Side Pony Interview

 With contrasting musical backgrounds and widely different personalities, Caitlin Cannon and Alice Wallace might appear to be a most unlikely combination to form a band. Alice’s musical background is very much West Coast country rock, as unveiled on her excellent 2019 album INTO THE BLUE. On the other hand, Caitlin’s debut album THE TRASHCANNON ALBUM from 2020, was a hook-loaded collection of songs that were self-deprecating and laced with cleverly unfussy lyrics. But they did, in fact, form Side Pony during the pandemic, writing and recording, LUCKY BREAK, an album that drifts seamlessly between country ballads and powerhouse retro pop. With live shows off the agenda in 2020, the duo hosted a number of live streams that were laced with humorous interaction alongside elegantly delivered songs. From those streams, Caitlin’s demeanour is very much ‘shoot from the hip’ – she has a mischievous expression that leaves you in little doubt that she’s most likely to shoot first and ask questions later. In contrast, Alice appears somewhat more composed, yet wholly amused by her partner’s unpredictable antics. It’s a natural fusion clearly visible when they chatted with me recently from New York via Zoom.

I understand that you both met in Nashville at a songwriter round and made an immediate connection?

Alice: We met at that song writing night and it was pretty immediate, we actually wrote a song the next day. We have known each other for a few years now as we actually wrote our first song together about three years ago. We would see each other occasionally in Nashville and L.A. and had written a few songs over the course of a few years. It was only during the pandemic that we decided to write and record an album. During the pandemic when everything was shut down, we started to do zoom writing sessions. We did everything pretty quickly after that. The world shut down in March and by October we were in the studio recording our first single.

You hired Doug Lancio to produce the album at his studio in East Nashville. How did that connection come about? 

Alice: I had recorded a couple of singles with Doug, part of a project I was working on. I had been introduced to him by a mutual friend and recorded with him in 2019 during Americana Fest. Caitlin had actually come to the studio that day when I was recording. We then asked him if he wanted to do this project with us.  

It’s difficult to ascertain who the lead songwriter is on the tracks on the album. Was there one or are they all collaborations?

Alice: Most of the songs were in fact collaborations. We bring out different aspects of each other’s writing, naturally.

I have this mental picture of you both - in Thelma and Louse style - tearing around America in a flat-top car creating havoc while on tour.

Caitlin: (laughs) Not exactly, but that is actually a very good idea for a photoshoot or a video.

How are the shows going and what is a typical Side Pony audience?

Caitlin: It is a little bit tricky touring in the middle of Covid time. Alice and I have a lot of people who knew us, respectively, on the West coast and middle America, places like Colorado. I spent a lot of time in New York and I had only put out my record THE TRASHCANNON as I was leaving New York. I was still really cutting my teeth there. So now as we are touring up the east coast, we have to work on winning people over. This is the process whereby we are making real fans rather than hundreds of friends on Facebook, that might never come to see us play. We are pounding the pavement that way, which is a little bit old school, going out making actual physical connections with people, and creating that relationship from the experience of the show. I’m not sure whether this actually happens anymore during the digital age, especially if you do not have a lot of capital behind you. Maybe we are the only ones out there doing this. 

You recently played in New York. Is country beginning to come hip there?

Caitlin: It is at present, but if anything, it is probably getting copied and parodied more than ever now. I lived there between 2003 and 2011 and country music was not on the radar at that time. None of the hipsters were into that. At first, some of my friends would be saying: ‘My God, this is so embarrassing that she is doing this.’ Whereas now all the hipsters in Williamsburg are wearing knockoff cowboy attire and singing with fake country accents. 

Have your live streams during lockdown been helpful in generating a fan base?

Caitlin: Probably, I am not sure we would’ve met guys like yourself without the live stream experience. There are also quite a lot of people who discovered us because they were searching for new music. We know many people actually looking for entertainment online that maybe travels beyond just the music. People who had discovered us in a live stream have shown up in person at a concert. This is great because you get to actually meet the person that you would not have got to meet otherwise. Certainly, there are some silver linings there with live streams.

Your shows are quite unique in that they switch from heartfelt ballads to vaudeville at the drop of a hat.

Caitlin: I actually don’t know how that developed because we didn’t intend doing that in the first place. People will come up to us after our shows and tell us how much they liked the variety in our performance. We didn’t actually know that we did have a variety show until people began commenting after we played. Our shows probably reveal the type of personalities that we are and maybe this project brought those personality traits out into the open. Alice is pretty measured and level about things and I’m usually trying to get her to do weird stuff. 

Alice: For the most part it has been pretty natural, we haven’t made a calculated effort. The show just is what it is, and I guess we’ll see how it develops as we go along. I’m not sure that the audiences know what they are actually in for, but it seems to work. 

Do your shows vary depending on where you are performing? What goes down well in New York might not be as well received in rural Texas.

Alice: We are really only discovering this as we go touring on the road. Prior to this, we were performing live streams to fans that we probably already had on board. But I do think depending on the show, we read the audience and lean a little bit more into the gloss or the crass, depending on who’s out there and that particular night.

Caitlin: As house concerts sometimes, I’ll ask Alice if this is the type of audience where we can perform some of our toolbox songs. Sometimes we will simply play some songs from Alice’s album and some songs from my TRASHCANNON album, to show people what the collaboration is and where it comes from. Other times I won’t lead into that and we get requests for material from those albums which often surprises me. Actually, last night I think I tracked a few F-bombs, which I don’t think were very well received (laughs). It is all about trying to read the room, but I do think when we play with a full band we lean more towards the musicality of the act, whereas if we perform as a duo, we tend to do more storytelling.

Have you a touring band at the moment?

Caitlin: We do indeed, we have a whole band on this tour. What is most impressive is that we found awesome musicians that are prepared to sleep on a couch if they have to.

Was LUCKY BREAK, the title of the album, selected on the basis of anticipation or recognition of the opportunity to start the band?

Alice: Well, I suppose when we wrote the actual song it was more in anticipation. It is a story in that we formed a band during the pandemic, which I don’t think is something that would happen very often. So, the title of the album has probably evolved over time in its meaning.

Caitlin: Yes, I think when we wrote the song, we were trying to write ourselves out of fear and depression. We wouldn’t have actually had this band had it not been for the pain during the lockdown. It was like you thought you were getting to the end of your life but it was actually a new start, which probably flipped the meaning of the title of the album. It would be nice if the album is a lucky break and we get Live Nation backing and we don’t have to sleep on couches and floors anymore. But we’re lucky enough that we got to make this record and that we were able to express ourselves as artists.

Is Side Pony a long-term collaboration or do you intend to record solo albums?

Alice: It is our intention to also keep both our solo careers going and also see how far we can take Side Pony. As many creative projects as you can have going on can only be a good thing, it keeps things flowing.

Caitlin: I think of us along the same lines as The Highwomen. They all have their individual projects.  We will also continue to invest in our solo projects. I do think Side poorly will be better for that. 

You performed at Americana Fest in Nashville earlier this year. How was that experience given the presence of Covid?

Alice:  Well, they did require vaccines, so everybody had to be vaccinated to be there. People were there and enjoying it, but that was probably less than half of the normal attendance. A lot of the shows were very sparse as a result.

Looking back over the past eighteen months, what were the upsides?

Alice:  Well, we got an album out of it. If I had to boil it down to one thing, it would be Side Pony.

Caitlin: I also was splitting my time between Colorado and Nashville before that. I was supplementing my songwriting habit by hairdressing and ended up with back surgery. I knew I needed to stop cutting hair but it was the only way I could make reliable money at the time. So, in the middle of the pandemic, I actually closed my salon and moved to Nashville full-time. It is a scary time to be doing music full time. But I am also now doing what I want to do.

With you both residing in Nashville at present, are you likely to be found at Honky Tonk Tuesday Night at the American Legion?

Caitlin: I love the American Legion but I do not know how to two-step. Alice is a really good two stepper so she swings around that dancefloor and I am the wallflower.

Have you planned a trip over to Europe?

Caitlin: Yes. At present we are looking at the beginning of April 2022.

Interview by Declan Culliton

Tony Poole Interview

Formed in London back in 1973, Starry Eyed And Laughing’s early gigs brought them to the attention of the music press and particularly Melody Maker, who were well impressed by the band’s live shows. Extensive gigging in colleges and pubs across the U.K. followed, leading to sessions on the legendary John Peel Show on BBC Radio and an appearance at The Roundhouse in London, alongside Michael Nesmith and John Stewart, for Zigzag’s 5th Birthday Party. A record deal with CBS soon followed, and they released their self-titled album in 1974, followed by THOUGHT TALK the following year. Their harmonies plus hook filled and note perfect West Coast-influenced songs, prompted an invitation to tour The States as part of Columbia Record’s ‘New Faces of 1975’. What was to be a ground-breaking experience was dogged by misfortune from day one with a hundred planned dates being reduced to just thirty. When they returned home, their management company collapsed, which essentially resulted in the band’s demise. Original members Tony Poole and Iain Whitmore have remained close friends and they started to write material back in 2013 for the third Starry Eyed And Laughing album – now 46 years since their last recording BELLS OF LIGHTNING has finally arrived. Their wondrous harmonies, alongside Poole’s trademark Rickenbacker playing, embrace musical arrangements that recall their passion for the West Coast sound of the late 1960s. It’s a triumphant return to recording and another chapter in the Starry Eyed And Laughing story that is most likely not over quite yet, as Poole explained when we chatted recently. 

How are things at the Starry Eyed And Laughing HQ these days?

The last couple of weeks have been pretty intense. Having put out the word about this record, the pre-orders have been in the hundreds. I’m operating a one-man mail room here because Iain (Whitmore) is living in Devon. I’m a little anxious this week because the Royal Mail are saying that European deliveries are about four to five days, but I’ve only had two people confirm that they have received it. I also got a couple of messages from people in America saying that they received it. Having said that I didn’t ask people to confirm that they received it. Also, in Europe they are starting to charge import duty. 

Iain and yourself are the two remaining members of the original Starry Eyed And Laughing four piece. Did you stay in contact with the others after you disbanded back in 1976?

Sadly, Michael Wackford, the band’s drummer, passed away in 2016, and he wasn’t old by today’s standards, only sixty. I had not seen him since around 2000 when we were putting together a retrospective of the two Starry Eyed And Laughing albums. I lost touch with him after that. I sometimes felt guilty that we had not continued with the band from the early days. After we broke up Michael went to Spain and joined a band that played U.S. bases there. I did keep in touch with Iain because we lived quite close. I don’t know what happened to Ross (McGeeney), I did see him at Michael’s funeral and strangely he did show up at a Bennett, Wilson, Poole gig. I don’t know if he is playing music anymore. 

Did the band consider regrouping in the ‘80s or early ‘90s when alt-country became popular and bands such as The Jayhawks, The Long Ryders emerged, with a sound similar to your own?

No, strangely not. At that time, I was doing engineering and production work. I ran into the guys from the band, The Men They Couldn’t Hang, when I was playing in a wine bar in Shepherds Bush. Stefan Cush from that band actually died earlier this year. I ended up producing them and also managing them. A journalist from Melody Maker called Will Smith was a big fan of that band and used to come to the gigs and he introduced me to R.E.M.  who reminded me of our early sound. The former band members weren’t in touch, this was before internet, so the band just seemed like history. I was also doing solo gigs and Iain came to one of the shows and we started doing duo gigs after that. We played in pubs around London. I remember making a sign that read ‘Tony Poole and Iain Whitmore ex-Starry Eyed And Laughing’. We were playing some of the band’s original material but also new songs because we were both writing quite a lot of songs at the time. We just carried on playing. We had a band called The Sun and we made a record. We recorded an album with another band we formed called The Falcons, which was a country record. All of that was done for pleasure, none of it bought us a swimming pool (laughs). 

What was your intention when you started writing the songs that ended up on the new record back in 2013? Were the songs specifically for a Starry Eyed And Laughing album at that time?

Yes, it was something that Iain and I had talked about for many years.  We started it in 2013, I then got polymyalgia, which knocked me about for three and a half years. Soon after that this wonderful thing called Bennett Wilson Poole happened, which took care of another couple of years. Iain was working on the songs here with me in 2013 and then in both 2017 and 2018, we did quite a lot of work then. We had part recorded about twenty songs by then. Then the lockdown came about. That actually helped to get the album finished, but it meant working on the songs remotely over the internet.  More so than putting closure on Starry Eyed And Laughing, it was about the beginning of finishing what we started. When we broke up in 1976 there was a lot of unfinished stuff, though I wonder how you can wait nearly fifty years to finish something. 

By the sound of things, the reaction among your followers has been very positive.

Indeed. I’ve been selling CDs of various albums for twenty years now and I keep a data base of around two thousand names of buyers. All I did with this album was put it on Facebook and Twitter and we’ve already sold hundreds of copies. It was mentioned to me that had I registered with Americana UK, we would certainly be in the charts. I’m certain of this based on Bennett Wilson Poole getting into the top five with their sales. With all the mailouts I’ve been doing, I still have about sixteen hundred people in my data base who are not on social media and have yet to hear about it.  Hopefully, that might mean that I’ll continue to be a mail boy for the next while. I have done a number of archive releases over the past number of years, mostly demos of the band to keep things going and I’ve sold up to five hundred of those, so it feels like a nice little family of people that support us. 

Will you be kicking down the doors of the popular music press to have the album reviewed?

I actually feel that the connection with people like yourselves is actually more important. Shindig magazine have also been good to us, they did a three or four-page feature on us a few years back. I often feel that getting a review in the larger music magazines can be vanity. What’s more important is people like yourselves who are dedicated, so I’m more inclined to contact people that I feel are genuinely interested in what we do. This is not a money-making exercise for us at this stage.

With a lifetime in the industry, I’ve no doubt that you have a very good idea how it operates. 

Back in the day, we always felt we were lumped in with pub rock, whereas we were more outsiders. The agents, managers and the labels make a lot of money and you read so many stories of people who were extremely successful but never got any royalties for their music. The wonderful thing nowadays, with the internet, is that I have a direct connection with our fan base, friends really and that means so much more. Back in the early days our manager contacted us to tell us that a particular radio station was looking for payment from us to play us on their station. We didn’t pay and didn’t get played. 

You are credited with all the instrumentation on the album, with the exception of bass and acoustic guitar, which Iain contributed.

Yes, you could probably call it megalomania. Over the years I had compiled a long list of guests who might play on the album, but the logistics of actually doing that seemed crazy. When Danny Wilson and Robyn Bennett approached me about working with them, I worked on all the tracks on that album, adding their guitars, vocals and harmonies and I played the rest of the instruments. I did something similar with this album, it can actually make the process easier. Having produced records for so long, I know what I want to hear and how to get that sound. There are some non-guitar, bass and drums instruments on the album, not many, they are just things I played on keyboards. Iain and myself did all the vocals and harmonies, he sang the songs that he had written and I sing my songs. There is a song we co-wrote, Love Still Speaks Your Name, where we sang a verse each. 

Does Harry Arthur, who was credited as drummer on Bennett Wilson Poole, not get a mention this time around?

On the Bennett, Wilson, Poole album, I was credited with playing the bass, keyboards and lead guitars. I didn’t want it to sound like it was a one-man show and credited Harry Arthur (my middle names), as playing drums on that album. When Fin Kenny was playing drums at our gigs with Bennett, Wilson, Poole, he was getting fed up with people coming up to him after gigs and saying ‘you were great Harry’ so he put him to bed. He designed a tee shirt that read ‘I shot Harry Arthur.’ This album is anything but a one-man show. Iain and I really worked out all the arrangements together and it’s as much Iain as it is myself. 

Do you think it will generate interest from people previously unfamiliar with the band?

It already has.  I’ve had sales of our previous albums already on the strength of this album. The extent will depend on what sort of spread the album gets. At the moment that spread is essentially everyone who already knows the band. We also did not want to use the word closure about the album, because, although it is a case of finishing what we started, Iain and I have great ideas about a next stage for Starry Eyed And Laughing. I’m not sure we will do what Danny Wilson has done with his latest album, introducing funny bleeps and noises: we definitely won’t be doing metal machine music. 

Though you incorporated both sounds on your earlier albums, I get a sense that the album is somewhat less power poppy and more West Coast.

You’re absolutely right, it was certainly a conscious decision to stay tuned to the original West Coast sound. We wanted the album to have a very uniform sound. We started recording about twenty songs but half of them seemed somehow to fit another genre. In my mind, and Iain and I had discussed this, we wanted it to sound as if The Byrds had not gone on to record SWEETHEARTS OF THE RODEO.

You reminisce of former days and your tour of The States on three consecutive songs on the album. Three Days Runningrecalls being stranded in Boston for three days.

We were on tour in the States for three months and there was a time when we were stuck in Boston and couldn’t get to New York because of flooding. Iain actually wrote the song in that period and we did sing it once at a gig. It was done for a radio station in Long Island called My Fathers Place – I actually have a recording of it. We were singing it without playing any instruments because we hadn’t properly learned the song. That one and two other songs on the album are about that U.S. tour. I wrote the first of lines from Dreamyard Angels back in 1975, the rest of the song is like a journey of some of the episodes from the tour. I got electrocuted in Atlanta on the very first date. Something was wrong with the wiring. I picked up the microphone and just saw this blue flash and I was hospitalised for a night, so that episode is included in the song.  Iain wrote the song Faith, Hope and Charity back in 1976 and it was about the disastrous situations that we landed in. Those three songs are like a little trilogy of things that happened to us. On the record, I put a little snippet of the intro to Simon and Garfunkel song America, to introduce that trilogy of songs relating to the tour of The States. It’s probably a bit self-referential.

Is it true that The Flying Burrito Brothers arrived on stage with you during the tour?

Yes, Gene Parsons, Joel Scott Hill and Gib Guilbeau joined us on stage one night. Another night Dr. Hook and The Medicine Show were on the same bill and I remember they got busted for having dope in the dressing room.  

You were mixing with some big boys then; did you think you had it made?

Yes, we thought we’d have our own jet. We supported Dave Mason, who was very big in The States at that time. We also supported the J. Geils Band and a little-known singer at that time called Jimmy Buffett, who is now a millionaire. Originally the tour was to be about a hundred dates but it had not been organised very well and we ended up doing around thirty dates over a three-month period. The illusions of limousines vanished quite quickly. 

I understand that your management company vanished just as quickly?

Yes, they were actually lovely guys, but had too much faith and too little knowledge about the business. 

Do you have plans to play the music from the album in a live setting?

Iain and I have talked about it. We’ll bring in some other musician friends to fill the band and do a proper album launch when things do settle down some more, Covid-wise.  

And hopefully some shows in Ireland might happen?

I would come over and sing on a street corner in Kilkenny. The weekend I spent in Kilkenny playing the Roots Festival with Bennett, Wilson, Poole is such a memory, I long to get back there. We played our first of four shows there on the Friday night and the next morning I was rooting around looking for somewhere for breakfast and someone I didn’t know from across the street called out: ’Hey, Tony, how are you?’. You become a Kilkenny legend after one night.

Interview by Declan Culliton

Tony Kamel Interview

A member of the Grammy-nominated bluegrass band Wood and Wire, Texan Tony Kamel’s recently released debut solo album BACK DOWN HOME takes the listener on a musical pilgrimage that announces the arrival of an artist fully embracing the world of Americana music. Old-time country, folk, bluegrass, Cajun and even a smidgen of funk combine to form what has been described as Third Coast Roots Music. Produced by Bruce Robison and recorded at his analog studio, The Bunker in Lockhart, Texas, the album is smile inducing from start to finish.

Congratulations on the release of your solo album BACK DOWN HOME. It’s a really fun album and I get the impression that you guys were having a good time in the studio?

I am so glad that you get that impression, it is something that we had hoped would come across, and you are correct, we had a great time. Especially after we tracked the first song because up to that, I was a bit nervous. Once we settled in on the second song, which is actually the first song on that record, titled Amen, I was fine. It was so much fun playing with those fantastic musicians. 

I understand that you were a late bloomer to the industry and that you did not play professionally until 2012. 

Yes, I always played at home for fun, but I did not really step on the stage until around 2011 or 2012. 

How did that come about?

Well, I started playing a little bit with a guy called Graham Wilkinson, who is a songwriter here in Texas and we are still great buddies. He gave me my first shot at playing in a band, which was at the end of 2011. I did not have a professional music career at all prior to that. I was actually studying bluegrass music around 2009. I began by learning how to flat-pick, I could always sing songs quite well but could never keep up with other players, so I started to study the techniques. From there I went to some jams and everything really snowballed after that. I was just into enjoying music as a listener, and as an occasional recreational player. I fell into a blue grass career accidentally. I linked up with the guys and we became Wood and Wire. I had always written songs for fun but not necessarily bluegrass songs. I reached a point where I had to decide whether I wanted to keep my day job or go on tour playing festivals with the Wood and Wire. I chose to do the latter and I am glad I did.

How did the idea of recording a solo album of your own come about?

I met Bruce Robison about four or five years ago when Wood and Wire’s bass player Dominic Fisher and I went in to record a song at Bruce’s’ studio with a great songwriter Christy Hays. I subsequently became friends with Bruce, having got to know him while recording with Wood and Wire, and he just liked some songs I had written. As his record label The Next Waltz was growing, he encouraged me to record an album under my own name. I had been listening to all sorts of music before I got into bluegrass and he thought it would be fun to make a solo record with me. I wanted to do it but was very busy at that time. So, eventually with the pandemic and babies coming into the mix, I became freed up somewhat. After four years of talking about it we finally came together and knocked it out.

Had you got many of the songs written prior to your decision to record the album?

There are a handful that I wrote in 2020 but most of them were written before that. The oldest on the record was probably written seven years ago and the most recent one I would’ve written towards the end of the summer last year. There were a number of those songs that we tried in Wood and Wire that didn’t fit. I had quite a number of other songs that I could have used, but Bruce felt that they did not work for the record, and I appreciated his honesty.

You had some serious players record with you. Were they selected by Bruce or yourself?

Noah Jefferies and I are very close friends, we have known each other a long time. He was the one guy that I insisted was in there. I was definitely interested in bringing in Jeff Queen, he is one of my favourite players. The bass player Bill Whitbeck was a last-minute add, he tours with Robert Earl Keen and I assumed he would not be available. There is a song on the album that he and I wrote together called Slow On The Gulf. I called Bill a few days before we were to begin recording and he asked me who is going to be playing bass. Scott Davies the multi-instrumentalist was supposed to play bass. We were going to have him overdub after we had recorded the rest of the instruments.  In the end we had Bill in to play bass and that allowed Jeff play the other instruments live. The rest of the musicians were Bruce saying ‘let’s bring these other players in and see what happens’. I really wanted the Shinyribs crew to come in to do backing vocals, including Kevin Russell and not just the Shiny Soul Sisters.  I thought that would be really cool.

How did the recording process compare with your experience in the studio previously with Wood and Wire?

In the sense that we were all playing live in the studio together, it was quite similar to recording with Wood and Wire. There are certain limitations that we had with this recording, that did not happen with Wood and Wire. For example, when Wood and Wire we use live tapes, we would occasionally grab a part of one live tape and switch it with another live tape. We only did this on some occasions but that option was always there. That was not available in the setting for this recording. With analog you have destructive editing, when you record background vocals to over dub, you have to decide right there if that is the one that you want to keep, because if you do it again, the previous version is gone. If it feels really good you have to decide to go with that one. It may not be perfect, maybe a couple little things are not perfect, but I found over time that those little things often add character. So, it was quite similar to the bluegrass recordings, because I actually like to record my vocal live with the band playing. With analog we had fewer tools at our disposal, so tracking the album only took a few days.

You open the album with Amen, which is a very reflective song, and end the album with Change, which offers a hopeful note. Was there a lot of soul searching deciding on the track sequencing? 

Definitely. It’s funny because I spent so much more time on everything else than the recording. The least amount of time was on the actual recording. I also decided to leave out another song that we had recorded, because I wanted the album to be under 40 minutes, the way it used to be when recording for vinyl. I prefer a concise record of good songs. I thought about the track listing quite a lot until I finally decided that this is the one. It could’ve been done a few other ways but I think we landed on the best one in the end.

The album’s title suggests being wrapped up in a blanket in a safe and secure place.

We went through several options for the album title and eventually landed with that particular one. As that theme started to emerge, I began to rewrite some of the songs to bring that theme of back home out even more. It represents a familiar place you will go when things seem weird or maybe falling down around you and I hope that there is a backdrop of positivity that people sense on the album.  I also like when album titles are from the lyrics of a song but not the title of the song. You have to find this little piece of gold that is in there somewhere.

You blend old-time country alongside some laid-back roots tracks before bringing in a horn section on the swampy track Heat. 

That was Bruce’s idea and I was resistant to it at first. I did not think I could recreate it on stage. I wasn’t sure whether it would work, but I was wrong, I really enjoy it now and I think it adds to the record. I was worried at some stage that the record would be a bit of a hodgepodge, but eventually it all seemed to come together. 

I’m also hearing shades of J.J. Cale on Slow On The Gulf and Let It Slide.  

I love that comparison, I’m glad you said that.

The songs, in the main, lend themselves to be performed solo or with a band. Was that on your mind when you were writing them?

I enjoy playing by myself and try to write songs that I can perform solo. I also like to tell the stories behind them when it’s appropriate. I have worked very hard to create an interesting solo show also, studying and learning from other artists like Hayes Carl and Rambling Jack Elliott. In general, with the solo shows, I like to talk, play some claw hand banjo and electric guitar, to change it around a bit. I have also been working with a great group of musicians who can play live with me, which brings out the best of the songs on the record. You don’t have to perfectly recreate the songs on stage but I’ve got Scott Davies, who played on the record, and Noah’s been also playing with me. I have played a few shows already with these guys and we really hit a stride where we feel that the songs are right on time.

How do you intend touring the album?

Well, I’ve got a baby at home no. I’m not sure if you can hear her screaming in the background. I plan on taking this album everywhere I can in the midst of what I hope is a dying pandemic. But, it is still here and people are still hesitant to buy tickets. So, for now I’ve got to focus on Texas and the hopes of doing some good support slots with bigger artists in 2022, together with some solo work. I’m looking at the spring of next year and beyond. It seems people really like the album and the radio DJs are also playing this. I’m told that they find it different to a lot of the stuff they get to play and review. I will do the work to build on the album as this is what I do for a living and I want to build on it. With my bluegrass background I didn’t even know about the alt-country charts and I hit number one this week. That’s something I’ve never done before; my only previous number one was for sticking my feet foot in my mouth. 

Can we expect more shows from Wood and Wire?

I would love to. There is a so much going on at the moment with babies arriving and different issues.  All I can say is that I would love to play more shows with them at some point, but I’m not sure when that is going to happen. I am super proud of the songs that were recorded and the accolades that we received. Given all the family situations, it’s unlikely that we would be in a position to tour as hard as we used to do. We were doing a lot of dates on the road which is unlikely to happen again. 

Interview by Declan Culliton

Mikaela Finne Interview

Born in Finland and currently based in Stockholm, Sweden, Mikaela Finne is yet another hugely talented country artist from Scandinavia flying the flag for roots music.  Her latest album, TIME STANDS STILL, shows once more that country music is very much alive and kicking in Europe, particularly in Scandinavia, where the Nordicana genre continues to grow. The album was produced by Brady Blade (Emmylou Harris, Steve Earle, Patty Griffin) and features the celebrated pedal steel player, Al Perkins. We spoke with Mikaela recently about the album and the challenges and pressures facing artists as we continue to deal with the aftermath of the pandemic.

How are things progressing in getting live music up and running again in Stockholm?

We are not back to normal yet. It’s been very difficult to get back to playing live music here. We haven’t opened up but a lot of mid-level and smaller artists like myself are facing competition from artists that usually sell out arenas because they also want to play, but now they are going to be playing the venues we usually play. It’s a bit problematic.

I understand that metal music was your obsession in your younger days in Finland?

I’m from Vaasa on the west coast of Finland, about six or seven hours drive from Helsinki.  Metal was my first obsession; I was a listener first and foremost and then did my fair share of metal performances in bands growing up. It was a lot of fun doing that but not what I was organically looking for. However, I could see similarities with metal and outlaw country, the whole idea of doing what you want. Things became really interesting for me when I began to see and explore the connection between metal and country. 

Were you also exposed to country music growing up?

Yes, I grew up with country music. My dad listened to a lot of Dolly Parton and Creedence Clearwater Revival; I was also exposed to country music at home at the same time as my own dive into metal. I’ve always loved both of them. It was totally uncool to like country when I was that age but I wanted to listen to what made me happy and what I enjoyed.

Can you tell me about your progression from a listener to a songwriter and performer?

I’ve always enjoyed writing from when I was young and before I could play an instrument, and I wrote lots of poetry. Once I learned to play the guitar the rest came naturally. I went to music school here in Stockholm and things just evolved naturally from there. I began to play as a solo artist and formed a few bands.  I enjoyed playing in bands but I felt that I really wanted to advance my career as a solo artist.

Do you feel part of the Nordicana genre that is coming out of Scandinavia with artists such as Malin Petersen, The Country Sound Of Harmonica Sam and The Northern Belle releasing roots albums?

When it comes to Nordicana or the country music movement, I simply think that we are all going back to our roots. We tend to label country music as American, but what is America?  It was built on immigrants, a lot of whom came from Europe. They brought their songs and their instruments. They brought the fiddle, the accordion, the banjo came from Africa. These instruments and songs got incorporated into the music culture over there. We brought parts of it to America but it’s also our roots and the Nordicana scene is us getting back to that heritage. It is growing over here and it is about time that country music got more attention here, because it’s also our music.

Is the music that you and your peers are recording getting radio play in Sweden?

No, it is so under represented on radio here. There is no country music on radio, which does not help to generate a younger audience or following. From my own experience, the audience is probably thirty years old and upward, the main audience is still very middle aged and upward.

You had been booked on an extensive tour with Caleb Caudle last year just before Covid hit.

We were to go out last year for about forty-five dates in Europe. We were to play Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium and The Netherlands. Because of the pandemic the tour was postponed and then cancelled. It was massively disappointing but it was so out of our control. I’ve just had to move on the best that I can.

Had your new album TIME STANDS STILL been written pre-pandemic?

The material for the album had been written before that tour was due. The oldest song on the album would have been written in 2018. I picked and chose the songs I wrote after that for the album and the most recent song I finished the week before we recorded the album.

You engaged one of the most sought-after session drummers and producers Brady Blade to produce the album. His clients include Emmylou Harris, Dave Matthews and Solomon Burke to name a few. How did that come about?l

It’s a funny story how I first met him. In 2017 a mutual friend of Brady and mine called me to tell me that Brady Blade was looking for a country singer for a pick-up band to play at a seventieth birthday party at one of the islands here in Stockholm. He had given Brady my name and was checking if that was ok with me, and could he pass on my number to him. My reaction was ‘is this the Emmylou Harris Brady Blade’ and yes, if it is, you can give him my number!  We did that pick-up band gig at the party for a neighbour of Brady’s and we just remained friends from then. He was the obvious choice and it turned out great. He knew exactly what I wanted from my sound, the exact vibe I was going for.

He also got Al Perkins on board to play pedal steel on the album?

That was hugely exciting. I’m a big fan of The Flying Burrito Brothers, so for me, it was amazing having Al Perkins play on the album. We laid down all our tracks in the studio and when we were done, we sent the tracks over to Al in Nashville and he recorded the pedal steel in his studio.

On the album’s opening track What I, you describe yourself as independent and stubborn. Is that an accurate description?

(Laughs) Yes, that’s pretty spot on for me. I am pretty stubborn.

You describe yourself as an outlaw artist and include the track Outlaw Women on the album. What female artists, past and present, best represent the title ‘outlaw’

For me an outlaw, regardless of whether it’s a man or a woman, but especially a woman, is a person who does things their own way and are uncompromising with their art. A past artist is certainly Patsy Cline.  Emmylou is very much an outlaw artist for me, she does what she wants and is quite unique in her type of artistry. Dolly Parton is one hundred per cent an outlaw woman and, of course, Loretta Lynn. Tanya Tucker is another of course.  I saw her at 3rd & Lindsley during Americanafest 2019 in Nashville and if she’s not outlaw, I don’t know who is. She was amazing. These women paved the way for younger artists coming out and gave us the confidence that we do not have to allow someone to tell us how to go about our art. They showed us that we can do in our own way and that nobody knows their art better than themself. Nikki Lane, Amanda Shires, Jaime Wyatt and Elizabeth Cook are also absolutely amazing and, like myself, are very unapologetic in doing what they want, in the way they want to do it. It’s so important. I don’t want to compromise about what I want to sing and write about. That would be unauthentic and I don’t want to be that person.

Tell me about your thought process behind the track and album title TIME STANDS STILL.

Time stands still is a description of an emotion, how it can feel when you are in a moment with someone and everything else seems to have just stopped. It feels as if there is nothing else going on in the world except you and that other person. The song and album title reference the emotion of being so close to somebody that it feels like nothing else is happening around you. 

What are your plans to market the album and get to tour it?

The competition for live shows this year is immense, particularly with the larger artists scaling down and taking shows at our venues. Planning ahead, our real focus is for next year. I have a great management team, but it is very difficult, especially now. With the pandemic there is so much pressure on artists to do something special and there is so much music coming out, it is insane. The cloud that you have to get through in order to get exposure is getting thicker and thicker. I try not to worry too much about it, otherwise it would drive you crazy. I just keep faith in my own work, it’s a challenge out there at the moment for sure, but I’m up for it. 

Interview by Declan Culliton

Jeremy Pinnell Interview

With a voice that fully emphasises the tales he tells so well in his down to earth songwriting, Jeremy Pinnell is a country artist with a capital C. He writes from the heart, suggesting that it’s his only means of dealing with the cards he has been dealt. His debut album OH/KY from 2015, offered snapshots from many difficult years and bad life choices which he had finally put behind him. He followed that album in 2017 with the superb TIES OF BLOOD AND AFFECTION. A classic slice of outlaw country, it presented Pinnell in a more relaxed and untroubled manner. His latest album, GOODBYE L.A, was recorded in early 2020 and was due to hit the shelves that year until Covid hit. The album was produced by Jonathan Tyler, who steers Jeremy and his band down an 80’s style country vibe, a little rockier and a little less honky tonk than its predecessor. It’s an album that he’s justifiably proud of and one that he’s about to tour in the coming months. We caught up with the straight talking and most engaging Kentuckian as he planned to get his career back on track after a testing period starved of the opportunity to tour with his band.

I understand that you are about to hit the road again with your band for shows in the coming months?

Yes, we’re back on the road but not as much as I’d like to be. We’re just testing the waters, it’s like we are getting out there but everybody is still not sure about things. We’re doing what we can and are excited to be out on the road again.

You played some live dates earlier in the summer. How did that feel having been starved of gigs since early 2020?

It was nice to be out playing to people again. You don’t realise just how much humans need other humans. It was good to be out playing live music and to be out with my band again. We’re all good friends and we like hanging out and getting away on tour for a while. I’ve got a real good group of guys and we just love being together.

How did you manage during that period when live shows were not an option?

For a while it was good, being home with my family. The Government was giving me some money, which is always nice. But that soon ran out so I got a job with a local construction outfit out here in Kentucky.  I’ve been doing that, playing some shows and waiting to go on the road agai

The new album GOODBYE L.A. is a slight change in direction for you, a little less honky tonk and a bit rockier than TIES OF BLOOD AND AFFECTION from a few years back. Does that signal a tweak in style for you going forward?

That’s a good question, but you know the next record might just be straight up country. I feel like this record is still pretty country but with a different sound. I wanted to experiment with some different forms of country music. I was listening to a lot of Gary Stewart and 80’s Waylon Jennings when we were touring. There’s an album called NEVER COULD TOE THE MARK by Waylon with songs like The Entertainer and Sparkly Brown Eyes that I was listening to when we were travelling in 2019.  We were on the road for over one hundred and thirty days that year. GOODBYE L.A is a culmination of what we were listening to during all that travelling. We went straight into the studio at the beginning of 2020 after touring to record those songs.

I got that impression listening to the album that a number of the songs were written while touring. Night Time Eagle and Doing My Best particularly come to mind.

Doing My Best, that’s a real story. You know that in Montana they celebrate the 4th of July on the 3rd of July. So, we were on the top of this hill watching all the fireworks and then the next day the town was like a ghost town. We went downtown to do our laundry and it just happened to be payday for my band and I got the call from my manager telling me how little I could pay everybody that week. My heart just sank in my stomach, the money is hardly ever right. So, that song is about us enjoying ourselves but it ain’t always easy on the road.

You brought Jonathan Tyler on board to produce the album. Had you worked with him before?

I hadn’t worked with Jonathan before. A buddy of mine Scottie Diablo from L.A. hooked us up. I heard what Jonathan did on Nikki Lane’s album HIGHWAY QUEEN and I love that record and that sound. I reached out to him and we stayed connected and it was such a great experience working with him. He’s got an ear for music that other people don’t have, he’s been in the game for a long time. He’s younger than me but has been working professionally in music for way longer than me.  He’s such a pro and also a hard worker, like all the guys in my band, we’re all hard workers. We just get the job done and Jonathan is just a super positive guy. We brought things to the studio and he’d say ‘that sounds great but let’s try it this way’ and everybody would get excited because it was a new and different sound on the songs. It was just a great experience all round.

You then decided to hold off on the album release date?

We got the album recorded right up to the wire. We had finished up recording at Sam’s Place in Austin Texas, and I had flown back to Kentucky on a Saturday and on the following Monday they started asking people to stay at home. When we were down recording in Texas people were talking about Covid, but nobody was really sure about what was going on and the seriousness of it. We had the record recorded and had time to mix and master it, so we just decided to hold on to it. Why rush it? Everybody is just at home, there wasn’t any reason to be in a hurry releasing it, so we just took our time.

Am I over stating it by calling it ‘your happy and fun album’?

No, and I hope that comes across on the album. I wanted to make a fun record because the mood has been so heavy here in the United States for the past six years. I wanted to make a record that gave people the freedom to be happy, to dance, to love each other. All those thoughts were in my head.

Did you have the opportunity to road test any of the songs from the new album when you were touring last?

Yes, we started playing songs from the record towards the end of 2019 and the start of 2020 before we recorded it, because we wanted to be studio ready. Some of the feedback was very good. Though I remember I played the song Goodbye L.A. in a taco joint in Ohio where we were getting paid hardly anything and some guy called me a sell out for having a different sound on the song (laughs). I thought ‘Dude, I’m playing a cheap taco joint’!

I love that song Goodbye L.A. and particularly the lines where you reference ‘I wish they all were California girls’ by replying ‘he ain’ t seen my woman with the long hair and curls. She might kill you in the night, she might love you in the day, but she’s a good woman who knows how to stay’

That’s a song about my wife. She’s an Italian girl and she’s got an attitude, if she gets mad at you, you’re done! She is really committed.  Being in a relationship with someone who is a travelling musician is not easy. As bad as times get, she has stuck around and that’s why I say ‘she knows how to stay.’ We do really well, she does great when I’m gone and takes care of things.

When you’re on the road, do you have a predetermined setlist for the tour or do you mix and match depending on the location and the reaction at previous shows to certain songs?

Our guitar player Junior Tutwiler, is a great guy, you can hear that on the record. He does the tour managing and he’s the band leader. At some point you’ve got to turn things over to somebody else, so I get him to put together the different setlists. We usually have a ninety-minute set and a forty-minute set depending on the venue and if we are opening up for someone, and we do change them around a bit.

How are bookings going to tour the album?

It’s been really great; we work with a booking agency out of Nashville and they have been pushing us. We’ve had no problems getting where we need to get, things are good. We usually travel light as a four piece, me, a guitar player, bass and drums.

You were due to tour Europe in 2020, will you get the opportunity to reschedule those dates?

I hope to be over there next year. We are really focusing on 2022, we have three tours booked in the United States and then I hope to get over there. I love it over there and often think about moving over there, it’s such a different way of life than it is here. It seems like you all live so close together and have figured out how to respect each other’s space, which is something that does not happen in the United States. People respect art in Europe, it can be like the wild west over here, you never know what is going to happen at shows. You can have a really attentive crowd or a wild crowd, it sure keeps you on your toes.

Now that you are heading off on tour, how does the issue of vaccinated or non-vaccinated audiences play out. Is that at the discretion of the venue owners or who calls the shots?

I got vaccinated because I wanted to go out and tour and live my life. A lot of people over here don’t want to get vaccinated for whatever reasons. I wish people on both sides would stop telling each other what to do. I’m just doing what I need to do, it’s like that Hank Williams song Mind Your Own Business. It’s usually the venues that dictate the rules, we just want to play music. Things haven’t really calmed down over here since the pandemic hit and the election. As my wife says, it just feels like you are a little sick in your stomach every day.  

With the new album about to be released are you already thinking of your next recording?

I’m thinking of releasing some singles and maybe doing an acoustic record. The idea of doing another record just now is a bit overwhelming at the moment, it takes a lot of work and a lot of your time.

Interview by Declan Culliton

Jesse Terry Interview

Jesse Terry has been releasing music since his debut album first appeared back in 2009. In addition, he has earned a degree from Berklee College of Music, worked as a  staff writer on Nashville's Music Row and has won Grand Prize awards and recognition in several international song writing competitions, including the John Lennon Song writing Contest, the CMT/NSAI Song writing Competition, and the We Are Listening Singer/Songwriter awards. When We Wander is the seventh album that Jesse has recorded and before the pandemic hit he spent his entire time on the road travelling with his wife Jess, playing his music and running his self- made business model. As his life on the road, took a complete about-turn with the virus and lockdown Jesse found himself in a place where he could reflect on his journey so far and what the future may hold. We were very happy to catch up with this human dynamo and to talk about his career and future plans.  

The new album, WHEN WE WANDER  has been receiving very positive reviews. Have you been happy with the reaction?

Yeah, it’s been thrilling and humbling. Having to delay the album release in 2020 was a tough decision, so having folks react to it so positively is really gratifying. The songs have weathered a lot and I’m so happy that the album still rings true to me. If anything, the meaning of the album has deepened for me over the last 18 months.

Can you tell me a little bit about the recording process? 

Neilson Hubbard is someone I love and trust. I’d trust him with anything, whether it’s an album, a photograph or a music video. That’s a rare thing to find in this business. So, when he encouraged me to record this album totally live in the studio, I took the leap. Neilson assured me I was ready for this and I believed him. I get the sense that recording live can be the best thing in the world or the worst thing. You have to trust the whole team, from engineer, to producer, to band, because there’s nowhere to hide on a live recording. And most of all, of course, you have to believe in yourself. We just had the greatest bunch on this album and they made it easy for me. Recording this music was a real revelation and the most joyful recording experience of my life. The recording process allowed me to be in the moment and get out of my own head. There’s no time to overthink things or to be overly critical of yourself. The only choice is to let go and be in the moment. 

All the songs were written before the Covid-19 virus struck. Do you think that the songs reflect the actual emotions that events subsequently highlighted?

You know, I feel like I’ve learned more about these songs as time went on.  The pandemic was probably the most transformational period of my life, so songs like Ghost Stories meant more to me after experiencing 2020. To be honest, I didn’t realize how much work I had left to do on myself. And if Covid-19 gave us anything, it was time. Sometimes agonizing time, but time nonetheless. Early on I was concerned that the songs wouldn’t stand the test of time, but the meanings have really deepened for me. I think a good song can make it through just about anything. For instance, a song like When We Wander had a fairly literal meaning to me when I wrote it, but after experiencing 2020, I feel like wandering fearlessly is not just limited to adventures and touring. We’ve had to wander into so many new places to get through this chapter of life. At the end of the day, I’ll think we’ll be better people because of it.

Can you give some insight into your song-writing approach? Do song ideas come regularly and does a lyric present itself before you build the melody?

I’m really careful to keep my antennae up and I’m always saving lyrical and melodic ideas. Those ideas often get me started when I’m staring at the blank canvas. There’s no steadfast song writing rules for me, but I do believe there must be a marriage between music, melody, emotion and lyrics for everything to be working at its highest level. I’m a big believer in the Paul McCartney school of singing gibberish as you’re singing new melodies. Often those phrases or rhymes or vowel sounds become the foundation of something special. I’m also a big believer in doing object writing and sense-bound free writing before sitting down with the guitar. It’s good to wake the mind up and really dig deep. I also think it’s vital to be a great reader, which is a good reminder to myself. Life gets so busy and you have to be disciplined with your craft and your art. Great writers are almost always great readers. I’m excited to enter my next season of song writing and determined to push myself into new creative places. I’ve been so busy releasing and recording albums lately, so diving back into song writing is going to be the greatest elixir.

Your previous two albums, both released in 2017, were very different, with the lush production on STARGAZER including warm string arrangements and an expansive production sound; complimented by the more stripped back, NATURAL album, featuring a series of duets with seven different guest female vocalists. Do you like to challenge yourself and take chances in your musical vision?

Yeah absolutely. It’s always more exciting when you’ve got a concept in mind. You can’t cover all ground on one album. If you’re recording an album live, the acoustic guitar is going to sound different, because all the mics are bleeding onto each other when you’re live. That’s a great sound, but it’s really different from a very isolated and clean sound, like you hear on STARGAZER. It’s not right or wrong. I think of Neil Young’s “Harvest Moon” and compare that to Paul Simon’s Graceland. Both magnificent recordings, but captured so differently. I recorded STARGAZER and NATURAL back-to-back with the same producer, Josh Kaler, so our approach with those two albums was very deliberate. We were excited for those two albums to be totally different, even when we recorded some of the same songs on both albums. I’m already starting to think about the next recording concept, which can really influence the song writing. When I was writing the STARGAZER album, almost everything I was listening to was produced by Jeff Lynne. And you can hear that in the songs and in the production. 

You spent a lot of years on the road, touring and exploring new places with Jess, your lovely wife, as your constant companion. The arrival of your first child, Lily, has now changed this lifestyle model dramatically. Can you tell me how lockdown has reshaped your plans going forward?

Lily spent the first 18 months of her life on the road with us before Covid hit – So actually, being locked down at home was foreign to all of us. Lily really thrived on the road before Covid, which was wonderful. I still love the idea of showing her the world and having her experience so many places and things. We’re lucky to be in a beautiful part of the world, on the New England coast, so being at home for so long had its benefits. I think with Lily’s age, it all happened at a good time, all things considered. We have a new love and appreciation for home. Now that we’re starting to see the light and reschedule tours, our plans moving forward are pretty much the same. My whole family is still committed to sticking together and really looking forward to our next adventures out in the world. With a child’s development I think things change on an almost daily basis, so it’s always a fluid thing. Jess and I are always talking about what’s best for Lily. When it’s best for her to chill at the hotel while I go play a show… things like that. We always agree that our family is in a better place when we can all stay together and that the pros of touring together greatly outweigh the cons. We probably are a bit unconventional when it comes to child-rearing, but I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. 

The reality of being more in the studio as a musician has led to you cutting back on the miles you have clocked up in visiting new territories. Will online performance become a key part of your new dynamic as a musician?

We were all so lucky to have livestreaming when Covid hit. Our online shows brought together this beautiful community of people and I’ll always be sentimental about that. We all saved each other in a lot of ways. So, I’m excited to continue that a bit and also do some hybrid shows as I’m performing live. I think that’s the future and I embrace that. But no, I don’t envision cutting back on touring to do more virtual shows. My first love is touring and performing live and nothing will ever replace that. There is no way to recreate the magic of a great live performance and the connection to a great live audience. I love the whole experience, even the miles on the highway.

How big an issue is the lack of royalties from downloads and streaming. Getting a sufficient income from what you do is becoming a much greater challenge?

It just depends on how you look at it, I suppose. I don’t think anybody is claiming that streaming is a sustainable business model for recorded music. But I view it as more of a discovery platform. Don’t get me wrong, it would be fabulous if artists made more money from recorded music, but that feels a bit out of my control. Things always change and evolve, so I’m sure in twenty years we’ll have a different music business model. With what I do, I’ve always made the majority of my income from live performance and live merch sales and that income has steadily grown for me over the years (excluding the obvious two years, 2020 & 2021!). So, I’m focused on just growing all of those avenues that I can and enjoying the ride. We also recently launched our Patreon page, with the exclusive early release of my upcoming covers album “Forget-Me-Nots.” I love Patreon, but it openly feels like a way to compensate artists properly for their work. In a perfect world, a platform like that wouldn’t be needed, but it’s really been a wonderful new addition to our career  livelihood.

What role does Jess play in the overall issues of being a self-sufficient musician. With live tours being replaced by online gigs, what does the future look like when you try to tweak your business approach?

Things are continuing to change in real time and we are doing our best to be smart and to stay ahead of the curve. It’s a time of great uncertainty, so I feel like you have to commit to something and then stay focused on it. Life’s been a roller-coaster for everyone. Jess is always my rock and I lean on her so much. My manager is also a wonderful steady person, who I trust so much. We’ve been fortunate to have projects come in for us during this time - We recently signed a book deal with Schiffer Publishing for our first children’s book, If I Were The Moon, adapted from my song of the same title. And a couple of great fans/friends Rick and Marianne Chester, executive produced and funded two double albums for me that were recorded during the pandemic. We’re so grateful. People have been amazing to us, especially in the last 18 months, and that’s the only reason I’m still making music full-time right now. The kindness and generosity that people have showed us, is something I’ll carry with me for the rest of my life. Our business model and approach has been to follow passion, work hard and make your own luck. So far, so good. We’ve been running on faith, but it does seem like the road appears for us, when we put our entire hearts into something. That’s another lesson of the pandemic that I’ll always carry with me.

On the new album, you called upon the production talents of Neilson Hubbard, who also played drums on the recordings. Having used Josh Kaler on the previous two albums, what key differences does a new producer bring to the overall project and the final sound?

Neilson actually produced two of my earlier albums, EMPTY SEAT ON A PLANE and STAY HERE WITH ME, so working with Josh Kaler was actually a bigger departure for me. But that was a great experience for me too. Josh is a brilliant musician and producer, who had a different production approach in the studio for STARGAZER and NATURAL, partly because of my input and what I was going for. My recordings with Josh were done in a more layered, Jeff Lynne type approach, which also can work beautifully. I really enjoyed my time working with Josh. But yes, a producer can (and should) have an immense impact on an album. I’m not a producer per se, but it feels like a big balancing act. I think it’s important for a producer to understand you, so they can get the very best performances out of you. And it also feels like they should bring something stylistic to the table, while still making a record for you. You’re paying them to steer the ship and I enjoy leaning on people I trust.

Who were your greatest influences when you started out a song-writer? 

Oh, so many great writers… but a few stand out – James Taylor, Springsteen, The Beatles, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Tom Petty and Paul Simon. Those are the ones where I learned every song and really absorbed it. When you do that, certain artists really become part of your DNA as a songwriter. I remember learning how to play guitar after quitting art school. I was so mesmerized by the whole thing. I got these extra-large coffees from the 24-hour Dunkin Donuts near my house and stayed up until sunrise every single day. There wasn’t a loneliness there. Music and songs became a real friend and comfort to me. And it still feels like that. 

Your debut album, THE RUNNER (2009), brought you to music media attention and have you been pleased with the arc of your career since that initial release?

I am quite happy and proud of my career path. It’s been slow and steady. The journey is not always at my desired speed, but it’s been a beautiful one. And when I am feeling discouraged, I’ve learned to not compare my story with others. That’s a recipe for unhappiness and unproductivity. This business will keep you humble and I usually don’t mind that. In the last few months, I’ve announced the publishing deal and a new booking agency deal with Strada Music to represent me in Ireland, the UK & Europe – This is literally the stuff of my dreams. And in those same months I’ve been rejected in places I didn’t expect. That’s the business. Being able to ride out those highs and lows is an important part of this job. 

The new album is your seventh release and one that sees your song-writing reflect your new perspective as a father. Songs like, Innocent Ones, and, Is There An Answer, reflect concerns about the world that we are shaping for our children to inherit. How concerned are you?

Yeah, there are some real concerning things going on and also some real confusing things. When I travel around and play music for folks, I encounter 99.9% great souls. Where does all the division come from? I’m not sure why people feel the need to be enemies. I suppose that’s why I ask the question in the song. There’s some madness happening right now and also some troubling developments with the health of our planet. But at the same time, I’m an optimist and I can’t get down in the depths for too long. At least not if I want to be a successful father, husband and artist. If you believe Ghandi and strive to “be the change you want to see in the world,” how could we go wrong? I think my job in life is to be a model for my daughter, so I’m doing my best to improve every day and make her proud. Innocent Ones is about owning my shortcomings and realising that I must be my absolute best to be a great father. I know that kids don’t do what we say, they do what we do.

The studio musicians are different on this release, with the exception of former producer Josh Kaler, who plays some inventive pedal steel. Was this a conscious decision to colour your sound with different players?

Josh is such a genius musician, he played almost everything on STARGAZER and NATURAL, so doing this with a full band and recording live, is such a different approach and ensemble. I do enjoy working with new folks from time to time, but there’s also some old friends and favourites for me on WHEN WE WANDER. Danny Mitchell on keys and harmonies has been on every project of mine for last ten years. He’s unique. Danny also arranged all of the strings on STARGAZER. Eamon McLaughlin on fiddle and mandolin has also been on most of my stuff since Neilson introduced us ten years ago. At that point, Eamon was touring with Kathy Mattea I believe – For the last several years, he’s been playing with Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell. Not bad company to keep. Will Kimbrough is also out with Emmylou and many others and is someone I’ve wanted on a record forever. It finally lined up and we got Will on the upcoming covers album as well. Love him. The whole band was so great. Liz Longley and Mia Rose sang so beautifully on the album. Dean Marold was fantastic on bass. Juan Solorzano was another great Neilson recommendation and another fantastic player. And of course, I love Neilson’s feel on the drums. His drums feel so great but never get in the way of the lyrics or the mix. Part of the producer’s job is to assemble the right talent and I’ve been really spoiled with that. I’m aware of how lucky I am there and I never take that for granted. All of these players, singers and engineers are just so damn good. It’s like an all-star baseball team. When Neilson tells me someone is incredible, I never question it. We got this guy Fats Kaplin to play steel, mandolin, fiddle and dobro on the new covers record and he was just nuts. Fats played with John Prine, Jack White, Beck and many others but it’s never about the name with Neilson. It’s always about the player and what they bring to an album. I’ve seen Neilson with young players and he’s just as enthusiastic about a person with no credits. But eventually, when they are that good, the credits always follow.

You have been praised for your warm vocal tone and your richly smooth delivery. Is this something that has developed over your career or was it present from an early stage?

That’s really kind of you. I’ve really worked hard on my vocals over the years and I’m starting to feel some benefits. These days, I really treat it like an instrument and do fairly extensive exercises every day. There are so many muscles and physical things that go into singing. And so much of it is breathwork and muscle memory. Lately I’ve been doing more work with breathing, which is the fuel of singing, and the thing that can really produce a resonant, rich, powerful tone. It’s exciting to have some control of your sound and know that you can always get better. I really needed to push myself on my two lockdown albums, with one being a Christmas album and one being a covers album. I chose some hard songs to sing and I couldn’t have pulled that off even a year or two ago. 

What are your immediate thoughts as America returns to a post-lockdown environment? Are you anxious about getting back to travelling regularly or will you focus more on home priorities and recording activity?

I don’t have the luxury of just staying home. I’m either touring for the majority of my living or I’m doing something else – And I don’t want to do anything else! I’m not anxious at all about traveling and touring regularly again. We’ve got good frameworks of tours in 2022 that are taking me to Florida, Southeast, Midwest, West Coast, Ireland, the UK and Europe. I’m only anxious about Covid and things not getting better. The current situation in US is not sustainable for most full-time artists and there is no more aid coming. So that’s the only anxiety. I just want to get back to work 110%. I love playing and I love working. I do feel confident that 2022 will be very different, but we’ve all been through the ringer for last 18 months. It will be a little while before I fully exhale. I think eventually things will get down to a level where it’s low risk and the majority of people can feel safe about going out and congregating. I miss that feeling so much and I know I’m not alone there.

Anything else that you want to say as we wave goodbye?

Really appreciate the lovely and thoughtful questions. I so enjoy a deep and thoughtful interview. Thanks for the support and the love for the music. Music lovers are really what keep this whole thing going and I’m grateful for all of them.

Interview by Paul McGee

Steve Dawson Interview

Steve Dawson has been an integral part of the Chicago music scene for many years, culminating in an Esteemed Artist Award, in 2020. The city of Chicago wanted to recognize his body of work and to support his creative muse. Whether working as an engineer/producer from his home studio or pioneering new music with his various projects; solo work / Dolly Varden / Funeral Bonsai Wedding; Steve Dawson has always been an innovator, searching for new artistic expression in music. His Dolly Varden band and albums have always received wide critical acclaim and with his new solo album, AT THE BOTTOM OF A CANYON IN THE BRANCHES OF A TREE, he arrives at a very interesting phase in his musical development. It is certainly one of the albums of the year and, like many truly inspiring works, it incorporates great individuality and rich expression.  We were delighted to catch up with Steve recently and take a look back at his fascinating career, while learning much about what constitutes a successful life in music in these changing times. 

Can we go back to 1993 and the debut release from your band, Dolly Varden. What was the Chicago music scene like at that time?

Diane and I had a band called Stump The Host in the late 80’s / early 90’s that did really well. We had a great local following and were getting looked at by a bunch of labels. It was an exciting time. The band broke up in early  ‘93. Right around that same time Chicago became a music business hot spot based on a few artists (Liz Phair, Smashing Pumpkins) getting national attention and doing well. Diane and I wanted to keep singing together and so we put together an early version of Dolly Varden and tried out a lot of different musical personalities. The national music biz attention in ‘93 was actually pretty detrimental to the scene here. It became really competitive and not about music. It affected Diane and I pretty badly. We made terrible music to try and fit in. It was a learning experience, though. By 1995 I realized that chasing trends was a fool’s task and a soul crushing waste of energy. So, I started writing acoustic folk-based songs from the heart again and it felt right. Dolly Varden’s debut album, MOUTHFUL OF LIES, came out in 1995 and was made from that place of clarity. It felt really good and people responded to it. 

You grew up in Idaho and I wanted to ask about your early music influences?

I moved to Idaho when I was 12. I lived in San Diego, California, before that and listened to the AM radio. At that time – early 70’s – AM radio was a goldmine of great pop, R&B, novelty songs, rock n’ roll and even country. I loved it. My first favourite band was the Beatles and I’d sit on the floor in front of our giant console record player and listen and stare at the album covers. I was pretty obsessed. When we moved to Idaho, I got a guitar and started lessons and began obsessing over acoustic singer / songwriters like Neil Young, Paul Simon, Jackson Brown, James Taylor, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, Bob Dylan. I really loved Rickie Lee Jones’ debut album. At some point I found my step mother’s Stevie Wonder LP’s and obsessed over those. I recognized the hits from the AM radio, so that was great, but the context and depth of the albums was almost too much. When I read the liner notes and saw that he played nearly every instrument I was stunned and so inspired. Getting into Stevie Wonder led me to a lifelong love of all soul, gospel, R&B and blues. My dad was a jazz fan and I absorbed a lot of it and in high school started taking jazz guitar lessons. My favourite player was Kenny Burrell. His album with John Coltrane is one of my all-time faves. 

The music scene in 1990s was rife with record labels offering big incentives to sign. However, you seemed to opt for a more independent approach with a self-released debut and then two releases on Evil Teen, the small NYC label. Was this decision taken in order to maintain creative control of your career?

Well, it would be nice to say we “opted” to be on indie labels but the truth is we tried very hard to get signed to major labels and several times got very close. The issue also boiled down to the marketing department not knowing how to pitch us. We weren’t fitting into a genre and we had two lead singers. The marketing departments ran the labels in the 90’s. Evil Teen signed us because they thought we were going to get snapped up by a major eventually and they wanted a piece of that. That being said, they did a great job promoting The Dumbest Magnets and that album project remains a wonderful memory. I am by nature pretty contrary and don’t take kindly to being told what to do so I think it all worked out for the best. Who knows? I do maintain pretty tight creative control of my recordings and I would have definitely not reacted well to business people dictating creative decisions. 

You changed to Undertow records for the fourth album and were busy touring outside America. Bob Harris was a fan and helped your UK profile in the early 2000s. Was it hard to try and break new territories while still maintaining a home fan-base?

No, that whole period was pretty wonderful and I was able to take in the joy of traveling to new places and singing to new people. It was awesome and so surprising. We played in Paris and in London for the first time right when Dumbest Magnets came out and we really felt like we had to pinch ourselves to make sure it was actually happening. When I first met Bob Harris, I had no idea what a big deal he was. He was so warm and encouraging. The record was doing very well in Chicago, too, so it was the best of both worlds. That was a peak time for Dolly Varden, for sure. 

Spreading the band too thin may have led to your decision to take a break in 2003. Was this just a case of increasing personal commitments, less energy to tour and time to prioritise other creative projects?

Honestly it was the aftermath of 9/11 and us, and everyone, re-taking stock of their lives and realizing time is limited. Dolly Varden was on a very good upward trajectory in 2000 and 2001. Undertow had a fantastic team of people, including a great booking agent, the UK team was also great and motivated. We were getting amazing press and people were showing up for shows and we got on a few good tours. We recorded FORGIVEN NOW with Brad Jones in Nashville in August, 2001. While we were down there our house was broken into in Chicago and a bunch of gear was stolen, including a few beloved guitars. That was tough. Then in September the World Trade Centre attacks happened just as we were scheduled to fly to London for our first full band tour of the UK. We decided to go but it was really challenging. At the time people were expecting follow-up attacks and weren’t going out, really, even in the UK. Diane and I felt awful leaving our daughter at home and just wanted to be with her. There was lots of tears and anxiety and tempers. Our last night of the tour was in Edinburgh as the first missiles were launched into Kabul. It was eerie. We played well, though, and aimed to come back at some point. We continued touring the US into 2002 and building momentum. Both Mike Bradburn, our bassist, and Matt Thobe, our drummer, announced that they were going to be new dads just as the new album came out. Things were changing and we could feel it. It was never burn out of the music, though. It was life and changing perspectives on priorities. Diane and I wanted to keep things going. We put together the Duets album and the two of us went on tour with Jay Bennett and Edward Burch in early 2003. At the last show of the tour, in Dayton, OH, I got the call that my mom was dying in California. It wasn’t a surprise because after a lifetime of alcohol and cigarette abuse, she was in terrible shape. We drove through the night to Chicago and I flew out to San Diego the next day and was there when she passed. I thought I was doing fine with it all until I came down with pneumonia that summer and was sick for over a month. Then I knew I had to slow down and recalibrate. I started doing therapy. I quit the job at the record store with the abusive boss and took a job teaching guitar and I started really digging into digital home recording. 

Your wife, Diane Christiansen, is an accomplished painter and has received media recognition for her gallery shows. Do you draw inspiration from her work when it comes to writing music?

What a cool question. When I met Diane, she was the first person who was as committed and serious about making art as I was about making music. There was the sense that it was a spiritual pursuit or a path of discovery. It was a real connection. That is an underpinning of our life together and we definitely bounce creatively back and forth. Always have. She did an installation with another artist named Jeanne Dunning called, “Birth Death Breath: An Inflatable Opera” in 2016

https://www.christiansenstudio.com/section/birth-death-breath/

I did the music for it and that is probably the piece of hers that’s had the most lasting impact on my writing. A few of the songs since 2016 have been a reaction to the installation, particularly the song, “However Long It Takes,” which was on the LAST FLIGHT OUT album and was a bonus track on the CD version of the new album

https://youtu.be/enhkt_h_orc

In 2005 you released your first solo album, SWEET IS THE ANCHOR. What are your memories of that release?

Wow, so many memories of making that one. I had a little room under the stairs in our house that I set up in to record. There was a piano, an organ, guitars and recording gear all stuffed into that tiny room. I was learning how to use pro tools and so it took a long time. But I loved it. The songs were written in the aftermath of my mom’s death and 9/11 and the outrage of the W Bush administration, but also about watching our kid grow up. Angel would have been around 12 then and I loved being a dad. It was the first time I gathered the courage to ask the jazz guys to play with me. I had worked alongside some of the most incredible and acclaimed musicians in Chicago at the record store and always wanted to see what would happen if I played with them. They were so enthusiastic. That would be vibraphonist Jason Adasiewicz, drummer Frank Rosaly, bassist Jason Roebke, and cornetist Josh Berman. I went to Denton, TX, to have the album mixed by Matt Pence and learned a ton watching him work. He’s so good. I did a short US tour with a cool band that included Adasiewicz, bassist Casey McDonough (who’s now in NRBQ and the Flat Five) and Joel Paterson, and I did a solo UK tour on that album. Those are great memories. 

Five years later and solo album number two, I WILL MISS THE TRUMPETS AND THE DRUMS. How did your perspective change in regard to song-writing over these two albums?

I think it’s just life experience and learning. I am always trying to push myself to get better as a singer, guitarist and writer and to find new ways to keep myself engaged and slightly uncomfortable. I would add “recording engineer” to that list, too. I love doing that as much as any of the other things. My biggest problem is that I love too many things about music and I want to do them all. I want to be a great drummer, I want to be a great engineer, I want to be a great bassist, etc. I love so many styles of music. I could never pick a favourite. So, if I get an idea like, “I’m gonna make an Al Green song,” I’ll follow it down, never thinking about how it might or might not fit in with other things that I do. Just what the marketing folks at the big labels were afraid of! And I can get as obsessive about capturing the sound of the snare drum as I do about writing lyrics or singing. By 2007 or so I’d invaded Diane’s art studio and set up my recording gear in the corner. I was recording clients as a side job, too, and learning more and more about recording. The songs, I think, overall are about embracing change and the passing of time. I was in the beginning stages of making peace with the past and there was an actual sense of hope in the air with Obama running and eventually winning the presidency. At the time that was a huge deal. Looking back now from what we’ve just been through it all seems tragic. I’m not a political writer but I am deeply affected by politics and how people get along and the continuing struggle between progress and the stagnated power in the USA. I worked more in depth with the jazz guys on that album and this was the first incarnation of Funeral Bonsai Wedding. On the song, Mastodons, I had Frank Rosaly, Jason Roebke and Jason Adasiewicz all play together with me in the home studio. https://youtu.be/IICiNTILKO8 This was the first album I recorded and mixed all myself, too. 

Dolly Varden never really ended and in 2007 and 2013 you released new music. The original line-up has never changed and has the bond remained close over all the years?

Yeah, definitely. We are all really close friends. I love those guys. We just played a show two weeks ago after not seeing each other for 18 months due to COVID. It was really celebratory and we all fell right in. Matt is such a great drummer. It always feels just right playing music with him keeping the groove. Lots of gratitude all around in the band. 

Over the last two years you have had to come to terms with the Covid virus. The lockdown impacted all of the music industry. However, you used the time well and decided to focus on a new album which has just been released. Can you tell me a little about the motivation behind the new album and the process of writing the songs?

After the last album came out – the self-titled debut by FUNERAL BONSAI WEDDING – I was kind of spent artistically. I was writing things but nothing was connecting. It was forced. After spending time with my father in late 2014 I finally realized that a relationship with him is not possible. I made the decision to say to him that unless he could take responsibility for his actions, even on a basic level, that I could no longer talk to him. He couldn’t do it. (He had walked out on my sister, mother and I when I was 9, at the height of my mother’s alcoholism and depression. It set off a downward spiral of events that ended with her attempting suicide and us having to go live with him. That’s how I ended up in Idaho.) I started playing as a sideman more often and I worked on a book with Mark Caro about song writing (Take It To The Bridge: Unlocking the Great Songs Inside You)

https://www.giamusic.com/store/resource/take-it-to-the-bridge-book-g9234

When Trump got elected, I bottomed out, honestly. My faith in humanity was crushed and I was stunned that so many people would fall for his con. But they did. Then, in late 2017, Diane’s father died very suddenly. Her family, and especially her mother, have been like the family I never had growing up. We expected her mom to be around for quite a while longer but she had a stroke in December of 2017 and died in early 2018. I stopped doing pretty much everything but teaching and doing basic stuff like eating and sleeping. No gigs, no song writing, nothing. On some level I needed to find a way back to what the point of it all was – or if there ever was a point. I did two things that helped very much: My friend Jenny Bienemann and I started a monthly songwriter’s get together with a few trusted talented friends, and I attended a week-long song writing workshop with Richard Thompson and Patty Griffin in upstate New York. Between those two things I re-gained some semblance of purpose and inspiration. Patty Griffin, in particular, inspired me to write straight from a place of truth. “Write the song you are afraid to write,” she said. Once I began writing again, I wrote a lot. That would be late 2018 and 2019. 

AT THE BOTTOM OF A CANYON IN THE BRANCHES OF A TREE is an intriguing title. I believe that it is rooted in childhood memories for you?

The thing about my songs is that they feel like dreams to me. The images have that surreal glow to them in my mind even as I sing them each time. The image of my sister and I in the branches of a tree in San Clemente Canyon in San Diego is very real to me but it could be a dream. The memory is of a family photo shoot for some insane reason right when we had to go live with my dad and his new wife. The idea was to present us as a happy little family. It was so fucked up.

Again, you have opted to use a small independent label in Pravda records. Have you ever felt tempted to form your own label?

That seems like too much work to me. I’ve self-released a lot of stuff but the idea of being a label seems like too much. I really don’t like all the busy work on the computer now, so that seems like it would drive me crazy. 

The songs appear to be very personal in regard to the lyrics, with some hints at specific moments in your life. Is it difficult to expose real emotions to the music media?

It never occurs to me to think about the media or the audience when I’m writing. When I’m recording, I think about it a little bit but not much. So, when the album is released, I often say to myself, “oh, shit, what have I done?!?” That definitely happened with this one. I wanted to crawl under a rock and hide for a few months. But the album was exactly what I wanted to make and I stand by the songs. I’m an introvert and pretty shy by nature so none of the public presentation stuff comes easily. 

Do you always write from a personal perspective?

Not always. Mostly, yes, but not always. I’ve written through character’s voices sometimes. A lot of the songs are a mixture of real memories and stuff that bubbles up in the process of writing. Some of the songs don’t make sense to me at the time they are written but years later I’ll realize, “oh, yeah, I see what you were taking about there.” It’s somewhere between subconscious and dream state and actual memories. The music is the glue and the conjuring device for me.

I have to ask about the song title, 22 Rubber Bands, and the Garden of Johnny Machine?

We live in a Chicago neighbourhood called Wicker Park, just west of downtown. In the late 1940’s Nelson Algren lived here and wrote Man With The Golden Arm with the main character, Frankie Machine. That’s the backstory. There used to be a vegetable garden in a vacant lot a few blocks from our house with a sign that read, “Johnny Machine Garden.” I don’t know if it related to the drummer who called himself that in the 90’s. Angel (our kid) used to go once a week to house near the garden for day care. This would have been in the mid 90’s. On the walk home there was always a search for tiny rubber bands on the sidewalk and Angel would always find handfuls of them. There was a little corner store with a giant hole in the sidewalk along the way. So, it’s really just cataloguing the walk home and how nice it was to just spend time with Angel with nothing really going on other than eventually getting home. A sweet memory. That song’s been kicking around for years in different arrangements. Dolly Varden recorded a rock version of it that was pretty good but never felt exactly right. It took a lot of trial and error to eventually get the right feel for that one. 

You play almost every instrument on the album. How challenging was that?

I loved every minute of it. Challenging, yes, but probably my favourite thing to do. I would spend hours and hours working to get the drum parts the way I heard it them my head and the time would fly by. I find so much satisfaction in setting out to do something I can’t really do and eventually figuring out / learning how to do it. Same with bass guitar. What a magical instrument. 

How long have you had your home studio, the Kernel Sound Emporium?

I started working with outside clients sometime around 2006. It picked up significantly around 2008 and I was doing 3 sessions a week, pretty much every week, until COVID shut everything down in March, 2020. There’s A LOT of recordings out there with me playing drums, bass, guitars, keys and singing harmonies. I made a Spotify playlist a while back:

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1SFgZncEC2EZbLUnwpjnBX?si=57912140672b4e4a

There’s so many talented Chicago singer / songwriters and I aim to help them document their work without breaking the bank and feeling the pressure of the bigger studios. And I love doing it.

How do you see the state of the music industry these days?

Jeez, I don’t know. The best I can hope for personally is to be able to keep making stuff. The entire history of the selling of recorded music is filled with criminals and scoundrels taking advantage of musicians. It’s just the same shit in a new digital world now. I will say that the quality and abundance of great new music is stunning. The art of song writing is very much alive and well! 

It is so difficult to forecast a steady income stream. Do your entrepreneurial skills stretch to writing music for film or tv?

No, I’ve never figured out how to go about doing that. I’ve had a few songs licensed for use in films but that’s about it. My income stream comes from teaching, recording clients at Kernel, playing shows and little bits of royalties.

Do you have immediate plans to play live again?

YES! I’m playing the release show for Last Flight Out on October 15th in Chicago. It was originally scheduled for May 8, 2020. It’s a big show with the full string quartet, Jason Adasiewicz on vibes, full rhythm section and a trio of vocalists. I can’t wait! I have one more show in December. Beyond that I’m still balancing the safety of touring. Some friends went out on tours this summer and got COVID despite being vaccinated. So many unknowns. 

The City of Chicago granted you an ‘Esteemed Artist Award,’ accompanied by a $10,000 grant, to recognize your talent and to support further efforts. Were you taken by surprise?

Completely and utterly by surprise. Flabbergasted. It was crazy because I got the call just as the world was shutting down in Spring, 2020. Chicago is really making an effort to support the arts lately. It’s fantastic. I’m so grateful. 

You studied in Berklee Music College and majored in jazz I believe? Did this come full circle with your project that became FUNERAL BONSAI WEDDING?

In some ways, I suppose. Berklee in the 80’s was pretty different than it is now. There was a prevailing attitude against non-jazz music at the time and I felt like I had to keep my love of pop music to myself. I did have a few very good teachers and I learned a lot about chords and harmony and arranging. It also helped me realize that I was not meant to be a jazz guitarist. I’d end my practice sessions by working on song writing and it always felt like a huge relief. Some of that is why I was slow to ask the Chicago jazz guys I was working with at the Jazz Record Mart if they’d ever consider playing my songs with me. Once I did, though, it was magical. The attitude was the complete opposite of the snobby Berklee jazz cats. Open minded, all-in, enthusiastic. 

Can you tell me about the collaboration within FUNERAL BONSAI WEDDING as a project?
I was playing more and more with those guys around 2010 or so and the natural next step seemed to be making a record with them. The process of collaboration with the musicians was not all that different than working with Dolly Varden. I’m not a bandleader who tells people what to play. I like to play the song for them and have them react and come up with a part and to keep trying until it comes together. Frank and the two Jasons have worked together so much that there was a lot of dialogue between them about how to have their parts interact. It was cool to be a part of and I mostly let them do their thing. They are all three great bandleaders themselves with lots of experience arranging. When it worked best, I literally felt like I was flying. 

Tell me about the LIVE AT SIMON’S release and what was behind the recording?

I used to do a yearly birthday show at a little bar on the north side of Chicago called Simon’s. We’d stuff the band along the wall and the place would get packed. We wouldn’t rehearse in advance so it was all improvised. They basically knew quite a few of my songs, though, so the structures were in place. I made up a handful of blues / soul instrumentals each time, too, all named after food. It was fun and silly and included a lot of whiskey. A friend used to come and record the shows and at some point, gave me all the audio so I did the best mix I could and put it up on Bandcamp. 

Your work with Jason Adasiewicz, Jason Roebke and Frank Rosaly has opened up new ways of playing and I wanted to ask how your approach to song-writing has changed by getting together with jazz musicians?

Some of the songs written for the debut FUNERAL BONSAI WEDDING LP were specifically written with a lot of open space so the band could expand and contract in time. So, for instance, Ezra Pound and the Big Wood River has a lot spots where it lingers on an E chord and the band plays with the time until I start singing again. That was purposeful in the song writing. The Liquor Store Fire does a bit of that, too. I wanted to bring in some of what they do best – improvise over free structures – while maintaining the songs. The new album, LAST FLIGHT OUT, does a bit of that but because of the string arrangements we had to stick to a more-strict form most of the time. 

You teach music at the Old Town School of Folk Music in Chicago. Does this inspire you in your approach to new composition? 

Yes, in so many ways. I think learning all those old folk songs has been a huge deal. Also, just being there in the song writing classes while so many students give their all and write beautiful songs each week. And just being around music constantly with guitar in hand, problem solving and moving my hands on the neck has helped. 

Any final thoughts that you want to leave us with?

As I was answering these questions and thinking back all the way to Stump the Host and the late 80’s I was thinking that I really am a tortoise rather than a hare. The stuff I was writing and doing in the 80’s showed some talent and drive but I really wasn’t there. In some ways I feel like I’m only now beginning to get a handle on things. Some people really get it early on, like Phoebe Bridgers or Bob Dylan. They seem to have it all figured out in their 20’s. Amazing, really. It’s taken me 30 years of pretty constant work to get to a place where I feel like I’m writing and playing well. Thanks so much for the great questions and for the interview.

Interview by Paul McGee

Moot Davis Interview

Moot Davis was born and raised in New Jersey a launching pad for some of high profile careers in music history. Starting out as a stage actor a career which saw him working in the U.S. and Europe. During this period he began writing songs during downtime at rehearsals. These songs, in demo quality, formed his first gig sales CD which now seems lost in the mists of time. It was my first encounter with Davis and I was immediately taken with the songs. Some of the players such as Chris Scruggs, Andy Gibson and Chris Dettloff would be known to readers of Lonesome Highway. The song writing and performances were great even if the overall sound lacked the hand of a producer who could bring it up a notch.

Rosie Flores was a key factor in Moot making to Nashville. She , in turn, introduced him to her then producer Peter Anderson. This resulted in Davis moving to Hollywood, California to work on his Little Dog debut with Anderson. Some of these songs featured in films such as Academy Award-winning CRASH and horror hit THE HILLS HAVE EYES. These early successes have earned him many film and TV placements of his material to date.

His previous, well-received albums include MOOT DAVIS, ALREADY MOVED ON, MAN ABOUT TOWN, GOIN’ IN HOT and his last album HIERARCHY OF CROWS which was released in 2017. We took the opportunity to catch up with Davis on the release of his latest offering SEVEN CITIES OF GOLD (October 2021).

The new album continues the trajectory of the last album with your contrasting of country, rock and other influences. Was that based on the reaction to HIERARCHY OF CROWS or more directly from your own instincts?

I think that it’s the combination of music styles that I like personally to listen to and when putting the album songs together, there were both the “California country” type songs and the more hard rock/experimental type and then a few that fall somewhere in the middle. So, it wasn’t really based on the reaction to the Hierarchy album but more my leaning towards more variety on an album.       

Yeah, I kind of feel like I’ve already started that with the past two or three albums. Certainly with songs on this album like, Seven Cities of Gold and Anunnaki War Bride and previous album tracks like Destroyer and Hemophiliac Of Love, I feel like I’ve stepped out from behind the cutout of what traditional country music is. 

Like pretty much every musician the last 18 months have been difficult for obvious reasons. How did you work your way through that time?

Well even though touring stopped we were still working full-time on the album. So, I just dug in deeper and luckily, when things got really bad, all the actual recording had been done. Then we went into the mixing phase, which took a while, so thankfully we had the time. Other then that, it was a lot of hanging out at my little farm house in rural New Jersey with my girlfriend, Katie. That and copious amounts of rum and vodka.

Having played a part in the early revival of a more traditional country music down on Lower Broadway do you find the way it has developed since was something you could have foreseen?

I’m not sure I ever gave it much thought, even when I was down there 20 years ago I was still doing 99% original music. I recently started playing Layla’s again, maybe once a month or so and still doing 99% original music. That’s unheard of down there, everyone is doing covers and maybe one original song thrown in. So I just always kept my head down and fought to play my own songs. Because if you think about it, that town was built on songwriting and songwriters.

Equally has the turmoil that has arisen in the United States been a factor at all in your outlook?

Well, I think there’s a pretty visible divide here and the fires seems to be stoked by certain factions. However, I just keep moving along, doing my thing all the while, keeping a distant, skeptical and suspicious eye on all that’s going on. 

You have been based in LA and Nashville and currently back on the East Coast. How much does location have a part to play in your pursuits? 

I just have to travel more now, we recorded most of the album in Los Angeles and so there were a lot of weekends I had to fly out there. My girlfriend’s a flight attendant so it makes traveling a lot easier for me. I was very grateful to be living where I am currently, during this whole past 18 months. Pretty removed from everything. 

Looking back how much does luck, location and timing play a part in forging a career in music?

I think luck plays a part, I think you also have to be prepared as much as you can be. The landscape is so strange now in the music business, I can’t tell what’s luck and what’s not. And I would think timing is probably huge in relationship to success but it’s never been something that I’ve had my finger on. I was very lucky and came along with the right time to work with Pete Anderson, just as he and Dwight were parting ways. And I was lucky in getting all those songs and film and television. Up to 24 at this point. As for location, I think it plays a big part in the beginning. The town I live in now, Sergeantsville, New Jersey was where I originally met Rosie Flores years ago and it was her that told me I should move to Nashville. Once I moved to Nashville and kicked around for a few months, Rosie came in for a beer at Tootsie’s where I was playing and watched our set. After that she invited me to go on the road with her. On the road, I played her some demos of the album I was making and she suggested that once it was finished I send it to Pete Anderson. So I guess to answer your question I think it’s all very important, but also completely unable to be premeditated. I mean, you can visualize things that you want to have happen and you can be as prepared as possible but I believe there’s another force at hand. What that is, I don’t know but at times in my career, I’ve felt it.

You stated out being involved in acting and later had some of your songs used in films. Are the activities of actor and musician still something that you have a joint interest?

Yes, I believe that one feeds the other, and recharges the other. I think being a band leader has a lot of challenges and sometimes to recharge, I like to get involved in some sort of theater work. Not musicals mark you, I can’t stand them. But stage plays, where you show up and just know your stuff and do your thing and all the worrying is left of someone else. All decisions, managing, all that kind of stuff, it’s just nice to take a break from it and still do something creative and be in front of people.

When you consider all things together do you think you have got to the place you wanted to be?

Well, I think artistically, yes. I’m very proud of the songs that I write and the albums that we’re making. However, career-wise, I still see myself as very much the outsider and largely ignored. 

Your influences, musically, are pretty wide-ranging and on your site there are mentions of T Rex, Guns & Roses alongside Willie Nelson and Rosie Flores. Are they (and others) still touchstones for your writing?

Absolutely. I really fell in love with classic country music and with no one more so than Hank Williams. But I also grew up with a lot of Bob Dylan, Roxy Music and all that great 60s and 70s rock and roll. I love all the old standards as well and Sinatra and Dean Martin, Louis Armstrong and some more recent versions of that sort of thing by Harry Connick Jr. But where I write from is bookended by classic country and 60s and 70s rock music. I do hope to get an upright piano and learn some chords on there because I think I could come up with some really cool songs, different kinds of songs.

There are essentially a collection of relationship songs on the album from the harsh rockin’ sounds and lyrics of the closing track Annunaki War Bride to the opening Hey Hey to the country overtones of Lassoed And Lost or the more acoustic Turn In The Wind And Burn. Do write from that standpoint or what do you draw influences from?

I think that’s true. I think a lot of them are relationship songs. They don’t all have to be factual, some of them are fantasy songs. Turn In The Wind And Burn talks more about my frustration regarding my career. I think I’d write from things I see, hear, feel and think. 

I think your take on Crazy gives it a very different patina with the 12 string guitar so upfront. What was the reason you chose that?

I wanted to get as far away from Patsy Cline’s version and Willie’s version as possible. Try some way to make it my own. The 12 string was just something I had in my head for some reason. I also changed the chord structure two more simpler I-IV-V progression. I think that helped make it feel more in my realm. 

You write on your own for the most part but there are some co-writes on the album. Do you have a preference for either?

My buddy Blake Oswald, who co-produced the album and played drums on it, came up with the song California. I added a couple lines here and there but he had most of it together and I just thought it was a great song. Blake is a really cool songwriter and it’s fun to work with other people because you get some songs that are out of the norm for you as a writer. Other times, I’m just stumped and can’t come up with anything for a certain part of the song, like Hey Hey. So I’m playing it over and over trying to come up with something and then my girlfriend Katie, comes up with something that fits perfectly. That’s always fun too!

You sound like you’re having fun making this album. Perhaps because you don’t seem to have any outside considerations or directions on how best fit your music on to radio. Was that the case?

Haha, yeah well we were drunk for most of the recordings for this one. And there really was no consideration about the radio or anything else for that matter. We were just trying to make music that we enjoyed listening to and didn’t make us too sick to our stomach. It was the most fun I’ve had making an album though.

Are you going to start touring behind this album with the band if the opportunity arises form you?

 Absolutely, we’ve started playing shows locally and in Nashville again. Just getting the band together and working up our show. So we are definitely planning to tour, given the opportunity.

Any worries about getting out there when we don’t seem to have left the pandemic behind yet?

I personally have no fears about it, that’s just not how I am. 

Are there any plans to make it Europe?

Absolutely, however one of the places that we based most of our tours out of was France and they seem to be having troubles of their own. So it may be a while. 

What do you listen to these days?

I listen to some podcasts, like: https://sasquatchchronicles.com/category/episodes. We also have a record player here, at the house and we’re usually listening to Harry connick Jr and the album he did for the WHEN HARRY MET SALLY movie, Dylan’s DESIRE, Bryan Ferry BÊTE NOIRE or an album called THE SEA HAWK which is a soundtrack album to Errol Flynn’s swashbuckler movies from the 40’s.

When you find those seven cities of gold will it suffice your ambitions?

No. I don’t think getting what you want is ever enough. When you get to the top of something, I think you start looking for something else to climb or you begin to self destruct.

Interview by Stephen Rapid

Charley Crockett Interview

With four albums released in the past two years - the most recent a double album titled MUSIC CITY USA - Charley Crockett is on a roll, as prolific and industrious as anyone in country music at present. The icing on the cake was his prestigious ‘Emerging Act of the Year’ award at the recent Americanafest Awards Show at The Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, where he performed live on that hallowed stage. He describes his sound as Gulf & Western, incorporating soul and blues alongside his classic country output. His latest album is testament to that with a rich, soulful, horn-filled sound on a number of the tracks, while others deliver simple old-time country and vintage rhythm and blues. Twenty years into a nomadic career that has included busking on street corners and homelessness, Charley Crockett’s time has arrived and he’s shifting more merchandise, and selling out more and more shows on his journey. He’s also just about the most engaging and enthusiastic guy to chat with as we discovered when we caught up with him again recently.  

When we last spoke in 2020 on the release of WELCOME TO HARD TIMES, your parting works were ‘they better watch out in country music, because I’m just getting started.’ True to your word, things seem to be going good for you. 

Every day that I’m able to play shows and put these records out, it has got to be good. So far, I haven’t made a big enough mistake or said the wrong thing for somebody to get in my way.  We’re playing in Boston tonight and it’s all sold out. So, things are good. 

Is the vaccination controversy adding uncertainty to your tour? 

Things are all over the place over here at the moment. Some nights are selling out as soon as we announce the shows and other places are a bit weirder. With the ideological and political situation some people are afraid with some of the things that have been happening here in America. Unfortunately, the vaccination issue has been made political over here and so people with different ideologies and others who are just nervous might not want to come out. The policy varies from venue to venue. Sometimes it’s the promoter who calls the shots, sometimes it’s the artists and sometimes it’s the moms and pops. It’s complicated and widely variant.  

What is the atmosphere like at the shows, having been starved of live music for so long?

Overall, the audience excitement is the highest I’ve ever seen and that’s not just for me. People have been going for so long without seeing a live show that you kind of forget what it is all about. I can’t get by if I can’t play on a real stage and people feel that same way when they make it to a show. Maybe they’re nervous with all that’s happening, but when they get there, I think all of that trouble goes away and people remember why they come out to shows in the first place. The idea is to just forget your trouble at a show, I know I forget mine. 

It’s only just over twelve months since we last spoke and since then you’ve recorded and released 10 FOR SLIM: CHARLEY CROCKETT SINGS JAMES HAND and followed it with a double album MUSIC CITY USA. What was the thinking behind recording a double album?

When we go into the studio, we try to record a lot, I’d rather have a lot of stuff to pull from than not enough. Initially, we were going to put this album out with ten to twelve songs. We were going to go with that and save the extra songs that we had recorded. I knew that this year, with so few people releasing records last year, there’s a lot of records coming out right now. I thought, let’s just give them everything that we recorded, so let’s do a 45rpm double LP that is the highest quality you can spin on a turntable. That gives my audience more songs for their money, especially for my folks that like to buy vinyl. A twelve-inch LP that spins at 45rpm is the highest quality you can get. Also, knowing that this would be my tenth record, I basically wanted it to be a special product and something really cool. When I buy CDs and boxsets, like the recordings that Chess Records made back in the 50s and 60s, I can buy a boxset at some of the resale stores with maybe six to ten CDs and get a lot more songs for my money. So, with MUSIC CITY USA I thought ‘let’s give them all sixteen songs’ for the cost of a single album.

Did you have all the players in the studio recording?

Everybody was present except the pedal steel. They piped in the pedal steel by Nathan Fleming, everything else was recorded in Georgia. 

Having nailed the classic country sound on WELCOME TO HARD TIMES, you reintroduced the horn section on a number of tracks on the new album such as I Need Your Love, This Foolish Game and I Won’t Cry. Tell me about that.

That was very important to me because WELCOME TO HARD TIMES was a hardcore gothic country record, which I’m very proud of. The ‘Gulf and Western’ sound is my version of country music and it is important to me. Sure, I’m a country singer, but the New Orleans aspect, the soul and R’n’B is also part of who I am. I don’t want to get too far away from that and I make sure that sound is always with me.  

As always, the artwork on the album cover is striking. You get the feeling that you know exactly how the album is going to sound from the cover. That appears to be very important to you.

I want the album cover to work in the same way that I want the song titles to really mean something. I learned to dress up and present myself in the street. That comes from a hard background of learning how to make money on a street corner. When you see my album covers shining like that, you’re looking at a street guy who learned how to present himself. 

I get the impression that the album, though titled MUSIC CITY USA, does not only relate to Nashville. Am I correct?

Exactly, it’s a wider picture. I play in Nashville a lot and do a lot of business out of there. I’ve never lived there and will never live on that side of the Mississippi. The title is not a dig at Nashville, it’s a commentary on the people trying to come into that town and trying to make something of themselves, moving from Brooklyn or wherever. It’s like Justin Townes Earle said when asked if he had advice for a young person moving to Nashville, he said ‘my advice is don’t move to Nashville, go anywhere else’. I’m very grateful for the fact that the business has come back in Nashville because without it I probably would not be doing what I’m doing right now. There’s a resurgence in independent country music and Americana, and even the large commercial pop machine that’s also come around.  Back in the 90s people would have never have seen that coming. Country music belongs to everybody, the title could be about anywhere. 

There are a number of standout tracks on the album for me, a lot of honest writing also. The song The World Just Broke My Heart comes to mind. Is that from personal situation or social and environmental issues?

It’s very personal. When I wrote the title song from WELCOME TO HARD TIMES, I wasn’t writing about the pandemic, I was writing about what I was seeing. It’s the same thing with The World Just Broke My Heart. If you listen to the words, it’s a man going through the trials and tribulations of his life. If it also finds itself relevant to society, I got lucky, I guess. 

I’m hearing a lot of Buddy Holly on Lies And Regrets.

I really appreciate that. If it sounds like Buddy Holly, it has got to have something to do with Waylon Jennings because they were right there together. 

As someone who has survived twenty years in your career, do you harbour any regrets?

No, I don’t have any regrets. This record that you’re hearing, it’s just me. The major labels and star-making type people, maybe even sometimes blindly, they’ve done me a huge favour by staying out of my way. I knew twenty years ago that I was taking the long way and look what that’s given me. It’s given me the situation I’m in now and I’m not sure of anyone else doing it this way.

The closing track is Skip a Rope which was a hit for Henson Cargill in 1967. It’s powerful lyrics touch on racism and spousal abuse but many listeners may well think it’s a Charley Crockett original, as it’s typical of much of your writing.

That’s an old deal. Hank Williams transformed country music. Nobody knew that his first song on the radio was four years old. That’s folk music man, that’s the tradition.  Literally nothing has changed since Skip A Rope was recorded back then, I might even wonder if we’re going in the wrong direction since that song was recorded. I included Skip A Rope partly because, like Henson Cargill, I walked the road to get to where I am now.

I sense that you’re attracting younger audiences to your shows as your career progresses and introducing them to real country music. 

Yes, the big difference has been the younger audiences and these are growing fast. There’s a big difference between what Johnny Cash thought country music meant and what the commercial pop country world thinks.  One of them stood up fiercely to the man, the other bowed down to the man. Young people are starting to listen more to the independent country because it’s standing up and not bowing down.

Interview by Declan Culliton

Dori Freeman Interview

Unlike many of her peers, Dori Freeman has resisted the draw of packing her bags and heading for Nashville to further her musical career. Instead, she has remained in small town Galax, Virginia, where she lives with her husband Nicholas Falk and young daughter. Nicholas also enjoys a career in the music industry as a session drummer and producer. Dori’s DNA is steeped in music: both her father and grandfather are musicians and owners of the Front Porch Gallery and Frame Shop, which is a tourist stop on the Crooked Road, Virginia music trail. Her fourth album TEN THOUSAND ROSES is about to be released and she has made a slight diversion to deliver a more muscular and percussion-driven sound on this occasion. The common denominator from her previous recordings are her inimitable vocal stylings that rise and fall gloriously across the ten tracks. A much-loved artist at Lonesome Highway and the possessor of one of the sweetest voices in the Americana genre, Dori is a bona fide Americana artist with an acute attention to detail in her writing. Her songs are based on personal experiences, real people and genuine sensitivities, far removed from the formulaic and slavish songwritingoften emerging from Music Row and farther field. We spoke with Dori prior to the release of the album about the album’s origins and her seemingly ideal life balance between career and motherhood.

Are you still in New York after your recent show at The City Winery?

No, I’m actually home now. There were to be two gigs, one in Philly and one in New York and the one in Philadelphia got cancelled so I got to come home a day early.

How was the show?

City Winery was good, it was a packed show and seemed bizarre having not played live for a year and a half. People seem to be so happy to be back at live music shows, everybody’s missed it more than they thought they would. Everybody seems pretty happy. My set was a solo show, my husband Nic (Falk), plays in a few bands and he’s on tour right now. I hadn’t actually done a solo show in a while, which was a little scary at first. Half the set was from the new album and the other half from my earlier albums.

Was the show restricted to those fully vaccinated?

The show was vaccination mandatory or negative covid test within three days. Everyone had to be masked at the show too.

The issue of mandatory vaccination for concerts seems to becoming a political football and the artists are the ones likely to lose out. It seems that if you take a stance like Jason Isbell did, you’re likely to get a backlash as much as support for your stance. You can’t win, would you say?

You really can’t, especially with Americans (laughs.) Everything can be so divided and absurd; it’s ridiculous and hard to understand. I may be in a different position to some musicians because I’m also a mom to a child who is not old enough to have the vaccine. So, I’m very pro-mask, pro-vaccine, pro-whatever we need to do to protect our children. I want to go and play a show and know it’s relatively safe and that I’m not going to potentially bring something home to my daughter.

I’m loving your new album TEN THOUSAND ROSES. Unlike other artists you went for a fuller and more experimental sound than many of the more stripped back and acoustic albums that were born in the pandemic. Had you always intended going in that direction musically or was that motivated by the pandemic?

It’s a bit of both. I have always wanted to do something different with an album, more electric guitar and a bigger sound. I was also very conscious that most people were going to make post-pandemic records, the sadder and acoustic songs that you mention. That was something I did not want to do not because there’s anything wrong with that, I just didn’t want to get washed away in the mix of all that and didn’t want the album to be a pandemic - for want of a different word - record.

Were the songs written during those times?

Obviously being home so much more, I had a lot more time to sit around with my guitar and try to come up with songs. So, yes, I pretty much wrote everything during that time in 2020.

You gifted your husband Nicholas Falk the role of producer on this album. Given that I witnessed you silence a talkative audience at Cannery Row in Nashville by launching into a capella mid set, I get the impression of someone who is well capable of fighting her corner. Was there going to be any conflict giving Nic the duties?

(Laughs). He definitely deferred to me anytime I had very strong opinions. He has a lot more experience in the studio than I do and I really wanted it to be a percussion-driven album. I was very comfortable with him producing and also had a hand in not letting any decisions be made that I wasn’t on board with. He knows how to deal with me at this stage(laughs).

You also remind us that you’re no shrinking violet with the opening lines of the song I Am (“I ain’t a good girl though everybody thinks I am / I got a mind as dirty as the bottom of a coffee can”

(Laughs) Well, I was thinking of saying ‘garbage can’ but I thought people might get the wrong impression, so I settled for ‘coffee can’.

Was the album recorded live in the studio or remotely?

We all went to a studio together, the only thing that was done remotely was the song Walk Away, which Logan Ledger sang on. He sang his part in Nashville and we put it together afterwards. The rest of the album was all musicians in real time, six of us. The options were to either wear masks all the time in the studio or do covid tests, and once everyone is negative you can stay in your little pod in the studio. We did the tests, were all negative and recorded in the studio.

I love that song Walk Away. How did the Logan Ledger connection come about?

Thank you. I’ve been a fan of Logan since he started putting out music and we also had some mutual friends. He knows Nic and a friend of ours, Ric Robertson, who Logan has done some collaborating with. I just reached out and asked if he’d like to work on a song with me, which he fortunately did.

I see Dori Freeman very much as an independent spirit but also very much a family person. The song Appalachian on the album reinforces that. You seem to have the perfect life and career balance living in Galax, Virginia. How important is it to have family support close by?

It’s super important, I’m always trying to balance things and don’t always get it right. But having a home so close to my family and having them step in and help when I’m on the road is so important, particularly with a young daughter. It would be much more difficult to do this job without that support. I want to devote time to both my family and my career, which is not always easy and when I’m doing one, I sometimes feel I should be doing the other. It’s a constant battle, but I try and keep a balance.

I understand that you are third generation musician in your family and third generation Galax resident?

Yes, my grandpa and my dad are both musicians. I’m only second generation Galax, my dad is from North Carolina and my mom grew up here but her parents were from Kentucky and West Virginia.

I really enjoyed your live streams during lockdown, which featured your husband and yourself alongside your father and grandfather. Your daughter even made a few inadvertent appearances running across camera!

(Laughs) I don’t think they were really inadvertent, she’s very dramatic. It was good training, she did acting camp this summer and I would not be surprised if that is the path she takes.

Are there any negatives career wise living in small town?

Not really, because people living in Nashville or wherever, most of the marketing, booking and media stuff is done via phone, email our internet anyway. As far as travelling goes, as a musician you’re always going to travel a lot anyway, so it doesn’t really matter where your home base is, you’re going to be on the road the same amount of time.

Have you had time to consider what direction you will now go musically? Do you intend repeating the fuller sound of TEN THOUSAND ROSES?

It’s hard to say, I wouldn’t mind keeping exploring that but it all depends on what type of songs I end up writing for the next one and I never know how long that’s going to take.

Have you many shows booked as things appear to be opening up again for live music?
I’ve about ten dates lined up. I think next year will be a lot busier as things get back to normal. I did not apply for AmericanaFest this year as I’d be a bit nervous going to Nashville at the moment with that many people around. Tennessee is one of the States that is doing poorly with the vaccine take up. So many people over here are resistant to vaccination, you have all these conspiracy theories, it’s an issue.

Europe seems a very good market for you?

I love playing over there. I really want to come back to Ireland so bad, it’s my number one favourite place that I’ve been. I don’t want to keep harping on about Americans because I am one (laughs) and there are so many things that I love about it here, but the audiences in Europe are so much more engaged, into the concert rather than looking at their phones. They pay more attention and are more enthusiastic. I’ve really enjoyed the times I’ve had the opportunity to tour over there. I’d love to get over again in the summer or fall of next year. Hopefully Americans can get over there again but who knows where we’re going to be in six months from here.

You mentioned fellow musicians Logan Ledger and Ric Robertson. Do you actively get the time to listen to other artists like them?

I do, I try to keep on top of what’s coming out especially music from friends of mine. There’s just so much, it’s often hard to keep up.

And who would you have been listening to growing up?

All kinds of stuff. A big one for me was Nanci Griffith, who just passed away. She was one of the first female songwriters that my dad introduced me to. He introduced me to a bunch of different music when I was growing up: Linda Ronstadt, The Louvin Brothers and even Supertramp, all kinds of different stuff. He was a great influence.

Interview by Declan Culliton

Samuel Horner Interview

Sammy Horner has been involved in music ever since he could hold a guitar. His career has taken many turns over the years and he has lived a very colourful and rich life. He has been described as a human dynamo, a very apt description for someone who is always working on different projects and creating meaningful connection through his messages of spiritual renewal and communal inclusion. Whether playing Folk inspired songs, as part of The Sweet Sorrows, or releasing Gospel Rock albums as Rev Sam and the Outcasts; Sammy has always looked to inspire and connect with people of all demographics and to create a positive experience and joy in those who listen. We are delighted to have the opportunity to interview Sammy and catch up with his very interesting back story, as well as looking forward into his future plans

Who were your biggest influences in music, growing up in Northern Ireland as a boy?

Initially my family.  I was the youngest of seven kids.  The first three died before I was born and my sisters were a good deal older than me, so we had records from Elvis, Cliff, Buddy Holly, Gene Vincent, and Jerry Lee Lewis. I really loved that ground breaking rock music my oldest sister loved.  Another sister really loved Johnny Cash, we listened to Live From San Quentin a lot. Jacky, the sister closest to me in age (still 7 years between us) was listening to Rory Gallagher, Dylan, Cohen, Van The Man and the like, whilst my dad loved country music, Patsy Cline, Les Paul, Ernie Ford, Farron Young, Porter Wagoner and Charlie Pride. I think that stuff really gave me a good all-round view of popular music at the time.  Bands like The Monkees were on TV so we got exposed to that stuff as well. I loved the Beach Boys... those harmonies …even to a little kid, I knew they had something special. When I was 15, I decided I wanted to learn bass. The day I went to buy my first bass, the music store in Belfast was blown up in the Troubles. When I got there, the firemen had put out the blaze and the store was wrecked, but I still went inside and got my first, (and only!)  bomb damaged bass for twenty-nine pounds.  A friend pointed out a guy he knew who played. He showed me how to tune and a few licks, and I sat with my dad’s records trying to play along every day.  In my teens, Glam Rock and Punk came my way…I always wondered if you could somehow mix it all up…later bands like Jason and The Scorchers showed me that you could!  I must mention my friend Rodney Cordner.  I heard him sing an Irish folk song when I was 16, it stole my heart and became a huge influence on how I think about music moving people.

You first achieved media attention as a member of Scottish Celtic/Punk band, The Electrics. Can you tell me a little about the group and how you came together?

I was working in a small town by Loch Lomond in Scotland.  I had already been in a band called ‘Infrapenny’ with the guitarist Paul Baird.  When that band broke up, Paul and I had written a handful of songs.  We went to a Salvation Army studio after hours (they recorded the brass band music you hear around Christmas) so we would go in at ten o’clock at night and using an old drum machine, we recorded six songs.  A few months later a Festival in Scotland that I helped organise, put us on the bill…we were free, so nothing to lose. By this time, we had drummer Davie McArthur, and Keyboard Player Allan Hewitt.  Amazingly we went down really well and went on tour in France and Portugal within about three months.  At that point we hadn’t figured out a real sound. Paul was a blues rock guy, Davie was a metal head, Allan liked jazz and I was a country rocker.  Bands like Jason and the Scorchers, Lone Justice and the Pogues proved it was possible to mix genres and make a good noise, so since we all had a love for Scottish and Irish folk music, we decided to write that way and play it like punk rock…it worked.

You had a lot of success, releasing nine albums and recording in Nashville with Buddy Miller. I believe that the band has never officially broken up?

It all happened very quickly. We did the usual driving all over the UK /Ireland in a van for a few years, but a producer heard us at a festival and asked if we’d be interested in a little indie deal.  We made our first album but before we finished the record company went under.  Davie’s mother loaned us the money to get the masters from the studio and we toured for about three months solid to pay her back, BUT the producer, Tony Cummings, pushed the album to other companies and WORD UK took a chance on it. Within a few months we were being invited to festivals all over Europe, playing to big crowds every weekend.  Buddy Miller was on the same bill as us when the airline lost his guitar, so he asked if he could borrow one of ours. After his set he stayed behind to listen to us and liked what he heard.  We became Buddy and Julie’s European band for a few years and Buddy produced our Whole Shebang album in Nashville, where we met Phil Madeira, (Red Dirt Boys), who went on to produce both Electrics, Solo and Sweet Sorrows albums for me. It amazed us… we were just a bunch of mates who loved to play and we were always thankful.  We still occasionally play short tours.

Your musical journey has always included a strong Christian message. Has your faith always been an influence in your writing?

Well, you write what you know. I spent a lot of years in a seminary and worked on different levels for the church for many years.  I’m sure it comes through in many ways, especially when I am writing what people might call ‘spiritual’ or’ gospel’ music, but for me it’s all spiritual … all of it ... I don’t see any divide. So, if I am writing a love song, a dark song, a party song, a country song ... whatever … it’s about some aspect of life and it seems to me that all of life is spiritual at some level. Even exploring the dark side (which I loved) with Dark Country (Tunes From the Darkside), I suppose I was still exploring how anyone can fall into madness, jealousy, hatred, vengeance…like Hollywood keeps telling us…it’s biblical!

Your partner in The Sweet Sorrows and also your wife, Kylie, is a registered nurse and has worked with diverse groups in different countries like Australia, Saudi Arabia and the USA. Was she also a musician when you initially met?

Kylie had sung in some cover bands in the middle east, and church choirs in America and her family were into family sing along times, but she was still working as a nurse when we met.  She played flute as a kid and some piano, and she has worked on penny whistle and accordion / melodica since we started playing together …she has done great … and I keep buying her new things to learn … got her a guitar for Christmas and she also has electronic bagpipes…working on those!

When you formed The Sweet Sorrows with Kylie, who plays superbly on whistles, accordion and melodica - was this a result of your courtship between Ireland and Australia over a number of years?

I have been touring in Australia for more than 20 years.  I was on tour with a friend of mine and Kylie was at the first few shows when we met. She was getting a lift home with a guy who had asked me about my music so I gave him my email… he had it on a note on his dashboard, she memorised it and emailed me… the rest is history!

Your work ethic has always been very high and the total number of releases is in the region of forty! What is your writing process?

It sounds more impressive that it actually is. At one point I had three record deals with three different companies.  I was writing and recording for The Electrics, The Celtic Praise Series and Kids music.  I was like a staff writer for one company, writing songs on demand, so for about a ten-year period I would be making three albums a year.  Then when I went solo, I’d make a record, then tour every year.  I played bass for anyone who needed a hired gun, took opening slots and wrote for different projects for other peoples’ groups, (Scotland against Drugs, Play Peace inner-city kids project and a stack of charity albums). Blues guitarist Glenn Kaiser told me one time, ‘Blessed are the flexible, for they shall eat’…it was good advice.  You need to keep ego out of it as much as you can. Phil Madeira told me to take any work that came my way… always say ‘yes’, you can always find the musicians you need to make it work.  Mostly I have done that and thankfully the work kept coming.

As for my process, anything can inspire me. I read a lot, but comic books, theatre, movies, conversations, visual art all help inspire me. If I get an idea, I try to write something…I don’t use all of it but I try to describe, story tell or spin it into something.  Usually, I sit with a mic and a guitar and play with ideas around the hook line… I don’t leave until I have a first draft, then if I like it, I revisit and edit. I mostly write alone but I have enjoyed writing with others. They bring something new and different to the process.

You recorded as Rev Sam and the Outcasts quite recently, a tongue in cheek version of a heavy rock band, with tunes that reflect a religious theme. What was the motivation behind this alter-ego?

I haven’t actually performed this yet ... it was a pandemic project.  I’ve always loved Metal, Punk, Glam and wanted to find a vehicle to make a record.  It’s a bit tongue in cheek with lots of samples of old American preachers spun into the mixes, but a heap of fun.  It gave a chance to make a big noise... I’ve been playing acoustic music for 10 years now ... it felt good.  We have some interest in Switzerland and Germany for 2022…really hoping we can do it.

Earlier this year you released a solo album, Far Away Places. This looks at the Irish Famine in the 1840’s and mass emigration - events that changed the course of Irish history. Was it a subject that you always wanted to visit?

Yes…I have been wanting to make this album for years.  Crazy thing is, I grew up in Belfast and was never taught Irish history. As I began to read more and understand our history, it brought up all kinds of feelings, so I sat down and wrote the album (also during the pandemic, in one sense COVID- 19 gave me time in the studio I would never have had.)

An audio book for children, Finn and the Wild Goose, was recently published and you also released three separate albums for children; one of which put the ten commandments to rock music. Again, is this you reaching out to spread the message of faith and hope?

Those albums are really old now ... I used to work in schools and with kids a lot. But yeah … the ideas of not stealing, being greedy, selfish etc are still good boundaries to live by, I think. I worked for an Australian group called ‘Values For Life’ where we looked at positive values for living in community.  I would often speak and sing to 3,000 kids a week in schools and the schools and teachers mostly loved it. Finn and the Wild Goose was actually written for my grandkids, Finn and Evie. I never expected it to actually get published, but an old friend of mine since Record Company days asked to see it. Angela Little is an editor and ghost writer who worked with the likes of Moya Brennan - she thought it was great and suggested we shopped it to publishers ... she got me the deal … and I love the process of writing longer stories!

WORSHIP LIKE A CELT was released in 2018 and is an album that explores the ancient Celtic Christians belief that worship was something to practice in everything, or ‘all of life’. Is this the way in which you choose to approach your life as a musician and an ordained minister?

That’s it in a nutshell …I just try to keep my eyes and ears open.  You see beauty and truth everywhere if you pay attention … sometimes that is harder than others of course.  I also love that the most common-sense way to faith and life came from Ireland! I’m also deeply aware of my many flaws and issues like everyone else …maybe even more, so a harmony of faith and everyday life is a blessed thing, I am kinder to myself and others and try my best to see others where they are at…we all fight our demons.

Is this also the philosophy that led you to become involved with Trade-Off, your outreach programme to help others in need?

I have been doing this kind of thing for years. Mostly in Thailand but also in South Africa and Romania.  We started a ‘Guitars for Africa’ for kids in Beaufort West... a town with the highest child abduction rate in the whole country.  I set up a music programme for kids in the slum community of Khlong Toei, Bangkok, about 13 years ago. We helped fix up and repair a community centre for homeless and poor people in arid Romania, but Thailand has been a real ongoing work.  I teach electrical skills (I am a qualified electrician) and Kylie teaches first response medicine/ first aid.  We mostly work with Burmese refugees. They are treated terribly in a country that has been in civil war for seventy years.  The stories are too distressing and way too many to list here, but mass murder, landmines, ethnic cleansing, rape, hunger and extreme poverty are all causing deep misery and anguish. We train people to be skilled, to save lives and get better jobs.  After training we do practical projects and give every graduate the tools they need to do the work. In 2018, we got over forty men well-paying jobs and now employers want our people because they are trained better than some of their workers.  I know we aren’t changing the world, but at least we can help to change their world a little.  I love this work and our music is what allows us to do it…we set money aside from our gig fees and pay for the training every year so there is no cost to the people,

This album also saw you include musician friends Beki Hemingway and Randy Kerkman from the United States. They are a talented husband and wife, musical duo and live here now. I believe that you were instrumental in bringing them to Ireland to initially ‘house-sit’ for you?

Ha! I’m not sure that we were instrumental…Beki has wanderlust more than anyone I know.  Beki and Randy were a part of that Gospel Music scene back in the 80s.  Lots of us knew each other, even if we had never met., (Buddy and Julie Miller, Phil Madeira, Phil Keaggy, Mark Robertson (The Legendary Shack Shakers) Amy Grant, Michal Been (The Call), Larry Norman and more. Beki and Randy knew who I was and I knew them from the band, This Train, I had played with on the road somewhere.   She contacted me years ago when they were coming to Scotland for Randy to do a music recording course, I think. They stayed with me for a night and borrowed a guitar for a show which I attended.  We stayed in contact, helping each other out where we could and when they decided to come to Ireland we had just moved back from Canada and were hitting the road. They stayed with us for about six months until they found their own place.  We still sing and play on each other’s records... in fact I think quite a lot of their album, WHINS AND WEATHER, was tracked in my studio.

Apart from writing songs of faith and spreading the word about spirituality and inclusion with your Celtic Praise releases, you have worked in Bluegrass and Newgrass (with the Lasslo Bros), released an album of murder ballads (as Dark Country), Celtic club music with loops, fiddles and uilleann pipes (The Seanachaidh) and International Desert Songs. Do you ever slow down long enough to smell the roses?

I write all the time, short stories, kids’ books, poems, ideas and of course, songs.  I still love mixing it up and my mind runs on several channels all at once.  We often tour globally about forty weeks a year, so I guess writing is a lot of my life, but touring allows me to smell the roses in Ireland, UK, America, Australia, Germany, Switzerland, Canada, South Africa, Hong Kong, France etc ... Writing and making music is the very thing that allows me to occasionally stop and smell roses all over the world.

Covid has certainly made us all sit down and take stock. We see a fragile world and a people who are divided by fear and hope. What are your immediate plans as you look forward to the months ahead?

We haven’t been able to tour so writing has been my focus. We hope to do a music/ book tour in September and as soon as it opens up, we have tours awaiting us…looking forward to getting in front of people again.  I also have a book for little kids coming out before Christmas Evie Versus The Dark, I’m working with a fantastic Sri Lankan visual artist Sanoji Rathnasekara.  It’s been fun connecting her imagination with my words.  Also, Master Guitar builder Dan Comerford here in Wexford is building me a Rev Sam RAT guitar (recycled and upcycled) … because you can never have enough guitars.

Anything else that you want to leave us with before we say our farewells?

Thanks to everyone who bought stuff on line and to magazines like Lonesome Highway who have helped keep us in the public eye during these strange days…hope to see you all on the road somewhere soon!

Interview by Paul McGee

Olivia Harms Interview

It’s said that an artist seeking an industry breakthrough in Nashville needs to have a ten-year plan and be prepared to overcome rejection and hardship plus other hurdles. If this is the case, Oregon-born country artist Olivia Harms has done her homework and may very well be a household name in the coming years. She is the daughter of country music royalty as her mother is the Western Music Hall of Fame member Joni Harms, who can boast fourteen albums over a thirty year plus career. As a result, Olivia’s own musical career began as a young child, touring with her mother and eventually appearing alongside her on stage. Rather than uprooting and heading to Music City with stars in her eyes, the fiercely independent and focused artist divides her time between touring, her hometown in Oregon and Nashville, steadily developing her career on her own terms. She also took time out to attain a degree in Agricultural Business Management, motivated by having grown up on the family farm. She recorded her debut album in Nashville at the age of sixteen and headed back there last year to record her recently released album RHINESTONE COWGIRL. The title perfectly describes the author, given her family background and her commitment to not only country music, but the western lifestyle and fashion. It’s a flawless suite of songs, sympathetically produced and delivered with a voice that is unadulterated classic country. It’s also an indication of a writer with a razor-sharp eye for the minor and major detail, and the skillset to create great songs from both personal experience and sharp observations.  We arranged an early morning zoom call recently with Olivia to hear about her musical journey to date.

Hi Olivia, where exactly are you this morning?

I live in a little town called Prineville, Oregon. It’s about three hours away from where I grew up on my family’s farm. I live here with my two dogs and use it as a home base to get back and forth from playing shows. It’s not too early for me, I’m a morning person, I’m just back from my run.

You were literally born into music, touring and performing on stage from an early age with your mom Joni Harms. Did you feel under pressure to pursue a career in music or was it a labour of love for you? 

It didn’t put me under any pressure at all. It was an amazing benefit to have a mom who was so encouraging and supportive and gave me the opportunity to go on tour with her, and meeting people that allowed me to grow my love of music. It’s a big deal when you’re twelve or thirteen years old, writing songs and playing them to a live audience. It is a great way to build confidence. When I went to college, my mom just wanted me to do whatever made me happy, whether that was playing music or not. Music is what makes my heart happy and that’s what I’ve decided to do as a career.

You received a college degree in Agricultural Business Management. Is that parked for a while and has it benefited you in your chosen vocation?

I do get to use the business part of it. As a musician running my own business, I put a lot of it to good use, accounting and business management, all of those things. It also helps once in a while when I get to play an agricultural event and talk with some of my fellow farmers. But for now, the degree, in terms of getting a job, is on the shelf.

How have the last sixteen months been for you with restricted opportunities to perform?

It’s been difficult, but it’s been difficult for everyone, I’m not the only one that’s been affected by Covid. Playing live on Instagram and Facebook has been a wonderful option as it gave me the chance to still play live and interact with my listeners.  I also got to play some outdoor concerts when the weather was permitting. There have also been some house concerts where a select number of people are invited and take whatever precautions necessary. It wasn’t a complete halt but I’m glad to be back in the swing of things now. I’ve been playing local shows in the surrounding area of Oregon and also Wyoming and Colorado, which meant some out of state travel, which is nice. The local shows were solo, just me and my dogs and for the others I had my band with me. It’s nice to do a little bit of both.

You also spend quite a bit of time in Nashville yet you have steered clear of the formulaic sound that Music Row is churning out, labelled as country music. You obviously have a clear vision of what you consider country music.

When I was in my search for a producer for my latest album, I had a very specific vision in mind. I wanted to produce traditional country that was also modern in a sense and not sounding like your grandpa’s records. I was also looking for something that could be played on radio today but also reminded you of going to a honky tonk or a dancehall, something very Texas infused but also mixing it with a Buck Owen’s Bakersfield sound. In my writing days I’ve spent a lot of time working with older writers in Nashville, people who had success in the late 80s and 90s. One of the songs I wrote was with Dennis Morgan, who wrote I Was Country When Country Wasn’t Cool and Smokey Mountain Rain. Wood Newton was another guy I wrote with, his songs have been recorded by The Oak Ridge Boys and Steve Wariner. I wanted my sound to be traditional and not like much of the pop music that’s on the radio today. I also wanted the sound to be authentic with live instruments, like someone is sitting in, listening to a live band that know what they are doing. I also get to do a lot of writer rounds when I’m in Nashville writing songs. I’ve done The Bluebird Café, which was on my bucket list.

From the lyrics on many of the songs on your album RHINESTONE COWGIRL, I get the impression that you’re no shrinking violet and quite independent. Were the songs written from personal experience or imagined?

A little bit of both. A number were written from personal experiences.Goodbye is one of them and Gypsy is an autobiographical song about my life. Hey There Cowboy I wrote after going to the National Rodeo Championship in Las Vegas, which is a big event they have in December. I had some of the strangest pick-up lines that I’ve ever heard. So, I came up with that song about how I would go about if I wanted to be flirty. The song Kiddies Pool is about one of my best friends who had a guy go off on her. She was so upset, but I told her that if someone leaves you then you’re better off without them. I told her to come on over to my place, we’ll open a bottle of wine and sit in my kiddie’s pool. It seemed a decent song idea so I took it to Nashville and they liked it. All the songs probably come from real life in one way or another. 

Were they recently written or did you raid your war chest?

They’re all pretty recent.  I’ve been commuting back and forward to Nashville for the past four years but most of those songs were written in the last year and a half or so. Goodbye was one of the older ones, I left the writing room in Nashville thinking ‘this is one I definitely want to hold on to.’ 

You spoke earlier about seeking out the right producer to represent the sound you were looking for. You chose D. Scott Miller, who certainly achieved exactly that. What players did he use?

He did a great job. We used Brett Cobb as one of the guitar players, an incredible steel played named Smith Curry who’s played The Grand Ole Opry many times. We had Allison West who played the fiddle parts. We did quite a bit of pre-production, we did acoustic recording of the tracks and I did the vocal recordings. I took those home and played around with the tempos to get them right and to do my own harmonies. We then booked the studio for ten days in Nashville and tracked all ten songs in the first day, a very long day. Over the next few days, we did some overdubs and added the utility instruments, added some baritone guitar and extra vocal parts. We had what we needed after ten days and they mixed it and mastered it from there. It was completed over a three-month period but I didn’t want to release it with everything going on with Covid. I didn’t want it to be overshadowed so I waited a while and then released one song at a time to get people interested.

For me the song I Don’t Want You (But I Need You) is a perfect example of how a song can be mainstream and radio friendly and remains a country song.

That song is special to me. I have so many friends of my age that want to settle down instead of being stubborn and waiting to find the right person and instead say ‘oh well, I’m in my mid-twenties’, I’d better bow to the social pressures and just get on with it and get married. I’m not that way. I have a busy lifestyle and I’m capable of taking care of myself, and I’ll wait until I meet someone that makes my life better and enhances it. 

How difficult is it for you to get your music on the radio and getting it heard by a larger audience?

It is difficult to get radio play especially as an independent artist, but I do have many independent radio stations and shows, like your own one in Ireland, that support my music and I have had success in getting people from my demographic to listen to my music. I know my market and so don’t try to play at all the country music festivals. I look at Texas style country music festivals and the traditional ones where I know I’m going to have a better shot. As long as I also know my niche market, I can get people of my age to hear what I play. 

Have you ever felt pressure to go down a more mainstream route?

Not really. I’ve come the full circle, because growing with Joni Harms as my mom, I was literally thrown into traditional country music, listening to that music, seeing the artists wearing western outfits and hats. When I went through my teenage years, I had that rebellious period where I wanted to blaze my own trail.  I did veer away from country and western a bit. You can hear that in my first album which I recorded when I was sixteen, where I was going down the contemporary country music route. Taylor Swift was my idol when I was sixteen years old, so I was definitely going more for that sound. But the more venues I played and the people I met made me realise that my people are folks that live western lifestyles. I’m a country girl from Oregon that grew up on a ranch. That’s where my heart is and it’s better for me to be authentic from what I’ve lived and experienced versus trying to be someone that I am not.  

Like your mom, you totally embrace the western style fashion wise. Is that important for you?

Yes, it is. That’s how I grew up and I love it. That lifestyle and fashion is also an art form. Many people don’t realise how expensive a pair of boots or a custom hat are. It’s only when they see the price tag on those items that they appreciate the artwork behind them. 

Your mom recorded her album OREGON TO IRELAND in Westmeath, Ireland with The Sheerin Family. How did that come about?

Seven or eight years ago she was playing in Sweden and the Sheerins saw that she was going to be in Europe. They emailed her and told her that it was their parent’s 50th wedding anniversary and that they are a family band, love her music and asked what it would take for her to come to Ireland.  They offered to be her backing band and thought it would be a great surprise for their parents. Because mom was already going to be in Europe and loved the idea of the surprise party, she made it work. She was blown away as to how talented the family band were. They hit it off and she came back a few years later and recorded the album with them. I went over to Ireland with her in 2019 because I really wanted to meet them all. We went to England, Ireland and then on to Scotland and I loved it. I had the best time in Ireland.  I can’t wait to get back to Europe and get to play Ireland and Sweden. We’re booked to play a festival in Germany in 2022 and hopefully one in Geneva also. The people in Europe seem to get my music almost better than the folks in my own country, so I would be thrilled to come back.

I expect you’ve got a long-term plan going forward?

I do of course.  I have so many goals for myself but for the rest of the summer I’m just going to continue playing music. I’ve sixty more dates booked between now and October. I’m then spending October and November down in Texas and Oklahoma playing honky tonks and bars trying to broaden my horizon. From there I’m just going to continue to write. I already have songs for another album down the road but in the meantime, I have to push this one and see what happens. 

Interview by Declan Culliton

Interview with Sean McConnell

It’s ten o’clock in the morning in Nashville when Sean accepts my invitation to talk. All just part of another media day that he spends being interviewed and answering questions about his new album, A HORRIBLE BEAUTIFUL DREAM. 

It’s a self-produced project by Sean, at his home studio, Silent Desert, just outside of Nashville and distribution in the United States is being handled by Soundly Music, based in New York City. 

Sean has been releasing top quality albums since 2000, in addition to writing for numerous other headline acts over many years and producing other artists albums from his home-based studio. We were delighted to have the chance to learn more about this new album and to reflect on the path taken by this superbly talented singer-songwriter;

You grew up in Boston, one of 4 siblings and your parents were both Folk musicians, active on the local circuit. You moved to Georgia, aged eleven, and that must have been a wrench at the time, leaving your known life behind?

It was a big shift. We have a very big family up in Massachusetts and we were really close to them, and all of our friends, so leaving was a little bit of whiplash, especially at that age. It definitely played a big role in what I was writing at that ripe age of eleven years old!

I believe that you wrote your first song aged ten years old so you were obviously influenced by your parents right out of the starting blocks. Your first album appeared when you were fifteen years old, what do you remember about it?

Yeah, the first record was called, FACES, (2000) when I was fifteen. My guitar teacher at the time had a home studio and he said why don’t you come and record some of your songs. I will always have gratitude towards him for the opportunity and even for the idea to record some of these songs. It came out and I had it on the internet, sold it at gigs and just bootstrapped it. 

Would you say that this DIY ethic, which has continued through your career, was influenced by your parents and watching them going out and making music themselves? 

It definitely was part of it, seeing my parents playing gigs and working hard to write songs and get their arrangements together. It was a big part of it in the beginning. And then as with anything that you do, you want it to grow and you keep spending more time at it, figuring out what you need to do, booking my shows for many years when I was younger and then how to get a booking agent, it just organically grows.  I think my career has been a really slow build of one notch at a time. A lot of it is just putting in the hours, getting on the road, keeping your head down and playing your music. 

Between the six years (2000 - 2006), you create and produce four albums, which is a huge work ethic for one so young. At this point you have moved to Nashville and attend college at Middle Tennessee State University.

Yeah, in Murfreesboro, just about thirty minutes outside of Nashville. I moved for college and I never went back home. I met my wife in my sophomore year and we got married really young so I stayed here. Nashville is a good place to be if you’re doing music, so it seemed like a good fit (laughing).

Your wife, Mary Susan, holds a doctorate in special education and is the host of the podcast, Mama Bear, which assists parents in challenging child-care situations. I also read about your incredible adoption story and your beautiful daughter, Abiella, that you brough home from Ghana. It’s a story of such bravery and love and I was very inspired when I read about your journey.

Well, thank you. Both my wife and my daughter are magical ladies. I’m a lucky man.

Were you starting to spend more time writing songs for other artists at this stage?

Yeah, so when that happened, I didn’t go looking for a publishing deal. Warner Chappell Music was the first publishing company that I worked with. Alisha Prewitt, who has become a dear friend, heard a demo and called me. She showed up at a show and really believed in what I did. I was new to what publishing was and whether I fit inside that world. I was with them for about eleven years or so and it was about writing songs everyday with different people or occasionally by myself. It started a whole other chapter of my career that was unexpected and really exciting.  

You then moved to Rounder Records (2016). Was this a conscious decision to have a label do some heavy lifting for you regarding business issues while you got on with the creativity of writing?

Yeah, up to that point I didn’t have any experience with a record label. I always want to put my best foot forward and it felt like at the time it was a decision to try something different and reach a wider audience with some help from a label. I think that we accomplished that and I still have a special place in my heart for that self-titled record that we did in 2016.

The next year, again with Rounder, you released an acoustic version of that album, titled UNDONE. You decide to switch back to recording under your own name again and Silent Desert appears as your own publishing company and recording studio.

The early version of the studio was not what it is now. It was just a room or two upstairs in our home but it is now a separate building. Mary Susan is also a potter and a painter and she has her own studio, next to mine, with a kiln and a wheel. She is very talented.

You also have a farm with chickens and pigs I believe?

Yeah, it’s very grounding and we like being out on the land.

You were invited to perform at the Grand Ole Opry in 2016. How did you find that whole experience?

I can’t remember how that happened. But when I got the invitation, I was so thrilled. It’s something that you hope for and wait for. It was a big night. My Mom and my aunt flew out, my wife was there and it was the first time that my daughter got to see me in a venue. It was an absolutely magical memory.

In 2019 you released SECONDHAND SMOKE and you tour the album in Europe, appearing in Dublin on one of the tour dates. Was that your first time to visit?

It all runs together in my head but I had been there just one time before. I didn’t have a show but me and my tour manager flew over for the day. We had two days off after a show in London and it was at the very top of my list to visit. We were there for twenty-four hours, walked around and took everything in. It was amazing, one of my favourite memories.

SECONDHAND SMOKE was a huge record for you, certainly in Europe, and this new record carries on the momentum. I’m really impressed with it, thirteen songs and a very generous fifty minutes of real quality. I wanted to ask if this is a more personal album for you, opening yourself up and feeling more vulnerable?

Yeah, I feel like you’re right that this record is a little bit more of a peek inside my psyche, my heart, my family and my stories. The songs are very personal to me. It’s definitely a vulnerable record for sure.

What The Hell Is Wrong With Me, (daughter Abi plays rhythm sticks on it) has a lyric about “hiding from a storm and being frightened from the day I was born.” Is this something that you experienced or is it how you feel when thinking of Covid now?

It’s an early memory for me and it starts off the song. I remember being very little and being with my family on the front porch and terrified by a storm coming in.  It’s very autobiographical.

I Built You Up, is a co-write and a song that could equally be about someone in the public arena or some personal connection. Is that how you wanted to portray the song?

Yeah, I think we wrote it to be both of those things or even more. It’s really the propensity we have to lay our own wishes and desires, or expectations onto somebody and how, for good or for bad, a lot of times people just can’t live up to that. 

There is a sense of redemption on Waiting To Be Moved, with a lot of religious imagery in the song. Do you have a strong Christian faith or is it a more spiritual message that you are giving?

I would say both, I was raised Catholic and grew up with a mother to whom that was really important and she handed that to her children in a very special way. The older I get, my faith becomes my own and my ideas and my philosophies have expanded and morphed and changed, but are still holding onto some of those core beliefs that I was raised with. There is a lot of that in this record and a lot of the songs that talk about fighting with faith or doubt. It is a very universal theme and a lot of people can relate to that.

Leave A Light On is a standout track and very memorable. You refer to doubt and believing that there is something bigger out there. Is that a song to yourself or a to a friend?

I think that good music will fit different occasions, I originally wrote it for someone that was going through a difficult few years, but now when I sing it, sometimes I could be singing it to myself. A lot of people have responded to that song and thanked me for it and said that It speaks to them in a special way. I’m glad that it’s on the record and getting out into the world.

You have a very rich, soulful voice and one which connects deeply. Did you have an interest in this music growing up? 

Yeah, I’ve always been really attracted to Gospel music and Soul singers and its definitely something that I listened to a lot growing up. Also, there is something that I was born with in my spirit that just wants to sing that way. There is definitely some of that on this record.

Another record, LIVE FROM BASEMENT EAST, was released on digital format in 2020, with Sean donating the proceeds towards rebuilding the destroyed music venue and helping Nashville recover from the terrible hurricane damage that was caused last year. It is typical of the humanity and generosity of spirit that Sean displays in everything that he does, whether reaching out to community or caring for his family. 

I look forward to meeting Sean in person when he can make it back over to Europe and continue to build on the momentum that had seen him visit five or six times over the two years before Covid changed our world. 

Check out the wonderful music of Sean McConnell on www.seanmcconnell.com or from your preferred media source.

Interview by Paul McGee

Interview with Mike Harmeier

When they launched their career over a decade ago, Mike & The Moonpies were essentially a covers band with a repertoire of over three hundred songs. Having earned a reputation in Texas as one of the leading country dancehall bands, a succession of cracking studio albums has subsequently transported them from high end impersonators to one of the most pivotal bands in the country music genre.

Rather than stick with a tried and trusted formula with their studio output, each of their last four recordings has found them challenging themselves both sonically as well as in the songwriting of front man, Mike Harmeier. Those albums included recording with The London Philharmonic Orchestra at Abbey Road in London, paying tribute to the oft-overlooked country singer Gary Stewart and, with their latest release, ONE TO GROW ON, creating a concept album of deeply emotional and fiercely honest songs.  Described by Saving Country Music as ‘one of the most anticipated releases all year’, it more than lives up to expectation and will most certainly feature at the business end of our favourite albums of the year.

 Normal touring duties have recently resumed for the band and we caught up with Mike Harmeier as he headed off on the road for a series of shows in America before coming to Europe in the new year.

How did the Covid related restrictions in 2020 pan out for you personally?

It was definitely a time for reflection and a re-assessment of what’s really important to me. I got to spend time with my wife and three-year-old son that I wouldn’t have gotten otherwise and got a ton of things done here at the house that I never would’ve gotten around to. I’m trying to remember all of the lessons and epiphanies that I experienced over that year and keep that perspective now moving forward.

You like to experiment with ONE TO GROW ON following last year’s TOUCH OF YOU – THE LOST SONGS OF GARY STEWART and CHEAP SILVER AND SOLID COUNTRY GOLD (one of the Lonesome Highway albums of the year in 2019). Where did the idea of a concept album come from?  

We always try to steer away from making the same records that we have in the past. I’ve always wanted to make a fully conceptual album and build a narrative that flows front to back. When the first couple of songs started to flow for this record, I started seeing a character develop that seemed to be a little of me and a little of someone that I didn’t really know. I decided then to really explore who this guy was and try to tell his story. It wasn’t until I had written all of the songs that I really sat down and put them in the right sequence to build the character. It was a very fluid process and it evolved over the whole course of making the record. 

Did revisiting Gary Stewart’s songbook influence the musical direction of ONE TO GROW ON?

I most definitely learned some things while making the Gary record. I think my biggest take away from making that record was experimenting with new ways to move my melody lines. Gary always went to unexpected places with his vocal melodies and that must’ve really ingrained itself in me while singing this record. I found places to go that I never would’ve thought I’d find vocally.

Johnny Paycheck is referenced on the opening track. Is he also an artist whose back catalogue is played on the tour bus?

From the beginning of the band we have all been huge Paycheck fans and have built a lot of our performance aspects around old Paycheck footage and recordings. We take a lot of pages out of his book. We found a lot of old bootleg concerts that we love to listen to for inspiration and to get pumped up before the show.

Were the songs on the new album written during quarantine and do you normally write between tours or when you’re on the road?

Most were written during quarantine. I tend to write at home anyway but this time felt a lot different. Definitely more rewrites and editing than ever before. Once we started to build this character narrative, we did dig up two songs that we had never cut for any previous albums. They were songs we had tried but never found a home until now. Brother and Whose Side You’re On were originally written for a movie soundtrack but they lined up perfectly for the aesthetic of this record.

Did you have the opportunity to ‘road test’ any of the songs on your last tour or were they written after that tour?

We didn’t get to play these songs on the road prior to making the record. We hardly ever do that anyway, so it wasn’t a big change for us. We like to really arrange things in the studio before releasing them into the wild. 

Is there a chunk of Mike Harmeier self-examination in some of the songs?

Absolutely. I was consciously writing from a character’s perspective during the whole process, but subconsciously I think I was learning all the lessons that my character was speaking to simultaneously. It’s a very chicken or egg scenario.

There is a central theme of ‘growing up’ and taking responsibility across the album. Is this in any way a reflection of many years touring with the band and is life on the road less frenetic now than in the early years?

With over a decade under our belts touring and recording, we have all grown up quite a bit. We really pick our battles now a little smarter and I think we’ve all learned about what’s really important to us both personally and professionally. And we have all learned to appreciate where we’re at and take pride in the work it took to get us here. I think we are all more grateful people these days. Those are all major themes on this record. 

Adam Odor, who produced the album, seems like an unofficial member of The Moonpies at this stage. How important is his contribution both to your songs and your sound?

Our whole game really changed when Adam came on board. It was the first time we really had an outside influence on our music and business, that we welcomed with open arms. We immediately found ourselves on the same page with the same work ethic and he’s been paramount in both the sound of our band evolving and the way we operate.  

Were you able to get everyone into Yellow Dog Studios in Wimberley to record live or were you restricted with Covid?

We did a lot of pre-production from our homes. Everyone had built home recording rigs while making the Gary record, so we utilized those again to trade ideas and demo things out. We were able to all get together at Yellow Dog though to cut the final product. 

It plays out like an album made for live shows. How have the songs been going down on the tour?

Most of the songs are upbeat on this record and I think they could all fly for live shows, unlike some previous albums. We’ve been adding them into the set and so far, they are crowd hits. I look forward to when everyone knows the words and we can all sing them together. 

Are you finding the atmosphere at the shows even livelier than before given that punters have been starved of live music for so long?

This has been very apparent to us. Crowds are bigger than ever and everyone is really participating more in the shows. More singalongs than ever before and in general just a more attentive audience. It’s been feeling really great.

As someone who always seems to be one step ahead, are you already thinking of the next album and will you continue to strive for something different to this one?

We had a few ideas for a new record before we even started this one. We always have a trick up our sleeve and when the time is right, we will pull the trigger on the next one. We have some very cool ideas for some cool places to go sonically and a different approach to recording we’re thinking about playing with next time. Stay tuned.

We’re huge fans of Mike and The Moonpies having seen you play a number of times at AmericanaFest in Nashville. You have shows lined up in the U.K. for April of next year. Will you make it over to us in Ireland for the first time or should we be booking flights for the U.K?

I don’t think we have any Ireland shows this time but we are already planning another trip back over again. So come see us in the U.K. and keep your eyes peeled for some more tour announcements next year.

Interview by Declan Culliton

Shaye Zadravec Interview

Artists such as Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris carved out hugely successful careers interpreting songs written by others - today, Shaye Zadravec is following a similar path with her recently released album, NOW AND THEN. With an angelic voice and the capacity to recognise songs that deserve to be reborn, the album’s ten tracks include songs written by Jay Farrar, Jesse Winchester, Mandy Barnett, Paul Westerberg and Lynn Miles. Also included are two songs written by Ian Tyson, one of which is a duet with the legendary singer songwriter. The album has rightly been receiving glowing reviews, not only in her homeland Canada, but particularly in Europe, where she continues to expand her fan base. We chatted with Shaye recently to get the history behind the album and her chosen career. 

When did you start singing and did you receive formal voice training? 

Singing is something I had done since I was a child, simply because I loved doing it. When I turned eighteen, I decided to go to an open mic event. I knew I wanted to be on stage because I had performed dance and theatre previously. Singing live created quite a fear for me and I wanted to conquer that. From that first open mic event I was introduced to a world of music that I hadn’t known existed. I had been always in the dance world or theatre in Calgary and had no reference point to the local music scene. I was hooked from that first open mic and started going to more events, and meeting more people. I actually only started taking voice lessons this year after recording my album, to make sure I was doing it right (laughs).  When I listen back to my own music, it is hard not to analyse the notes that I was singing. It made me think that maybe I could’ve done things a little bit differently. I actually took the singing lessons throughout Covid just to keep me sane.

Based on the selection of songs for the album, I get the impression of an artist with exquisite music tastes or good parenting, our possibly both. 

I have two siblings and we have been very fortunate to have been exposed to all kinds of music from a young age. The arts were always very much encouraged at home, whether that be singing or dancing. My Dad’s father was a musician, so music was a large part of his life. I did find that when I was in junior high school that I was humming a lot of songs that were different to what my friends were listening to. 

Can you explain where the title of your debut EP NORWAY came from?

That was a very interesting story. I started working with my manager Neil McGonigill a few years ago now and he encouraged me to go into a studio and record some demos. To find out what my actual musical groove was, he asked me to interpret certain songs. One song that he suggested I try was a Chip Taylor song called I’ll Carry For You. I took the song home and learnt it, and went into a studio in Calgary called Airwaves Studio and recorded it. I was actually quite nervous, because I had not done anything like this before and we basically sat on the song for a few months. Neil is good friends with Chip and eventually sent my version of the song to him. Chip was excited enough to talk to his producer Goran Grini, who totally unprompted added some instrumentation to the song and sent it back to us. When we got it back, we thought it was quite a beautiful sound, having been unaware of what to expect. After that we decided to do a couple more songs with the same format, where I would record and send the songs to Goran who is based in Norway and he would send them back with added instrumentation. When we had the songs together for the EP, we were trying to figure out what to call the album and the guitar player that I work with, Tim Leacock, suggested I should call it NORWAY, as a thank you to this gentleman I had actually never met, but did all this work for me.

The two opening tracks on your current release NOW AND THEN are the Jay Farrar written Windfall and Jesse Winchester’s Biloxi. They set the tone of the album perfectly. How did the selection process for the songs work out? Were they chosen by you or did you have an input from others?

The opening song Windfall was the newest song in my repertoire and that was brought to me by Goran. He is a big Jay Farrar fan and asked me to sing that song. He also thought it was a song that may have been overlooked and had a fantastic hook to it. He felt it deserved another chance. He was right, I really believe that song could be so universal and that anyone could sing along to it if they wanted to. It also had the right vibe to be the first song on the album. Biloxi is my dad’s favourite song. He’s a huge Jesse Winchester fan and has always considered him something of an underdog.  It’s one I’d been intending to use in the project for a long time, having known the song so long. The Slider by Roy Forbes was pitched to me years ago by Neil while Mandy Barnett’s The Whispering Wind has been one of my favourite songs for many years. The album is mostly a collection of songs that I had always had with me at some point. It’s kind of a timeline of my music career so far. That’s where the album’s title NOW AND THEN comes from – and it’s also the first two words in the opening song.

Skyway, written by Paul Westerberg of The Replacements, is also very impressive. 

That was actually one of my favourites of the songs to record. Part of my inhibition as a singer is that I feel that lots of the songs I perform on stage tend to be quite understated and mellow. The common feedback I often get is that I need to pick it up a notch. I actively went out looking for a rockier song that I could make something of in my own way. I wanted a song from The Replacement’ collection and I found Skyway. I wanted to rock it up a bit, but I thought this is not the time, so I selected the most melodic song from them that I could find. 

You also got the opportunity to record a song with the legendary Ian Tyson. How did that unfold?

That was again through my manager Neil, who had known Ian for quite a long time. He used to be his manager and tour manager. Ian is advancing in years and lives in a ranch at Long View and doesn’t play that often anymore. We wanted to try one of his songs which may have been previously overlooked. We chose a Christmas song, Silver Bell and wanted to record it and release it as a single, which we did. We needed Ian’s blessing first before recording it and he invited us over to his ranch and we got to sit in his famous stone house, which is on his property and is where he does all his writing. We sat there and worked up the song. I was singing it with him to see if he was comfortable with my vibe and what I was doing with it. We then thought, why not sing it as a duet, as the song is from two perspectives and he was all for it. I was a bit nervous in his company, I just hung in the background while he talked to Neil and Tim Leacock. My plan was just to sing and if Ian Tyson approved my singing, that’s all I needed.  But he was very welcoming, not afraid to give feedback and eager to make the song sound as good as it could be. 

You also include another Ian Tyson song Summers Gone on the album.

Yes, that song is completely different to what people think of when they consider Ian Tyson’s music. Traditionally people will think of Four Strong Winds or Someday Soon, when they think of him. This song is totally left field, but also one of Ian’s favourite songs that he had written but slipped somewhat under the radar. When I covered it, I felt it was more of a crooner type song and not just a country song, even though there is country music content in the lyrics. 

Are you continuing to seek out somewhat undiscovered songs to make your own?

Yes, I do look for songs that would resonate if they were given a second chance. However, I don’t want to just limit it to that, as there are some songs that I just love singing at my shows, even if some of them have been done to death already. In terms of my recording career, I would prefer it to be songs that resonate with me and deserve another shot. Watching the Linda Ronstadt documentary, The Sound of My Voice, it seems like she was motivated by songs that sat in her heart, many of which got an extended life by her recording them.

Do you have a couple of gems that you’ve written yourself but are somewhat nervous to put out there on a recording?

(Laughs). I have written a couple of songs including a few co-writes and I do perform one of them live. It’s a love song to send people off at the end of the night with a good feeling in their hearts. As far as my owns songs go, I feel that I write goofy songs. When I look at what I’ve written down and try to work a melody, I find a lot of humour in the writing. I’m not sure I want to introduce myself to the world as a goofy songwriter.  That might be down the road a bit.

Have things opened up for live shows in Calgary yet and are you performing solo or with other musicians?

Yes, to extent things are opening up, but people are being careful. I’m actually happiest doing outdoor shows at the moment and with Covid still around that seems like the safest way to proceed. I generally have Tim Leacock on guitar on stage with me most of the time. I haven’t expanded beyond that yet, but now that things are starting to roll, I may change that. I have learnt how to perform on stage with multiple musicians and how to take the lead as an artist.

The song selection on both the EP and the album in the main are songs that could work stripped back or indeed with an orchestra. Was that a consideration in the song selection process?

The NORWAY EP could have been very difficult to reproduce live without an orchestra behind the songs. But, having said that, I’ve performed them on stage with Tim and they work surprisingly well. With only two guitars on stage there are certain melodies that may feature piano on the recording that has to be replaced by guitar. But it is possible to strip the songs down without losing the effect. When I do get the opportunity to perform on stage with multiple musicians all their parts are there on the studio recording for reference. It can work both ways. 

You must be relieved to be finally getting the chance to leave the house and get out and perform once more?

I really am. I did find during Covid that I’m alright with my own company. For an artist it is all too easy to develop inhibitions by comparing yourself with other artists that you see on stage. You’re thinking ‘should I be writing more original songs’ or ‘should I change my hair colour and create more waves’. You can start to get inside your own head in normal times. During Covid, when I took a step away from the visual stimulation that the industry encourages, it allowed me to concentrate on the music and not the other smoking mirrors. The negative was and is, not knowing how long all of this is going to last. You start to question why you got into the industry in the first place. But it is coming back and so many people need music and art in their lives.

https://continentalrecordservices.bandcamp.com/album/now-and-then

Interview by Declan Culliton

Erik Shicotte Interview

An ironworker by trade, Erik Shicotte’s days are filled with erecting fire training towers across the United States of America and his evenings are regularly spent writing songs in motel rooms. His mini album MISS’RY PACIFIC was recently released on Shooter Jennings’ record label Black Country Rock, quite an endorsement for a relatively unknown artist. With a booming baritone voice and songs about trains, trucks, highways and blue-collar workers, the album made quite an impression at Lonesome Highway when it arrived for review a few weeks back. Life has been like a rollercoaster ride for Erik over the past year as he explained to us via Zoom recently.

Where are you located at the moment?

Madison, Wisconsin, the dairy State, which is mostly home for me. I’m from here and when I’m not on a job I spend most of my time here. 

Before we get to the album, tell me about the ‘Mid-Western Guilt’ phenomenon that I read and hear about?

(Laughs) Mid-Western guilt is more or less a concept. Mid Westerner’s tend to be stubborn, hardnosed, complain about the weather but we have a strong sense of community. Even if we hate each other, you never let your neighbour down. I like to play off that a bit, being raised here and seeing how I grew up here. Sunday church-based lunching culture still exists here and there’s still a market for polka bands in Wisconsin. There’s a lot of unique attributes to this place that are very important to who I am as an artist and a person in general. But the Mid-Western guilt is a joke about ourselves because we have to be a bit self-deprecating to put up with the winters here. We have to be a bit masochistic; we get up to thirty degrees centigrade in the summer and negative thirty in the winter as well as the wind chill factor.

I understand that you have a day job as a steelworker as well as your musical career.

Yes, I work with a crew that builds fire training towers for local Fire Departments. Sometimes it’s military work, like air force bases. The towers are built for fire fighters to do live burn training on and can be used again and again. We build them tip to tail, from start to finish. It keeps me moving and it keeps me thinking. 

Is that lifestyle helpful in terms of your songwriting?

Oh definitely. Being out on the road and spending your life in hotel rooms is very conducive to the life of a country singer. It gives me both ideas for songs and the environment to write them. Typically, my songs come out a couple of years after the subject matter I’m writing about. I haven’t quite figured out how my timing works yet, but I’ve got a lot of things swimming around in my head for songs about the actual work and the boys on the crew. The song Niners on the EP is about a winter spent working in Wyoming building a tower out there and the misgivings of the crew, the weather and everything that was going on out there. We had boys getting drunk and not showing up for work and we had winter storms whistling down the canyon. It was the first song where I explored what was going on around me at the time. I wrote that in Room 104 at The Day’s Inn in Thermopolis, Wyoming. Some of the shit that went on at that job you never quite forget (laughs). 

Does that line of work limit your opportunities to perform live?

Yes, generally speaking. I probably could find some opportunities to play when I’m out on the road working, but the last couple of years with the pandemic and all the other crazy things that have been going on in my life personally, it was not conducive to finding shows. A lot of the places we’ve been, like that little town in Wyoming, didn’t have any venues to play except for the rodeo grounds, but it was the depth of winter and there wasn’t much going on there. 

There appears to be something of a revival in what is called Outlaw Country music with acts like Colter Wall, Jaime Wyatt and Vincent Neil Emerson, to name but a few, all making names for themselves. Do you consider yourself part of that community?

Personally, I don’t try to fit into any one corner. I’ve got this Waylon tattoo on my arm and that’s probably where my loyalty lies. Though I do think you’re on to something with that. There is a growing appreciation, invigoration and drive among musicians and fans, gravitating towards whatever you want to call all these niche markets of Americana and Outlaw, and it is growing. A lot of the people making these tunes are also very versatile musicians. I’m looking forward to see what Vincent (Neil Emerson) does next, since you mentioned him. He’s a cool cat, I enjoy his tunes and I think he’s definitely going to be sticking around for a while. I’m looking forward to hearing his songs for the next decade at least. I’m aware of those artists you mentioned and the bigger banner folks like Tyler Childers. Even around here there’s some local artists doing their kind of stuff and trying to find their sound. It does sound a lot like outlaw to me.

Do you take encouragement from the success that an artist like Tyler Childers has achieved without selling out and recording music on his terms?

It’s been breath-taking to observe, witness and listen. He is very much himself, he’s not a label and he is not bought by anyone. It’s very encouraging to see that happening because it gives the likes of myself and so many others hope that we can maybe make enough money to live doing this, to survive and maybe even flourish one day. It makes me realise that here might be a place for me out there.

MISS’RY PACIFIC was released on Shooter Jennings’ Black Country Rock label. How did that come about?

My management team is made up of Brit DiMattia and Ash Seiter and Ash had worked with Shooter’s label before and knows them. We were all thinking we would be self-releasing the album but Ash said: ‘let me send a quick text’ and low and behold BCR were interested. We pretty much had the record ready to go and sent it to them. We had also done most of the artwork and it just happened to be right in line with what BCR were looking for. Now there’s Jennings’ blood on my album, which feels absolutely insane to me 

The production for the album was handled by Aaron Goodrich, who also plays with Colter Wall. Tell us about his input?

He is quite a character. He’s been a godsend through all this. Ash (Seiter) had worked previously with Colter and knew all the guys in the band. I was on the road working during this process and we were trying to figure out who we could get to play on the album. Ash got in touch with Aaron, who really took the reins on the recording. I never at any given point got the opportunity to sit in the studio with any of the players. I still have not got the chance to meet any of them.  Between the pandemic and my being on the road for work, we had to piecemeal the album together. Aaron was a complete blessing and we got a couple of other guys from Colter to play. We got Jake Groves on harmonica, Pat Lyons on the pedal, Eddie Dunlop also played petal steel. Miss Tess played bass. Aaron put together a bunch of amazing players. Being that this was my first real recording project with session players, I did not have the vocabulary or the words to tell him what I was hearing and how I wanted the songs to come out. Lacking the vernacular to tell them what I wanted, I basically just told Aaron to listen to the demo and play what the guys feel. That could have been a blessing or a curse for a session player, who sometimes just wants a sheet of music to play from. There was a lot of creative licence on the album, simply because I did not know any better. I also put together a little Spotify playlist of songs that reminded me of the sound I was hearing in my head and what I was looking for and sent it to Aaron. He made it all happen.  I got these tracks back from him to do my vocals and guitar over, and I am thinking ‘Holy Christ, we’ve made record, this is a real thing and it sounds good.’ What they created was beyond my dreams. 

Was there a temptation to include a few cover songs to record a full-length album?

I did think about it and I do have a few covers that I would like to record at some point. I have a bad habit of turning double four songs into three quarter songs and turning stomps into waltzes, which can be a problem. With the time constraints going back and forth with files, it took us a good month or two to get all the these tracks together. It could have been three or four days in a studio but because of the way we were recording it took months to get them back and forth, and eventually mixed. We did have other songs we could have included but we basically ran out of resources and it would not have made sense to try to do more.

The songs on the album visit different places and different themes. There’s a sense of movement and constant mobility within the songs.

Well, the songs were written standing still (laughs). There’s only one of them that was written when I was actually living somewhere, which is always a recurring theme with me. I’ve probably got half a million on these bones already and that’s all domestic travel. I’ve never even had a passport and all that travel is either on rims or rails. I never fly, I don’t trust those sardine cans in the sky. Travel has always had a strong presence in my mind and in my songs.  I am not sure how to say it exactly but I guess I kind of wax cinematic in my own head about life in general, whether it be mine are somebody else’s and I try to provide a soundtrack to those thoughts.  

The album’s title MISS’RY PACIFIC pays homage to the Missouri Pacific Railroad, one of the first railroads west of the Mississippi River. That title and the artwork on the album suggest a fascination with trains, is that right?

I love big stinky freight trains. They speak to my soul in ways I cannot accurately put into my writing as yet. It’s just a big part of me and what I enjoy. Most of my friends either work for the railroad or are as obsessed with it, as I am. We’re the kind of guys that stand next to the tracks and watch a freight train go by at forty miles an hour. We won’t say anything but just stand there and feel the rhythm, the motion and the rumble. Diesel exhaust is one of my favourite smells (laughs).

I understand an Irishman can take credit for your finger picking guitar skills.

Yes indeed, that was Ian Gould. He gave me lessons when I got my first guitar and laid the foundations for what was to come. He taught me the basics and I kind of made it my own from there. A lot of the way I learned was just messing around until something sounded neat. Eventually, I started messing around too much and Ian told me that I was probably wasting my money because I was not listening to him, but that’s a recurring theme with me.

The album’s out and the reviews have been very supportive. Are you looking forward to bringing those songs on the road in the near future?

I am actually very much looking forward to getting out and playing and supporting this record. I can’t right now because I smashed my hand up. A stack of headers I was nailing together blew over in the wind and I had a floating finger for a little while. There are pins in there now and is it healing up slowly. My physical therapy to get the hand back up to strength is to get back playing guitar.  We are looking at playing shows in September so hopefully things will be fine by then.  I leave all the booking to my management; it is all kind of Greek to me. We have some opening slots lined up with Mike and the Moonpies and down the road I want to be playing festivals. Things are opening up in the States but a lot of acts are fulfilling their contracts playing shows that had to be cancelled during Covid. 

 Tell me about your fascination with Kacy Andersen of Kacy & Clayton.

(Laughs) You heard about that? For one, her voice is incredible. My management work very closely with Kacy & Clayton and I have had the privilege of hanging out with them when they played Wisconsin. We were imbibing certain drinks after the show, sitting around playing songs to one another. Just getting to hear Kacy’s voice up against my sounded great, I’m not sure how it sounded to everyone else, but it sounded good to me. I immediately thought that I need to do a duet or something with her. Her voice is so perfect, frail on the warble, delicate, yet also strong. The quality of her voice is just incredible. I felt privileged to have witnessed and heard her voice in that informal venue, drunk in a garage listening to her doing her thing without any stage lights or any of that. It truly does just come naturally to her.

Final question. Has this happened very quick for you or was this part of a career plan?

I have been doing music for a long time, I played in cover bands for years. I have written for quite a while, though much more seriously for the past three to four years. I have one previous recording, a four-track mini album which was done in my buddy’s living room. It was a labour of love. My management wanted me to drive towards what my individual sound is and to record an album with session players. We started recording this album this time last year with the song Silver when I was on a job in Oregon and we finished it by winter. Since then, it has been one thing happening after another. I don’t always understand what is going on all the time but I am not completely overwhelmed. Although it is taking quite a while to actually sink in.

Interview by Declan Culliton

Rodney Crowell Interview

With a career that has spanned five decades, Rodney Crowell is one of the most revered singer songwriters in the country and Americana genres. Alongside over twenty studio albums, numerous collaborations, two Grammys and six Americana Music Association awards, the Texan’s benefactors read like a ‘who’s who’ in country music royalty. His songs have been recorded by Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Emmylou Harris, Crystal Gayle, Alan Jackson and Lee Ann Womack, among others. His recording output in the past ten years has impressively yielded no fewer than nine albums with the latest TRIAGE released this month. He is also credited for his commitment to lending a hand to emerging artists, regularly appearing on their albums or in the case of Vincent Neil Emerson, taking on production duties. Lonesome Highway chatted recently with this most engaging and modest man about the new album and a lot more.

Your recording output in recent years is the most prolific of your fifty-year career to date?

Maybe time is compressing itself as I age. I just like the job more than ever and getting my work done. 

Given the political and environmental climate at the time of writing, there is little anger in your latest album TRIAGE. Instead, it breathes empathy, love and gentleness.

That was intentional. Certain things do make me angry. I know the countryside when you get outside Dublin and into Wicklow, heading on down south in Ireland. It’s like a beautiful garden.  You know, we have such a beautiful green planet. The sun will come out and food will grow. This planet that we live on is such a generous, warm and friendly host yet human kind treats it like a waste basket. That’s what makes me very angry. But anger is not becoming of a man who has empathy. So, I thought in writing all the songs on Triage, I’d followed the notion that some of the best advice you are going to get as a writer and performer is ‘show don’t tell.’ I tried to make the language in the songs display the way I present my ideas and my longings for a better understanding of this world that we live in and how we share this world together. It can’t be preachy. I’m very much a monotheist but very much anti religion, because of the controlling factor. The teachings of the great preachers of any particular religion often get worked by others for personal gain. As a songwriter and performer, I do not want to display any of those attributes. Hopefully I can just share with others my sensibilities, my feelings and my ability to articulate. 

Is the album’s title TRIAGE, a reflection of the medical meaning of the word? 

When I finally looked up the definition of triage, it refers to prioritising things in a medical situation, particularly in a dire medical situation. That’s how I felt about the songs and that’s how I felt about my place as an artist in as much as the audience that I’m able to reach. How do I prioritise the first things we need to get done? The earth that we share is number one and quickly following that is universal love, which we should all share on our best days. I understand that there are a lot of ‘ifs’ about that very thing. That’s why the title song Triage starts with ‘I think I know what love is.’ Maybe I don’t know what it is for you or my next-door neighbour, but here’s what it is for me and I’ll share that with you. If it fits, good, we are one step closer and if it does not fit, no harm (laughs).

How would a twenty-five-year-old Rodney Crowell feel about the album?

I wrote a song at aged twenty-three called ‘Till I Gain Control Again that might just fit fine on this album. At aged twenty-five, to answer your question, I was already on my way to being the person that I am now. A lot of things happened in my early to late twenties that sent me on a path that I am still very much on today. I would hope that my twenty-five-year-old self would look at TRIAGE and say ‘Hey, you’ve gotten better at writing and making your thoughts more concrete, you’re not flying by the seat of your pants as much as before.’ Honestly, I think I was an inspired young writer who tripped the wire now and again, and sometimes got something really good, but I wasn’t nearly as consistent or dedicated as I am today. As you said earlier, I have been very productive in the past number of years. I think my productivity is just testament to my work ethic. If I’m not on the road performing, you can bet I’m up early working on writing every day.

You are seen as a mentor to many young songwriters trying to establish themselves in a challenging market. You recently produced one such artist Vincent Neil Emerson’s self-titled album. How did that come about?

Vincent was sent to me by an industry man who sensed that I would be able to guide him towards a better expression of his song writing, if that’s fair to say. When I first listened to some of Vincent’s songs I thought ‘ok, he’s done his homework and paid attention, he knows how the Townes Van Zandt’s and Guy Clark’s of the world made their mark.’ I felt I could help him focus and make that record.  Being a producer is like being a photographer in a way, figuring out how to put a frame around this young songwriter so that one, such as yourself, will get the full impact of his strengths. Vincent is a poet, his heart is in the right pace, he’s a young man who’s going to be wonderful. He’s going to be a Billy Joe Shaver type of artist for a long time.

You’ve also worked with and aided other local artists such as Andrew Combs and Michaela Anne.  Do these artists have the same opportunities as you would have had in your early career?

Good question. Yes and no. When I and Guy (Clark) and Steve (Earle) were coming up there weren’t many older singer songwriters around. I’m old enough to be the likes of Vincent Neil Emerson’s father and can share with him my insight into how to frame himself and get his music out there. Andrew Combs and Michaela, that you mentioned, are good friends of mine. Certainly, in terms of return for their time invested and monetary gain, the internet has stacked the decks against them. Back in the mid to late 70’s, record companies used to invest money to get us out on the road and understood where our audiences might be, but that money’s gone now. I’m hoping for someone like Vincent and others, that their association with me may lead to people that follow me picking up on these artists, which may be helpful. If you don’t have that type of help and you’re coming on the scene now it’s rally daunting. 

You’ve a very heavy touring schedule coming up. You obviously still get a buzz out of playing to a live audience. Have you still got the appetite to tour and play live on consecutive nights?

I still get a buzz out of playing for sure, I don’t know if I get a buzz out of the travel. But as we say, we don’t get paid to play, we get paid to travel. Looking back a few weeks ago in Texas, I was taking part in a tribute to Jerry Jeff Walker. We had all been in quarantine for so long and Jimmy Buffett, Steve Earle, Jeff Hanna, Emmylou and myself were down there. We were all going ‘wow, this feels like we’re nineteen years old again’, because we hadn’t been performing for so long. Coming out of the Covid pandemic, things are fresh again and it’s going to take a while to wear that out. I’m looking forward to performing to people again even though I’ not looking forward to the travel part of it. On a tour bus it’s very doable for me, I feel like I’m a turtle in my shell. Once you take to the airways there are so many things that can go wrong. 

On a personal basis, tell me what good and bad emerged from quarantine for you?

The death of someone very close to me due to Covid, the passing of John Prine, Hal Willner, Joe Diffie were all low points. That notwithstanding, the isolation was a blessing to me, having no travel for sixteen months. I stayed back in my studio with a little bit of recording gear and recorded about thirty or thirty-five songs where I played all the instruments myself, banged on pots and pans, banged on the windows to get a drum sound and recorded it all. None of which is probably worthy of being released but certainly points the way to what I may do pretty soon.

Interview by Declan Culliton

McKain Lakey Interview

A gifted artist who plays banjo, fiddle, acoustic and electric guitar, McKain Lakey is also a songwriter, teacher, sound engineer and luthier. Her recently released album, SOMEWHERE, showcases her devotion to old time country and folk music. We spoke with her recently to learn of her journey as a young devotee to folk and roots music, her wood working skills, her studies at the celebrated Berklee College in Boston as well as the recording of her most impressive new release.

Tell me about your first introduction to playing music?

I am originally from Washington State, out in the north-west. I started playing music when I was about eleven or twelve. I started taking guitar lessons and my teacher was a lovely woman and the first person that really exposed me to music and in particular folk music. She also introduced me to the community of folk artists in the north-west. They were mostly older folks so I was the young kid running around, trying to learn from all of these players.

It’s quite unique to hear of an 11-year-old listening to folk music.

The first music that I started learning were the songs by Elizabeth Cotton. As it happened my teacher had learnt directly from Elizabeth. For me that was a special way of starting to learn folk music, particularly as a girl, because I felt this was like lineage that was passed down from woman to woman. That was my first exposure to folk music. It also meant that I was connecting with different people and different age groups and also learning the history of folk music. The technical part was important but I was probably more drawn to the human side of it at that time.

Alongside your song writing, performing and teaching you are also a skilled luthier. How did that come about?

I grew up doing a lot of wood working with my dad: he always had projects going around. I gained a deep understanding of working with wood. After college I decided that I wanted to know all aspects of music, including the woodworking and creation of the instruments that I played. I got to know a lovely older gentleman who is a luthier and I basically asked him if I could learn from him. He took me under his wing. It was a sort of casual apprenticeship, learning how to build guitars and other instruments. I don’t do it to make money because I am really slow at it. Building instruments is something that I do between all the other things. It’s really a way to relax for me and something that I love, but not as a career.

Travelling to learn the history of music seems equally important to you. Why is that?

The last few years before the pandemic hit, I was spending half the year teaching music and the other half on tour playing shows. It was a combination of factors and learning the history of music was definitely one. I did want to dig in and learn and see all the various regional areas, the music played there and the nuances of those areas. But some of it was just simply wanting to see the country, meet people and see what life is like in different places.

You recorded your first album WEST in 2018. It’s quite acoustic and stripped back, much more so than your new release SOMEWHERE.

In 2018 I decided to concentrate on music full time. I knew I was going to be spending a long time on the road and WEST was something that was recorded live in a friend’s living room in Birmingham, Washington before touring. The album is certainly where I come from with old time acoustic music. The new album SOMEWHERE was an idea in the back of my head for a long time. Especially after travelling solo for a long time, I was looking for an excuse to make a record that people could dance to.

You selected a producer, Johnny Sangster, who has worked with rock bands such as The Posies, Mudhoney and Supersuckers for the new album. What drew you to him?

Before I started taking guitar lessons as a child, my upbringing was very much rock and roll. I did have a love of gritty and analogue type music with a bit of an edge that goes along with that. With SOMEWHERE I wanted to capture some of that sound and some of that grittiness. I was also interested in recording to tape as I thought that it would be a really cool thing to do. Johnny has a lot of experience doing analogue recording. I knew I wanted to have a folk-influenced album with the rock edge to it production style wise. I felt Johnny was the ideal person to capture that.

Alongside your own playing there is some timely brass inclusions, in particular the ripping sax solo by Jane Covert-Bowlds on Decibel Jezebel.

I still get chills listening to that sax solo no matter how many times I hear it. I just love brass. And it also turns out that some of my very closest friends in Seattle are horn players, so the day that we did horn overdubs was my favourite part of the recording with all my friends just hanging out and playing horns. I was trying very hard to give each of them little features on the album because I love them as people and also their playing.

I also hear some New Orleans influences on the album. Am I right?

There are definitely some. The title track especially was inspired by some Dixieland style. It’s a sound that is still new to me so I’m still digging into and learning more Louisiana specific styles. I’m not an expert by any means but I love a lot of music and the various styles that come out of Louisiana.

When and where was the album recorded?

I was supposed to be in Washington last March for a friend’s wedding when Covid hit and as a result I was stuck in the north-west for a lot of the pandemic. I had been planning to record in Seattle and then tour out there but I wound up stuck in Washington. We started recording in August and spent a period of nine days on the album. Three days of basic tracking, three days of overdubs and three days of mixing. Those first few days it was just me, bass and drums, we recorded all of them live. I was in a booth and they were masked in another room. We recorded all the basic tracks together which I loved. We had horns fiddle, guitar and pedal steel overdubbed.

Where can people get copies of the album or stream it?

The album is accessible on all streaming platforms at present. I already have CDs and a bunch of people have already ordered them which is awesome. I’ve been directing people towards Bandcamp to order it as they are better to artists than most other places. I would love to do a vinyl and that is something that I want to look down the road a bit.

What expectations did you have when writing and recording the album?

 As I mentioned before, on one level the goal was simply to get people dancing. (laughs) That was possibly one aim for me given that the album was made during the pandemic and I was definitely missing dancing, celebrating, being with people and being in a joyful space. On a very base level I just want to make people happy as I thought ‘everything is so sad now: I want a reason to celebrate.’ The flipside had been getting people dancing also possibly means better festival slots, especially coming from a background where I have been playing acoustic, solo music in most cases. I had probably made people sad and crying playing solo, so hopefully this album will make them happy. This album has been in the back of my mind for a bunch of years and I think there was a part of me that wanted to prove something to myself. I went to Berklee College to study music. That was a really challenging time for me. It was pretty hard and very competitive. I actually came away from that experience feeling pretty down and possibly lost as to where I was musically, and not actually wanting to play music I know at that time. 

Tell me more about your experience at Berklee College.

Part of the experience was not being seen for what I was capable of. There are a lot of very talented people that go to that school, so it is very easy to get lost. After that experience I felt like I had something to prove with SOMEWHERE, as in ‘this is what I do, this is what I am capable of and this is the level that I set for myself.’ I wanted to make that a reality for me: that was the personal side of actually proving that to myself. A large part of my experience at Berklee was very much gender related. At the time that I was there the college had only thirty per cent women attending. I found that culturally in the school there was quite a lot of disregard for the experiences of women students. At least that was true when I was there. Often the culture at the college was looking at students and thinking ‘okay you’re a cocky, we need to take you down a peg or two.’ Whereas, I started being pretty intimidated in the first place, so being taken down a few pegs I was in negative peg territory (laughs.) It was also a culture shock for me going from a rural town to the middle of Boston with a lot of people who had been training to go to Berklee for ever. I randomly applied to the school and received a scholarship, so maybe I was a little bit out of my depth at that time.

Do you consider there were many positives from the time spent there?

I’m not sure. That’s actually a question that I ask myself a lot. The things that I am most grateful about are the friendships that I made there, people that are very important to me in my life both musically and for their friendship. When I was there, I was a vocalist, though I did not do a lot of singing as I got caught up in a lot of trauma.  I studied audio engineering which was great in some ways and challenging in other ways.  I am grateful that I got the theory background of music at college but most of the technical skills I had already developed myself, either before or after Berklee.  Most of the study that I have done pretty deeply around folk music history in the US has been since going to college, basically learning things myself. It was helpful to know that I was capable of learning what was put it front of me there, that part should be credited to the college: but as far as the experience of the school itself, I feel that I have been in recovery for many years. (laughs) It’s difficult for me to say overall how I benefited from the experience. Although, it does look good on my CV, so I’ll just run with that. 

Have you been able to set up touring dates now that things are starting to open up again?

I have been very slowly dipping my toe into playing and booking shows. My schedule at present is still pretty open but I’m hoping that things will begin to open up as the summer goes on and into the fall. I am hoping to strike a balance between doing some solo shows and then bringing the band for bigger shows and for festivals. I am envisaging a five-piece band. That would be me, bass, drums and probably Jane on saxophone and someone ideally playing fiddle or pedal steel.  I would consider travelling anywhere that wants to have me. (laughs) In the short term, it’s North America but I would love to come out to Ireland and the UK at some stage.

Interview by Declan Culliton

The Green Line Travelers Interview

Swedish band The Green Line Travelers provide further evidence that classic country music lives and breathes outside of the Texas and Tennessee borders. Their recently released album BAKER’S BOG BLOWOUT created quite a stir at Lonesome Highway. It combines some killer original tunes alongside a selection of classic cover songs and is honky tonk heaven for lovers of that genre. We tracked them down to find out more about their passion for all things old school country and a whole lot more. Daniel Bjorkande, the band’s lead guitarist, kindly responded on behalf of the band to our questions.

Sweden has become very popular in recent years for touring Country and Americana artists. Are you noticing an increased appetite for those musical genres?

Maybe so. There are a few booking agencies that have an eye out for great country and Americana acts, also upcoming ones, so at least there have been opportunities for Swedes to go and listen to great bands and artists. There’s been a show called “Jills veranda”, “Jill’s Porch” in English, that has aired on national television in later years. The plot is that a Swedish artist goes to meet Swedish country artist Jill in Nashville and gets to cover a country song and go through a bucket list. It may have grown an awareness for the more general public and a hipster or two that country music isn’t just Shania Twain. A lot of great artists have appeared in the background (Charlie McCoy, Hogslop Stringband, Sierra Ferrell, Johnny Hiland) and episodes have given viewers a glimpse of e.g., American Legion Post 82.

Tell me the history behind The Green Line Travelers? 

TGLT formed in late summer 2013. David Ritschard and Agnes Oden were performing with their bluegrass outfit Spinning Jennies at a Swedish roots music festival and met bass player Anders Hojlund. They had talks about forming a rockabilly band. Anders knew me and asked me to join on electric guitar. It soon morphed into a hillbilly outfit when they got to the actual playing. The line-up was completed with drummer Fabian Ris Lundblad, actually a schooled drummer who had been studying jazz at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm, but also a keen admirer of country and bluegrass. After the line-up was completed TGLT had their first gig in February of 2014. 

Initially we played a lot of rockabilly festivals in Sweden, with recurring dates in Stockholm where we grew a small following of family and friends. Our EP was recorded very early in our career: it featured two original tunes and one was a polka, in the style of The Buckaroos. Digging deeper into classic country we got the idea to get Nudie-styled suits and found Maria Bansgaard Køster, North Country Maiden, and had her make suits for us. It might have been what caught the attention of the organizers of the Nashville Boogie Festival in Nashville and we were invited to play there in 2017. It was quite an overwhelming experience and we met a lot of nice people and had some fun gigs and festivities. 

Where did your own love of classic country develop from?

Each one of us could probably give our own answer to that question, but in short you could say that for David, Fabian and Agnes, classic country music grew on them from their love of bluegrass music, whereas for Anders it was the rockabilly connection, while I approached classic country through a love of classic soul music, like Motown/Stax. When the band got together it started out as more of a hillbilly band, but it has slowly grown to become a classic honky-tonk country outfit. Now we are knee-deep into classic country and there is probably no turning back. For the record we got pedal steel player David Wigstrand to do his thing. We’ve admired his playing for quite some time and he really put his mark on the record. 

You were awarded "Honky-tonk Group of the Year" at the Ameripolitan Music Awards in 2018. How did that nomination come about in the first place?

That’s a good question! We were deeply honoured. Our recorded output at that time wasn't really representative of how we sounded then, we had already moved on to more classic country. We might have had some help from a few semi-live videos filmed by Chris Magee (Bopflix) that were filmed when we played Nashville Boogie. 

You buy into the total package of old-time country including the fashion aspect. How important is this to you? 

We’d say that's really important. Of course, music is the main thing and dressing down can be a blunt statement as well, but for us the stage outfits is kind of a ritual. It frames the live performances to be a very important solemn thing and a way to pay our respects to the music and also to the audience that might be listening or dancing to our music. Also, a thing like Nudie-styled suits can create a certain kind of vibe and at best an extra layer to the experience. For our new record we chose to leave our suits, maybe to try to not be framed as just a costume act (we love acts with costumes). We have a Volvo on the front cover and Göran with his flamenco suit on the front cover. For the band photos we couldn’t leave out a cowboy hat though. 

I understand that the band’s title borrows its title from a subway in Stockholm. Where did the title of your recently released album BAKER’S BOG BLOWOUT come from?

That’s correct, our band name is a reference to the green subway line that runs to the Southern parts of Stockholm where we started out and had our first rehearsal space. “Baker’s Bog” and for that matter “Blowout” are direct translations of stops on that line. For a reference to our EP - Highvalley is yet another stop. Also, we thought Baker’s Bog was slightly reminiscent of Bakersfield.

When and where was the album recorded?

It was recorded on Gotland, the island east of the Swedish mainland in the Baltic Sea. The purpose was to isolate ourselves and be thoroughly focused on recording the album. The studio, Vall Recording Studio, is located in a barn. The basic tracks were recorded in the spring of 2019 and there were plans to release it that summer, but lead singer David had a breakthrough as a solo artist singing country music in Swedish that summer and then covid struck. Then additional overdubs were recorded in Stockholm last year. Initially the plan was to postpone the release to after the pandemic, but since no one knows when that is we went through and did it. 

The well-chosen covers on the album include songs previously performed by George Jones, Connie Smith and Conway Twitty. You’ve recorded these quite similar to the original versions. Were you tempted to reconstruct these songs or would you have viewed this as musical sacrilege?

Foremost we chose them because they are amazing songs and that they fit with our original songs and the record as a whole. We just tried to record them in the simplest possible manner, kind of like a lot of country acts and also rock bands did in the 50s and 60s, like: “this is a hit that just came out. Let’s just record it in a similar manner as the hit, we might get a hit as well.” Kind of like pretending these were not 60-year-old songs. Ha-ha, I don’t think we are gatekeepers out to stop musical sacrilege. We encourage musical sacrilege if it serves the song and art. However, The Green Line Travelers might not be the band to break the fold, invent new musical genres and expose the world to sounds never heard before. We’re sing-and-dance women and men.

The song Honky Tonk Saturday night is wonderful. It features Kristina Murray, a much-loved artist at Lonesome Highway, on vocals. How did that connection come about?

Thank you very much. We think Kristina is wonderful too and we are very glad that the song has been well received. Initially we met her at the Nashville Palace when we played the Boogie. I think we heard her perform with JP Harris and somehow, she got around to talk to Fabian. Next, we met her in Memphis at the Ameripolitan Awards where we were nominated in the honky tonk group and female categories respectively and said hi. When she toured Sweden with Southern Ambrosia, we crossed paths again at a festival and she did a great gig. It was probably then when I had that song in the can and thought her voice would fit well with Fabian’s as a duet. Fabian mailed and asked her and she recorded her part with Michael Rinne in Nashville. 

Was the song Honky Tonk Tuesday Night on the album inspired by the now legendary Tuesday night sessions at The American Legion in East Nashville?

Yes. We have played there three times. The first night especially had a quite cinematic quality about it. Like a Tarantino movie or that scene in True Detective where a band plays “One-Woman Man” in the background? It felt really cinematic to be in Nashville at this place where they serve light beer, the water tastes like chlorine and these people in the audience aren’t faking it, they are doing the two-step for real and their cowboy hats are a part of their culture. And there were young people too. Probably hard to relate to for an American, that their everyday life can be that romantic for Swedes, but we have grown up with that on TV and it was like stepping into your own romantic dreams. So, the song is a tribute to those sessions, the Legion and what’s good about East Nashville.  

Have you had the opportunity to have a full-scale album launch with the current restrictions due to Covid?

No, sadly not. We haven’t yet scheduled a release gig either. It looks like the restrictions for live gigs might remain for a long time in Sweden. 

Where do you see your market in practical terms? Are you looking locally, further afield in Europe or America?

Well, locally (nationally in Sweden) lead singer David’s solo career is looking to take off, so we might have to look elsewhere. On the other hand, a legendary Swedish music critic wrote in his review of the record that we deserved a big break. We’ve saved that in our scrapbook. We know little about a European country scene but we would love to tour more in Europe. Thus far, we have been in Finland and France, and have had a covid-postponed gig in the UK. We’ve had some nice compliments for the record from Ireland and the UK. We'd love to do gigs there. Please reach out!

Obviously, we’d love to go back to the US and do an actual tour. For example, it would be another romantic dream come true to play one of those Texas dance halls. Would they two-step to “Pretend Girlfriend” and “Nine For My Pride”? That would be something. The next step might be to try to get on country radio (or at least the outlaw/classic/retro kind) all over so that a hypothetically interested audience might get to hear us. Either way we are thrilled about how the record has been received, and the kind words that have been said. 

Interview by Declan Culliton

Mac Leaphart Interview

Like many before him Mac Leaphart landed in Nashville with the intention of taking Music City by storm, writing commercial chart-topping hits and winning Grammy’s. When things did not quite go to plan for the South Carolina singer/songwriter he returned to his previous existence as a self-managed performing and recording artist. With two full albums and an EP under his belt, it is his most recent album MUSIC CITY JOKE that has finally brought him the attention his hard-hitting and somewhat tongue-in-cheek writing merits. Setting his sights high, he engaged Brad Jones (Hayes Carll, Josh Rouse, Chuck Prophet) to produce and brought Nashville top session players Fats Kaplin, Will Kimbrough and Matt Menefee on board for the recording. The album – it spent over ten weeks in the Americana Radio Album Charts – combines some frank insights into the less glamorous side of Music City alongside deeply personal ballads and side-splitting fun songs. We caught up with him recently via Zoom to talk about the album and his 10-year experience in Nashville.

Can you talk about your move to Nashville and your expectations at that time?

 I moved to Nashville from South Carolina in 2012, almost ten years ago. I came here to do the typical Music Row songwriter thing. I wanted to write songs for other people and I put a lot of time and effort into that. I was trying to write commercially viable songs and I thought I wrote quite a few good ones. My problem was I did not know how to get them heard or get them into the hands of people who could get the songs on the radio. After a few years of doing that, I decided to do the artist thing instead. It got frustrating to be spending so much time for the songs not to go anywhere. They were not songs that I had intended performing myself but songs that I thought would suit other artists.

Did you record any of those songs?

 Actually, one of the songs I wrote back then made MUSIC CITY JOKE. The song is called The Same Thing and I wrote it with Tim Jones from the Los Angeles band Truth and Salvage Company and Whiskey Wolves of The West. Tim and I wrote that one and I thought it would be a cut for somebody. I actually forgot about it until Brad Jones, who produced my record, asked me if I had any more ballad type songs for the album, which I did not. I dug up that song and sent it to Brad and he loved it. It is actually a lot of people’s favourite song on the album. I am glad that it got in because there is something about the slower songs that does not strike me. I like to write songs that are fun to play live. The slower songs can be good to listen to but it can be hard to put them in a show when you are trying to keep everything up and flowing.

Were you also performing alongside writing in those days in Nashville?

 In the early days I was doing a lot of writers’ rounds. In Nashville there would normally be probably ten writers’ rounds happening every night. I actually hosted one for a couple of years called Southpaw Supper Club. It got that name because it was at a pizza place. I’m actually starting to host it again but at a different venue, so we’re calling it the Southpaw Social Club this time. The name Southpaw came from the sound being somewhat left of centre and not typical Nashville. I was doing a lot of writers’ nights back then and meeting other writers and writing with them. I guess that if you stick around Nashville long enough and write with enough people, eventually somebody is going to put one of those songs on an album. Some of the songs I wrote made it onto other people’s albums, which is kind of vindicating as well as frustrating.

Your two previous albums LINE ROPE ETC and LOW IN THE SADDLE, LONG IN THE TOOTH were self-produced. You opted for handing over the reins to another for MUSIC CITY JOKE. Why?

 I did both those earlier albums with a great engineer but we didn’t really know what we were doing. We just had some songs and did the best we could editing them. I felt I needed a producer this time. For a decade I had just been bouncing around playing bars and making records, and I hadn’t figured out how to get people to listen to them. For this one I thought I would put everything into it and get a strong team together. The first member of the team was hiring the producer.

What drew you to Brad Jones to produce this album?

 Brad had been on my radar from TROUBLE IN MIND that he worked with Hayes Carl back in 2008.  I really liked that album. I had a mental list of people that I would like to work with and Brad was one of four or five producers that I talked to. I sent him some of my songs and I liked his vision for them the best.

You surrounded yourselves with a lot of talent in the studio. Did you hand pick the players for the recording?

 No, that was Brad’s doing. I brought in Logan Todd on drums and Brad brought in Fats Kaplin on violin and pedal steel, Will Kimbrough on guitar and Matt Menefee on guitar and banjo. Brad also played bass and also got Carey Kotsianis, who is just a great singer, on backing vocals. It was really cool because I had never worked with session players before. Normally when I made an album, I played all the guitar and maybe a little bass. This time I had a sonic vision for the songs and to get the sound that I did from those musicians was great.

How did that sonic vision develop? Did you have an absolute feel for the music to accompany the songs before recording?

 Not really. Brad doesn’t like the players to hear the songs before they get to the studio to allow for spontaneity. In the mornings we would get to the studio, have some coffee and just talk about the songs. The guys would make their notes and we would decide to try fiddle on this song or steel on another song, and that’s how it ended up working out. I guess Brad knew that he also wanted this album to have this Fats Kaplin vibe to it.  Those players had all worked with Brad a lot, which I think helps. We were all on the same page because Brad was the conductor, so to speak.

I don’t expect that you are going to be appointed to the Nashville Tourism Board giving some of the lyrics on the album. Are they based on real life experiences or simply observations?

 (Laughs). Both. Take a song like Music City Joke.  It is kind of an exaggerated and I hope mostly funny take on my experience in Nashville coming here from South Carolina. I was listening to country radio and thinking that I could probably write songs like those before realising that there is a whole lot more to this game. There are also some very personal songs on the album. I wrote Every Day as a tribute to my wife. That was a very personal song and actually very hard for me to write. I was in a little bit of a slump with writer’s block and I wanted to write it because my wife was having a bit of a tough time then. It’s like Willie Nelson says, he would rather give you a song than diamonds and gold, so I did the best I could with that song. Window From the Sky literally came from a bird that got trapped in this building where I was living and I worked on the symbolism of that and the idea of not realising that the door is always open. Whether it’s a bad relationship or a job that you think you can’t get out of, the door is never closed. And then a song like El Paso Kid was just a story I had that came from the idea that adversity can lead to greatness. You read these stories about great personalities that accomplished a lot having started off in the slums. My life has been so different to that.  I come from a whole lot of love and support from my parents and I often wonder would I be more driven if I did not have that background and sometimes that makes me feel uncomfortable. I was drawn to the character in that song as he really had to fight to get anywhere.

The song Division Street is also particularly graphic about an area where the less fortunate in Nashville often ended up?

 Division Street is one hundred per cent accurate. It’s not the rough end of town now that it was years ago. When I drive down there now there is a bunch of luxury apartments and fancy restaurants, which were not there eight years ago.

The artwork on the album’s cover shows your good self with a sign reading ‘kick me’ on your back, which also tells its own tale about Music City.

 I just thought that was funny, I guess. To use the term that you use over there, it is all kind of taking the piss, so to speak. I just thought that’s the way it feels like sometimes in Nashville. My buddy Gabe Ford, who takes all my pictures, went down to Broadway with me and I said ‘just get me standing in the middle of the street and put a kick me sign on my back’. I am hoping to do vinyl with the album this year because I think that would look really good on a full album cover.

How important is the artwork on an album for you?

 I’m a great fan. Do you know that Moe Brandy has great album covers? He was big in the late 70’s and 80’s and one of those guys that is very Nashville country. He always has a great story on the cover of all of his albums.

How did the last twelve months pan out for you?

 Fortunately for us my wife’s work in healthcare continued, so we didn’t really suffer financially but I did have that residency at a little bar not far from my house, that I felt was really getting off the ground. That was the Southpaw Social Club, that I mentioned earlier.  It had been on for six months and I felt we were really getting people interested. For me there also was a lot of silver lining over the past year.   Good friends of mine who live down the street started some outdoor neighbourhood concerts last year. They were fantastic and they are still doing them now that things are opening back up. I just played their last Friday and there was a few hundred people sitting out and chairs in the front yard. Also, I met and got to know all my neighbours. We just all hang out on the street with our kids and get to know one another. Everything kind of slowed down for me in terms of the hassle of trying to get out there and make things happen. Again, I am fortunate that I wasn’t depending on the gigs to feed my family and for me. When you play in bar bands for years, which I did, you sort of take the performance for granted. Sometimes you’re playing music that you don’t like, written by other people, in bars to people who are not listening. You can therefore take performing and the joy of playing music for granted. I’ve got shows lined up for the summer and the fall, and I have never been more excited about getting out and playing. Playing live music when you are in the room and people are listening to your music is a great experience. It’s an engagement that can’t happen with the live streams.

How do you intend to tour in the album now given that it is a mixture of ballads, story songs and some rockers as well?

 If I go on the road with a band, it is probably going to be a three-piece. We have come a long way from Emmylou Harris and the Hot Band. I watch some old clips from The Old Grey Whistle Test and I wonder how anybody could afford to have a band like that and on the road. I don’t intend attempting to replicate the album exactly, as it would mean bringing a certain type of musician on the road, which is not practical. I intend to do a little bit of both, solo and with the three-piece band. Sometimes on the road you get gigs at a coffee house where they only want you to play solo and can give the other guys a night off. It is also unchartered territory for me because I have played a lot of bars and colleges in the past, so getting out there and trying to sell tickets and play for people that have enjoyed this album is really exciting. Most of my albums had just fallen under the radar until this one.

The album has earned great reviews including a nine out of ten on the Saving Country Music website.

 I was really happy with that review because country in terms of music to a lot of people these days can be a bad word. It can mean something that is musically disingenuous because of what people perceive and hear on the radio as country music. ‘Trigger’ Coroneos has got a real community on his Saving Country Music  page of people who are really into Americana and red dirt and traditional country music. I really appreciate you all writing reviews of the album and spinning it. It means a whole lot to me because I’ve been doing this a long time and it’s great to work hard and people enjoy your music, which is the point in making music. You all keep doing great work over there, we really appreciate it.

Interview by Declan Culliton