just let it flow. And the most important thing to me is that you let the songs carry you on an adventure. It’s not only the story and the songwriting, but I would be really bored playing songs the same way every time, and you kind of have to listen to where you are metabolically, biologically, and spiritually, and then meet the crowd where they are, and then some kind of alchemy happens. That's what we're chasing.
GW: What kind of experience might someone expect to have at one of your live performances?
GG: We have a big time, and a big following, and fortunately, I don't know how or why, but we've got some fans, and I've gotten to know them. They'll write to me or talk to me, and they say it's a very spiritually uplifting time. They will often say to me that they have been carrying around all this weight, and all this stuff, and they can just leave that behind and get healed in the moment. I'm not selling religion here, but that's the power of music, and the power of intention. There’s a palpable sense of community and love. It's very positive. We're not looking for anything other than community. And we want that community to be helpful and positive and well intended.
Allie Crow Buckley, the Los Angeles and London-based singer-songwriter, is ready to transport listeners to a world where reality and imagination intertwine with her highly anticipated sophomore album, Utopian Fantasy. Crafted within the prestigious confines of London's renowned 4AD Studio and skillfully mastered at Abbey Road, this musical endeavor provided her with the opportunity to venture into uncharted territory while remaining faithful to her creative vision. In an exclusive interview with Grateful Web, Buckley shares insights into her songwriting process, her connection to mythology, and the magical tapestry of sounds that make up her ethereal new record.
Every element of "Utopian Fantasy" showcases Buckley's remarkable focus on sonic intricacies. By skillfully intertwining acoustic and electronic components, she creates a reality that is both otherworldly and firmly rooted in reality. Buckley's mastery of storytelling is elevated by a captivating fusion of soothing folk influences and an enchanting allure reminiscent of bands like Black Sabbath.
The album's lead single, "Angel," offers a glimpse into the tender vulnerability of new love, while tracks like "Greatest Hits" and "Naked at the Feast" delve into themes of chaos and acceptance. Buckley's ethereal vocals gracefully guide listeners through a world filled with sonic wonder.
Buckley's creative process often begins with the lyrics, although occasionally a melody serves as her starting point. She explains, "Usually, it's lyrics first, but sometimes I'll have a melody first and then work lyrics into that. It's different every time." Her songs are born from her emotional experiences and love for poetry. Drawing inspiration from mythology and symbolism, she skillfully weaves narratives that strike a chord on both personal and universal levels.
The influence of mythology permeates Utopian Fantasy and leaves an indelible mark on Buckley's music. Fascinated by tales like "Cupid and Psyche" and the Greek god Dionysus, she infuses her songs with a mystical quality. Drawing parallels between these ancient stories and the modern human experience, she captures the vulnerability and resilience required to navigate the chaos of life. Through her music, Buckley harnesses the power of mythology to illuminate the complexities of our existence.
As our conversation with Buckley draws to a close, it becomes clear that her connection to the Grateful Dead runs deep. Her first concert experience, a Grateful Dead show in Golden Gate Park, left an indelible impression on her and played a significant role in shaping her musical journey. As she embraces her own artistic path, Buckley carries the spirit of the Dead and their dedication to musical exploration and storytelling.
In response to what she would like her listeners to know about her upcoming album, Buckley shares, "I want them to know that the album revolves around the concept of finding ecstasy through chaos. It's centered on the theme of escapism. Throughout the record, I often reference Dionysus and the Dionysian mysteries, contemplating the vulnerability of being. Dionysus was torn apart limb from limb by his followers, the people who loved him. So, I was inspired by that idea and the vulnerability surrounding impending chaos. Dionysus represented the god of chaos. The album explores the idea of embracing chaos and being okay with it, finding joy within it."
She further adds, "I always strive to make my records feel like a world of their own. I want listeners to be completely transported into the realm I've created, just like some of my favorite records have done for me. I hope that when people listen to this album, they embark on a journey and immerse themselves in the experience”. Utopian Fantasy is a testament to Buckley's introspection, growth, and artistic evolution.
Allie Crow Buckley extends an enchanting invitation with her album, Utopian Fantasy, where mesmerizing soundscapes and introspective lyrics seamlessly entwine. This album showcases her artistic growth and remarkable talent in constructing a reality entirely her own. As the release date draws near, eager listeners anticipate embarking on this sonic journey, ready to be captivated by Buckley's musical vision.
