Hailey Whitters Interview

A small-time country singer with stars in her eyes heads to Nashville after graduating high school. Working three jobs and playing street corners and smoke-filled bars, she spends over ten years dealing with rejection and heartache, before overnight success propels her from down on her luck to a Grammy nominated singer songwriter, headlining her own tours and playing arenas. That might read like a script from a pilot TV script chronicling the life of a fictious country star, but it’s the real-life backstory of Grammy nominated country singer songwriter Hailey Whitters. Leaving her hometown of Shueyville, Iowa (population 731) at the young age of seventeen, having finished high school, she packed her bags and moved to the bright lights of Music City.  Ironically, it was her 2019 single Ten Year Town (‘I thought I'd be a big star now, I'm twelve years into a ten-year town’), written at a low point in her career, that eventually led to her richly deserved industry breakthrough. Three years later and the world is an entirely different place for Hailey Whitters as her industry profile continues to escalate. Hailey plays the C2C Festival at 3 Arena in Dublin on Saturday 12th March alongside Luke Combs, Ashley McBryde and Flatland Cavalry. We chatted with the engaging and vivacious artist about those early years in Music City and her latest album RAISED due for release next month.

Three notable people are flagged in Wikipedia as coming from your hometown Shueyville, Iowa. A major league baseball player, a film and television actor and country music singer Hailey Whitters.

Really, I didn’t know that. Who are the others?

The actor is Robin Lord Taylor and the baseball player is Scott Schebler.

Ok, Scott used to date my sister. I’m not googling Shueyville on Wikipedia too often, so that’s very cool, I’m proud of that.

What were you listening to growing up in Shueyville?

Country radio drew me into the music industry. There’s not a lot of country music floating around Shueyville, Iowa, so it was very much a case of what I was hearing on radio that inspired me to want to pursue a career in music. The Dixie Chicks were huge, they were coming out with WIDE OPEN SPACES, I remember my mom bought that record and I just about wore it out. I was also into Shania Twain and Trisha Yearwood, Alan Jackson, Tim Mc Graw was starting to come out, mostly the stuff that was happening in the 90s. 

What prompted the move to Nashville?

I knew that Nashville was the place for country music and my mom booked me a trip for me and her to come down when I was fifteen. I’d never been to any city before, not even Chicago, three hours east of where I grew up. I was completely enamoured and taken in by Nashville.   I remember seeing people down on Broadway with their guitar cases over busking in the street, there was music everywhere, very much unlike what I was used to seeing back home in Iowa. When I went home after that trip I said ‘I’m moving to Nashville when I graduate high school’. My parents were scared but also very encouraging and supportive of me wanting to do that. I was pretty motivated and driven to try and make something of myself back then and my parents saw that. 

Was it difficult coping having  moved from a small town to a metropolis?

I just tried to make a lot of friends there. I’m from a very big family and tight knit community back home where you know everybody. I had that same approach moving here, trying to make as many friends as I could. So, I don’t think I was too scared by any of it.

How did you go about getting shows in the crowded marketplace that Nashville is?

I walked down Broadway and into Tootsie’s Bar at the weekend and asked the bass player during a smoke break what I had to do to get a gig. He told me to come back tomorrow and we’ll audition you, which I did. After that they gave me a few gigs playing down on Broadway on the weekends. I also played Tootsie’s out at the airport and little by little I just started booking shows myself. I’d go to a show and just walk up to the sound guy and ask who I needed to talk to play here. It all just snowballed from there, booking as many shows as I could at songwriter clubs.

You survived seven or eight years before making a commercial breakthrough. Was it difficult to survive those years?

Well, I did a whole lot of day jobs. I was a nanny, a receptionist at a hair salon, a waitress several times. I was looking for jobs that paid my bills but were also flexible enough to let me take a last-minute show, which was always my number one priority. It was eight years doing that in Nashville before locking in my first publishing deal, getting paid to write songs that helped pay my rent. It wasn’t until 2015 that I put out my first record, an independent record called BLACK SHEEP. 

Did you at any stage think of packing your bags and heading back to Iowa?

Everyone says that Nashville is a ten-year town, so the mark of when I was supposed to ‘make it by’ arrived at year ten. I began to second guess myself pretty hard for the first time. My friends back home were on baby two and baby three, buying a house or buying a boat and had all these tangible milestones. At that stage, I thought it might be the time to start thinking of something else for me. 

You then realised THE DREAM in 2020 on your own independent label. Such was the impact of that album that you got signed to Sons and Daughters and released THE DREAM (LIVING THE DREAM) in 2021. 

I had laid some solid groundwork as to who exactly I was, what I wanted to say and what I could do. When I put out THE DREAM independently on my Pigasus label, it just seemed like the response to that record was so validating. I put that album out as a last-ditch attempt to try and get my career going and I thought people were either going to hate the album or love it. The response to it was overwhelming, it was so special to me as a songwriter and as an artist. Having had the door shut in my face by the industry so many times, to have the fans love what you’re doing, that they feel it and resonate with it, that told me to ‘keep doing what you’re doing’. So, when a got the record label it didn’t feel like pressure, more like an extra part of the team that was going to help me take this thing even further. 

All of a sudden, after years of hard work, your name is appearing on co-writes with Brandi Carlisle, Brandy Clark, Lori McKenna, Brent Cobb and Trisha Yearwood. Did you find that intimidating?

I was super intimidated. I actually get more star struck by songwriters than I do by artists. I want to be respected by them; I want to belong in that room. It’s very nerve-racking writing in those sessions. 

Do you feel that the co-writing improved your songwriting as well as raising your profile?

It does improve my writing. Getting to work with writers of that calibre, they are the ultimate for me. I’ve studied their records and songwriting and tried to write like them and any time I get in a room with them it’s a challenge for me. It’s a challenge for me to try and prove myself and write lines worthy of being in a song with them. They are the barometer of quality for me and so any time I write with them it’s like, I better put on my big girl pants today and try and write something good. It pushes and challenges me in a really healthy way. 

A Grammy nomination followed for the song A Beautiful Noise, written with Brandi Carlisle, Brandy Clark and Alicia Keys. Everything that Brandi Carlisle seems to touch turns to gold. That must have been hugely satisfying?

Brandy Clark was the one that introduced me to Brandi Carlisle. I’m a huge fan of hers so even getting to be in the same room as her let alone on a Grammy nomination is incredibly exciting for me. It’s been a really crazy last few years alright.

Moving on to RAISED he your latest album. There’s a whole lot of music on it, seventeen tracks in total. 

Yes, it’s been released with all seventeen tracks on cd and vinyl. The record label is being very supportive.  I feel lucky to have their support, they have not tried to compromise my creative integrity at all, they’ve been nothing but supportive. 

The album  plays out as you reconnecting with your roots and heading back home to Shueyville. 

Yes. With THE DREAM people got to see the broken-hearted dreamer that was twelve years into a ten-year town and feeling very frustrated by that. With RAISED you get to go back and see the place and events that made that girl, shaped her and taught her to work hard, hang on, never give up on herself and see it through. In a way RAISED seems like the prequel to THE DREAM. 

Were the songs written after The Dream or written previously and parked?

Some of them are quite a few years old, a good batch of them were written before I released THE DREAM. I thought that they may end up on a record some time. I wrote Boys Back Home in the fall of 2019 and that song made me realise what the concept of this record might be.  We cut a few songs around that and the record started taking shape. When we recorded the title track Raised, that was the light bulb moment in deciding that the record would be about where I come from. We finished out the year writing with that concept in mind. 

Did being off the road during the pandemic give you more space to work on the album?

I did some touring in 2020 before the pandemic but when that hit it was all about writing songs and eventually getting back into the studio when it was safe to do so and finishing recording the record. The pandemic allowed me more time to be really thoughtful in making the record. 

I particularly love the tracks Big Family, Raised and In A Field Somewhere. They are wholehearted and genuine country songs. The track that took me by surprise was the muscular Middle Of America featuring American Aquarium. 

Thank you. I’m been a fan of American Aquarium for a long time and have written before with B.J. Barham.  That song needed a rock element to it and when we were looking around for someone to put on the song, it was a no-brainer to get American Aquarium. I’m so glad because B.J. was able to take it to where it needed to be. When it was just me on the song, I felt there was something missing, something lacking. He just elevated the song to the next level.

You’ll be over in Europe for C2C next week on the bill with Luke Combs, Ashley McBride and Flatland Cavalry. 

Yes, I’m finally coming to Europe for C2C. It’s been a long time coming but it’s almost here. I’ve in the middle of my first headlining tour with my band now, getting to play ninety-minute shows. We go to play New York next week, then Boston and Philadelphia and then we’re getting ready to leave for Europe. 

Finally, tell me about your admiration for the work of Phoebe Bridgers, which I read about? 

What draws me to her is her very intimate performance, maybe more on STRANGER IN THE ALPS than on PUNISHER. She has these really raw stripped moments which is very captivating to me and it’s a thing that I could see in myself with my song Ten Year Town for example, which is a very raw, stripped and intimate song for me. I’d like to channel more into that side of me production wise. I’ve been told that I should make a record with just me and my guitar, maybe that’s a hair-brained side project idea but it would be interesting to do that at some stage.

Interview by Declan Culliton

Jeremy Ivey Interview

The last few years have been traumatic for Jeremy Ivey. The arrival of a baby daughter to him and his wife, Margo Price, in June 2019 was a high point, as was the release of his debut album THE DREAM AND THE DREAMER in the same year. His sophomore album, the politically charged, WAITING OUT THE STORM was already recorded and due for release. However, things turned on their head on 2nd March 2020 when a violent tornado, the sixth costliest in terms of financial damage in U.S. history, caused extensive damage to East Nashville.  The passing of their dear friend and mentor John Prine brought further heartache and was preceded by Jeremy, at high risk due to underlying medical issues, contracting Covid that left him severely debilitated for a couple of months. The pandemic effectively put the couple’s careers on hold. Those harrowing times have passed, thankfully, to give way to brighter ones including the emergence of Jeremy’s third album, INVISIBLE PICTURES – and he recently took the time to discuss the background to it with us. 

How are things health wise with you at present?

I had Covid for about two and a half months in 2020, but I’m fine now, I don’t have any long-term effects. I’m pretty healthy now.

There are a lot of dark titles such as Black Mood, Downhill, Silence and Sorrow, on your latest album INVISIBLE PICTURES and yet the album plays out quite upbeat and optimistic. 

What happens is that I naturally write from an upset and dark place and when I develop the songs, I find hope in there. That tends to be the theme. I never really thought about the titles reading so glum, that’s just how it turned out. 

Was that a reflection of your mood or what you were listening to at the time of writing the songs?

Yes, I was listening to a lot of Elliot Smith for the first time in a long time. I was also listening to a lot of flamenco guitar and also listening to The Handsome Family around the time I was working on the songs. And as always, The Kinks and other British rock bands. 

I certainly get a Lennon/McCartney vibe to both Black Mood and Silence and Sorrow. 

The Beatles’ music is ingrained in me, their music has been inside me for a long time. There’s always a little bit of that coming out in my music.

You got Andrija Tokic on board to produce the album. Does he still work at The Bomb Shelter and what drew you to him for this album?

Yes, he’s still working out of The Bomb Shelter in East Nashville and we’ve been friends for a long time. The first time I recorded with him was in 2008.  Me and my wife’s old band Buffalo Clover used to record with him, so I knew him from those days. 

Did he select the musicians who play on the album?

Yes. I had heard an album that Andrija had recorded just before mine called START IT OVER by Riley Downing, from the band The Deslondes. He’s the guy with the real deep voice in that band, he kind of sounds like Blaze Foley in a way. The production and the arrangements were incredible on that album and what really drew my ear to it was the rhythm section. When I heard those guys play, I just said: ‘I need that’. I basically asked Andrija to get the same players from that album to play on my record. So, we had Megan Coleman, the badass drummer who plays for Yola and other people, Jack Lawrence from The Raconteurs and Dead Weather on bass, a couple of different keyboard players, one of them being Margo’s keyboard player Michael Hulscher. We added string arrangements and a number of random people came in playing marsophone and a couple of Asian instruments that I can’t even pronounce, adding a lot of colour.  I was connected with all those weirdo musicians who are legendary in their own right. Usually, I record with my band so it was cool to branch out this time and give the control connected to Andrija.

You’ve been prolific in recent years despite all the distractions. The title of your 2020 album WAITING OUT THE STORM was fairly prophetic? 

WAITING OUT THE STORM was written in 2019, before the pandemic. It was about things that I saw coming down the line politically. I didn’t know there was going to be a pandemic but with all the racism and polar opposition, everyone was being divided in our country. It was coming to a boiling point, apocalyptic in a way, I suppose.  

Do you consider if things have moved on at all?

I see myself moving away from paying so much attention to it. With the pandemic and going through Covid myself, that taught me, even though I need to know what’s going on in the world, that’s important. But it’s also important not to let yourself be too affected and doom orientated by it, to the extent that you can’t enjoy a day with some sunshine in it and your family, the things that really matter. I do like that sort of political writing but also think that some of the causes that I wrote about, although I can help in my own little way, but as a white male, I can fight the fight, but I’m probably not the right voice to express that side of the story. 

Are you seeing things returning to normal career wise for you?

The new Covid strain seems to be really weak and things are getting back to normal. I’m going on tour next month, fingers crossed, on a tour that has been rescheduled twice already. Margo is going on tour later in the year, so it seems to be getting back on track.

Is Margo working on new material at present?

Yes, we’ve been to California recording and have finishing work on a record up here. I don’t know when it’s coming out, hopefully later this year. That’s been fun too, it’s cool for me because there’s a thing that happens to most musicians which is like post album depression. You put a lot of work into an album and then everything just stops and you’re thinking ‘what do I do with my life now.’ Having Margo’s project was great because just as I finished mine, I got shipped over to work on her album. 

With two working musicians, recording and touring, and two children, how do you keep all the balls in the air? 

It can get a little hairy but we have great support from both our parents, which helps us. We make it work because it’s what we love to do. I don’t do a lot of media or interviews, except when I have an album coming out. Mostly I have the time to do the dishes. Right now, Margo is doing another interview in the other side of the house. Thank God for school for the kids. 

It’s such a wonderful story of how your career’s have developed since the release of Margo’s MID WEST FARMER’S DAUGHTER in 2016 after many years of hard work prior to that. 

Speaking of which, Margo is just finishing writing a book about it all. She’s been writing it since she was pregnant with our daughter who is two and a half now. It’s an early life memoir, talking about her growing up, meeting me, the whole story. 

Finally, will we get to see you perform at AmericanaFest again this year?

Hopefully, I will be playing some shows. Last year I was supposed to be on tour and didn’t get to play any gigs. That tour got cancelled the week before AmericanaFest, so I wasn’t booked for anything. That was life in Covid times, hopefully this year they’ll put me on something.

Interview by Declan Culliton

Anna Ash Interview

Los Angeles based singer songwriter Anna Ash recently released SLEEPER, a collection that enhances her reputation as an artist with striking vocals and soulful arrangements to embrace the sadness, vulnerability and optimism in her song writing. Her debut album THESE HOLY DAYS from 2012, follow-up FLOODLIGHTS (2016) and L.A. FLAME (2019) introduced these qualities – and on her latest they are confirmed. We took the opportunity to speak with Anna, via Zoom, about the album, its recording process and the in-depth messages in a number of the songs. SLEEPER came out last month on the Black Mesa label and is highly recommended. 

Looking back during these strange times, how have the past two years panned out for you?

I was okay financially because I had a regular side gig and enough hours at a restaurant and I was really grateful for that. So, I was able to sit back and look at my life and not panic too much. It has been a journey. On the financial side of things, I grew up poor and pretty scrappy, and did not have too much luxury, so it was interesting to take that baseline of mine and even lower it (laughs) and think ‘I’m still fine, we’re ok.’

Is Los Angeles a permanent home for you now having moved from the Mid-West and how does the music scene there compare with Michigan’s?

I’ve been here for ten years now but go back to Michigan at least once a year to visit family and also because I’ve stayed connected to the music scene there. There’s a really beautiful and strong music community in the northern part of the State. There are no cities there, so bands don’t tour up there, it’s all just local stuff. I have friends up there, one of them is the delightful singer songwriter, May Erlewine. She’s very regionally famous and doesn’t tour that much outside of Michigan and I really enjoy plugging into her world. I also spent a couple of months in upstate New York as my best friend lives up there and that world is very cool, very hip but it’s still living in the middle of the woods and I’m thinking ‘I’m not quite ready to do this yet’ So, I’ll be in L.A. a bit longer. It has a lot of magic to it, there’s everything musically here. There’s a strong singer songwriter scene here, but also a strong country scene that a lot of people don’t realise. Like a lot of people, I was really lonely for the first few years here, playing in the wrong rooms and wrong scene. I met a guy, who I ended up dating. He was in the country scene and he told me that even though I wasn’t making country music, that scene is pretty open minded in L.A. and that they’re going to love my music. He had come across my music on Spotify and was a fan. He came to one of my shows and hadn’t realised I lived in L.A. He was totally right. I changed my view and went in that direction and was welcomed with open arms. Unfortunately, that community feels like a ghost right now. Even for a town that could have outdoor shows all year round, things have not really come back yet. 

If I had not heard your music previously, how would you describe it to me?

Well, I don’t put it in the Americana genre because I don’t think it’s acoustic and rootsy enough. I don’t really care where people want to throw it and I think each of my records has a slightly different feel. My 2016 album, FLOODLIGHTS, had this very soul and funk thing going on, particularly because of the type of band that I played with then. I was in college with those guys; their band is called Vulfpec. L.A. FLAME had a completely different crew of people and was probably more indie rock. SLEEPER was recorded in two sessions. The first was just me and one other guy Eric Kune, who is a really talented multi-instrumentalist. I had him running all over the studio, so maybe those songs did come out more Americana because they’re acoustic. The first half of the record was recorded with a band and people keep referring to a 70s singer songwriter sound, I don’t really know.

Where do your musical influences stem from?

I did listen to a lot of country when I was young, lots of Bonnie Raitt and Patsy Cline. I also listened to a lot of Emmylou Harris but not her country records. WRECKING BALL is still my favourite record. Also, a lot of 70s stuff that my parents listened to such as Neil Young and James Taylor. I didn’t start singing and playing stringed instruments until I was eighteen or nineteen in college. I started off very folky, playing the banjo and really into roots music. That’s probably why I don’t think of myself as Americana now because I did that back then. 

You released SLEEPER on the Black Mesa label. Tell me about your relationship with them?

As an artist, it feels like being part of a clubhouse with Black Mesa rather than being your own lonesome voice. It’s a very hands-off deal with them. You come to them with a record and they’re not trying to tell the artist what sort of songs to write. They are very artist friendly and always want to get the ball rolling for the artist. Chris at Black Mesa helped me press my last album L.A. FLAME to vinyl, but I was too far down the line with that album to do a full release with them. He knew exactly what I was doing with SLEEPER. In November it felt fine to work in the studio with just one person and not bring a whole crew in.  So, I decided to record the ‘B’ side of the record first and either release it as an EP or sit on it until the full album is released. There were so many question marks about how long it was going to take to make the full record, how and when we were going to be able to release it. Chris agreed to just go ahead and release the first songs as an E.P. and even though it was recorded in two sessions, it was always going to be a full record.

SLEEPER sounds like a movie soundtrack or the opening up of a personal diary as the lyrics are very deep and introspective.

They’re very personal, we can run through every one of those songs and I can describe where they came from.  They’re not always about me, some of them are from stories told to me by friends and their lives. It’s not all first person. 

I’m getting a sense of agitation and stress from many of the songs. I’m particularly intrigued by the title track and am interested to hear the story behind that song.

I have been trying to figure out how to talk about that song. It came from a conversation I had with an old friend. He’s a photographer who actually took the album cover shot. He kind of dropped off during covid and I hadn’t heard from him. I had one of these feelings of abandonment at the time and was wondering what was going on with him. We made plans for me to come and visit him because he had just moved. During covid we all had our own sad stories based on what we had been going through. He told me the most crushing story about a woman who had lost her whole family in a really intense tragedy. It was from a sleeper wave, which is one of those waves that come up on the shore, you can’t see them because they are underneath the water. It’s one of those stories that in perspective takes over whatever you’re going through and I was overcome with sympathy and grief. That’s where that one came from.

And the song Dress Rehearsal?

That was a song I had been sitting on for a long time. The very first lyric from that song (‘This ain’t no dress rehearsal, if it breaks in your hands, you broke it man’) came from my housemate, who had just broken this ceramic bowl of mine.  He left it in a pile in a bunch of pieces and I just loved what he said. ‘It was crazy, I was just washing it and it just broke in my hands.’ He genuinely did not think that he had broken it or that it was his fault. I loved that as a metaphor, we do that so often, not realising how much damage we can do while doing very little.

There’s quite a lot of unease and disquiet in the song Fire Season. 

I just have to get out of town for September and October every year because of my anxiety, I’ll regularly refresh the Twitter local Fire Department page. I live up on the side of a mountain and I can see fires on the next hillside. The hill burns every year on July 4th from fireworks. For years I’ve been thinking that I have to get out of here and that probably comes from being mid-Western, because there are not any natural disasters in Michigan. Many people live in places where their houses could be destroyed from natural disasters and all of a sudden, I found myself living in one of those places. But I don’t want to leave, this is my home, but I also feel crazy sitting here watching the hillside burn. 

Was it difficult putting all these songs together and recording them without the prospect of bringing them on the road?

To be honest, I have never had a full team behind me when I’ve recorded an album that would arrange a tour after the album’s release. So, with this one, not having any real plans to tour it felt fine to me. 

When you do eventually get back on tour, will it be solo or with a band?

I love playing with a band, a little trio usually and having background vocals. When I go back to Michigan for a little tour, I’ll bring a band. If I’m just going to New York or Chicago for a one-off show, I’ll play solo. I’ve also been doing this for so long that I can just find out who is in town at the time I’m playing and call up a guitar player to show up at the gig 

You actually made it over to the U.K. for live shows late last year.

Yes, that was a tour that was postponed from the previous year. It just happened to work at that moment, a nice little window at that time that allowed me to come over. It was just me and a tour manager which made it a lot easier. It was great, I’ve only since played one show in New York and one show in Los Angeles in addition to that tour. It was good to play great little shows to that many people in neat venues over there. 

Do you actually listen to much music yourself?

It goes in phases. If I’m writing music I don’t listen to a lot of music, I read a lot of books and poetry. I do a lot of my own engineering, the editing and recording overdubs on my records, so when I’m in that phase with headphones on tens hours a day, I’ll then listen to very specific and familiar music, stuff I already know and don’t have to work too hard with. I used to have a lot of vinyl records and for me, that was a much more comforting way of listening to music, and I like the commitment of how long I’d listen to an album instead of the downloaded playlists. 

Finally, tell me what do you do by way of relaxation, I did read that you used to practice ballet?

When I was much younger, I was into dance, I’ve never been a very serious dancer. I made a joke once that I used to just get stoned and do ballet then. I live in a beautiful neighbourhood, it’s very rural even though it’s close to the city. I can just tumble out my door and hike up the mountain. I do quite a bit of that. I also used to be a pretty intense yoga practitioner but I’ve fallen out of practice a bit with that.

Interview by Declan Culliton

Mose Wilson Interview

‘It's the best country album I've heard all year, to be completely honest’. That was the opening line of the email sent to me with a download of Nashville-based Mose Wilson’s self-titled, debut album. Hardly an original approach but on this occasion that declaration was spot on as the album was one of the best of 2021 at Lonesome Highway.  The ‘who’s who’ list of Nashville session players on the album is impressive but I was equally struck by the songwriting and style of the material which makes it a genuine ‘country’ album. Not unexpectedly Wilson is no newcomer to the scene. He has served his time as a hired hand as well as being a member of the Florida-based band, Hotel Oscar, before getting down to business and writing and recording this solo album. We caught up with Mose recently in snow covered Nashville via Zoom, where we heard of his career backstory and his enthusiasm about the resurgence of traditional country music in East Nashville and further afield.

I saw an Instagram post and photo from Grimey’s Record Store in East Nashville earlier this morning and the area was like a picture postcard. 

Yes, I live down the street from Grimey’s and we’re (turns the camera in the direction of his back yard) covered in snow this morning, it’s beautiful.

You started singing at a very young age at church. Was that by your own choice or pressure from your parents?

I didn’t have the choice as to whether I was going to go the church, that’s for sure (laughs). It was a really small church in a small town in Tennessee, at the foot of Sewannee Mountain, between Nashville and Chattanooga. Every Sunday night at church, song leaders just came up to sing songs and anyone in the church that wanted to sing could come up and lead a song. When I was five years old, I told my parents that I wanted to lead a song, I had already picked out the song I wanted to sing, There Is Power In The Blood. I couldn’t read but I learned every verse and got up and sang my heart out, though I was holding the songbook upside down.  I still love singing gospel songs and get together with friends here in Nashville that also grew up that way and sing Gospel songs, even though there’s a bit more alcohol involved these days singing the songs. 

 I believe that your mom was a classically trained pianist. 

Yes, she was. Her teacher had been a professor at The Juilliard School in New York for a long time and had retired in Tennessee. She can still do it, if you put a sheet of music in front of her. Whatever it is, she can play it. I remember her playing Chopin pieces when I was a kid, followed by Scott Joplin. I used to try and get her to play the blues or a country song with me but it just didn’t register.

What music would have been around you other than Gospel in your childhood? 

Everybody in my family enjoys music, even though myself and my mom are the only musicians in the family. My dad is a big country and classic rock fan and my grandparents were huge country music fans. My grandad listened to the Grand Ole Opry every week and he got me into Hank Williams when I was young. I also got into the blues real young as my uncle was a big blues fan and he gave me some Muddy Waters cassette tapes when I was in first or second grade. I had a little Walkman and used to walk around with my earphones in listening to those tapes all the time. He also gave me a tape of Buddy Guy’s Damned Right I Love The Blues. I remember hiding it from my parents because it had the word ‘damn’ in it and I was afraid they’d see it and take it from me. 

You moved to Nashville at eighteen years of age. How did the migration from rural Tennessee to Music City pan out for you?

I wasn’t ready for it; it was a culture shock. I went to school here at Belmont for a semester, it was a songwriting major, the first one that they had there. I did not like anyone I was going to school with because most people at the school were from out of State. There was a lot from New York and a lot from California. After one semester I became discouraged, I didn’t like the music, didn’t like my classes, but I did like going down to Broadway and picking up gigs. I started playing guitar in bands when I was eighteen and I left school and stayed in Nashville for two and a half years just doing that, playing gigs downtown. I wasn’t supposed to be playing bars at that age but they let me play and served me beer. That was twelve years ago and Nashville was very different to what the city is now, much more hometown. 

You then headed southward to Florida. What triggered that move?

I was twenty-two at the time and had just broken up with my long-term girlfriend. I wasn’t getting many gigs and Nashville was beating me down. I wasn’t really ready for city life yet and had a friend down in Florida who offered me a job to work on the beach for the summer. I went down there and loved it, working the beach every morning, hanging out with the tourists at night and taking my guitar out and playing songs. By the fall I had started getting steady work playing music and gave up the beach job. I started a band called Hotel Oscar and put out a record that got really popular on The Gulf Coast and basically spent the next six years touring out of there. I lived in Pensacola and then lived over in New Orleans and all of that culture had a really big effect on me. 

Hotel Oscar’s sound was more roots and southern rock than country. Were you still a country artist at heart back then?

Yes. I was still writing country songs but with Hotel Oscar we were playing other styles and I think that helped with the appeal. People were able to latch onto soul music and punk music in the songs and could go out and dance, and have a good time. The guys that played in that band have all gone on to do great things, the drummer is with Tedeschi Truck Band now and the sax player plays with Marcus King. 

What triggered the move back to Nashville?

I started a country band in Florida and it was working ok, but country music wasn’t accepted as much down there as when I was living in Tennessee. A country rock band in Nashville reached out to me because they needed a lead guitarist for a tour. They offered me a full-time job which was the perfect opportunity for me to move back to Nashville. It gave me steady income, so I moved back in 2018. I still had a bit of a bad taste in my mouth from my previous time in Nashville and I was a bit hesitant going back, but it’s been a completely different experience this time. I got back into the country scene that didn’t seem to exist before. Having met some great people in the country scene in Nashville now, I was able to make my record the way I really wanted to. I also got lucky in a way because with Covid in 2020 and everything shutting down so much, nobody had work. I was able to call up all these guys that I admired so much and asked them if they wanted to be a part of the record and nobody said no. 

You certainly got your own Wrecking Crew onboard to play on the album and the legendary Matt Coles to produce. How did you connect with those guys?

Matt Coles is a great engineer and has worked on some great albums, and working with Compass Records is his main job. His wife is from my hometown and her and my dad grew up together. I didn’t know it but my dad had sent her some demo recordings that I had done. She played them to Matt and he really liked them and asked me if I’d like to come into the studio and work on some songs. At first, we were going to put together some demos to shop around but after that session, Matt asked me if I wanted to write songs for other people or try to cut a record. As I really wanted to record my own record we started brainstorming from there. A lot of the players came from Matt. He has a good concept of players that work quickly and efficiently and players that would suit my sound. So, he brought in Miles (Miller), Casey (Driscoll) and Dan (Dugmore). Dennis Crouch is a friend of mine: we had met at a honky tonk Tuesday at American Legion. My friend Mark Pointen, who played guitar for Jerry Reid for a while, introduced me to him. I didn’t know who he was at first, I just thought he was a really nice guy. He told me he was a bass player and when I went home later, I looked him up and realised who I’d been talking to. He’s not at the American Legion often so I’d say I got lucky that night as we’ve been friends ever since. My girlfriend lives near him, there’s a big park where I go to run and he walks his dog there, so I run in to him all the time and catch up. He’s a great guy and my favourite player in Nashville. 

How long did you spend in the Compass Record Studio recording the tracks?

We cut it in two sessions pretty much. It was kind of spread out: the first day was in July 2020 and then we came back in at the end of August. We cut the acoustic tracks first, Cornered, She Don’t Live Here No More, Blue and ‘89 Lariat, and we came back and cut all the full band stuff in one other day in under five hours. None of the players had heard the material before. I had written everything out and would play through the acoustic. Everyone would read the charts and make notes, we would go in the studio and three takes later it was done. All very old school style. Dan Dugmore was the only one that we had to overdub; he was a little worried about the virus. He came in later and I was there when he played. It was amazing watching him work.

You also had siblings Johnny & Mary Meyer from The Meyerband lend a hand. 

They sing on several songs; Burning Memory is probably my favourite one that they sang on. They are so professional. Mary took charge of the vocal instructions for the two of them and Johnny was in charge of the musical ideas. You can tell they have been playing their whole lives as they have their own language. They were in two different rooms but could see each other through the windows. They played everything live, sang, played the banjo and the mandolin.

Over what period had the songs been written prior to recording?

They were written over a long time. The first one I wrote, This Time It’s You, goes back to 2015. I had a lot of songs, probably thirty, that I had written over various periods. The most recent is the single, Don’t Need You, which I wrote not long before we recorded the album. I was watching the Superbowl with some buddies and I just had this idea that popped into my head for that song. I walked off into another room, wrote the song and missed the whole game. 

Dare I ask if that song is based on personal experience?

Kind of. The original lines came from something I was going through at the time.  Any sort of heartache seems to be a good thing for any country songwriter, at least you get something out of it. 

I love the YouTube video with that song. It’s pure country, featuring everything from moonshine, pick up truck, fishing and beer. It even has a hound in it.

That’s my sister’s dog. His name is Ruby. The video was all shot in my hometown.  I had visually come up with the ideas of places I wanted to shoot, places I loved growing up, and places I thought would look cool on a screen because I’ve loved movies all my life. Michelle Kowalski, the cinematographer from New Orleans, worked the video and she has a great eye for capturing what you’re going after. I sat down with Hannah Juanita, who has done several videos and is really good at writing a script, and she helped me lay it out on paper, stayed in charge of the video and directed it as we were shooting. There was only the three of us. The lake beside where I grew up, close to my parent’s house, is in the shoot. I grew up in a valley at the foot of the mountains and we went up to the top Sewannee Mountain for the cabin shots, which is a good friend’s family house that’s been in their family since before the Civil War. It was a long shoot. It took all day long but we really had a lot of fun.

The album criss-crosses various aspects of country music including bluegrass, Cajun, traditional and blues while avoiding going down the dreaded pop crossover road. It reminds me in many ways of the musical variation on another East Nashville resident Sierra Ferrell’s recent album LONG TIME COMING.

Sierra is awesome and a good friend. I remember my first year here in town. She had already been here a couple of years and we would all hang out after the Honky Tonk Tuesday shows at American Legion. We’d all head back to somebody’s house, build a fire and sit around and pick and sing. I remember hearing Sierra singing up close and in person for the first time and being blown away. I’d never heard anyone sing so powerfully and with so much confidence. She’s simply amazing. She knows exactly what she wants to do and does it. I was torn between so many styles recording this album and I was worried that I was having too many styles on it and that it wouldn’t have a cohesive sound.

Do you sense and witness a resurgence in popularity for real country music in Nashville? Artists like yourself, Sierra Ferrell and Joshua Hedley are making true country records in Nashville and Jesse Daniel, Charley Crockett and Jason James are doing the same in Texas.

Yes, definitely. Actually, I was just talking to a good friend of mine Aaron Goodrich, he’s a great drummer in town and used to play with Colter Wall and Jaime Wyatt. We were just talking about the resurgence in country music around here and a lot of folks think that the Ken Burns Country Music documentary is doing the same thing for this generation that O Brother Where Art Thou did twenty years ago, bringing it back to the forefront for people that really like country music. 

Despite that, those artists I mentioned are not going to be played on Country Music radio?

Well definitely not over here. I think that Europe has a better sense of what country music is than people over here. Pop country over here rules the radio, that’s all you’re going to hear. 

Is the album a ‘one off’ country album for you or where do you see your musical direction in the coming years?

Country is where I want to be. There might be times when I dabble in other things but if I’m putting music out under my name, I want it to be country or some form of country. I still do feel that in a way I want my projects in the future to be more centred, maybe dedicating an album to a certain type of country and getting deep into that avenue for a period of time. Maybe I might cut a bluegrass album because as much as I love writing, I’m probably more of a player than a writer. I write every day but the musician inside of me always wants to dig deep into the styles of country music. 

Have you got plans to get on the road and tour the album?

I’ve done some shows already and am heading to Texas this weekend for two more, one solo and one with a full band. They’re both with Gus Clark, who is another up and coming guy in Nashville, who’s put out some great records. The band I’ve got are guys that I toured with in Texas last November, so they’re familiar with my stuff.  I’m still working on getting a full-on tour together for later in the year.  

Many artists like yourself avoid playing too many shows in Nashville, preferring to play outside of Tennessee.

Yes, that’s very true. Willie Nelson called Nashville ‘The Store’, where you go to buy and sell things. That’s the truth: you don’t want to play here all the time but you want to be here and be around the people here, and be influenced by all that. Having said that, we played in Dee’s Cocktail the other night with Vaden Landers and Hannah Juanita. It was a great show. Dee’s has a built-in crowd on Mondays because East Nash Grass play from six to eight every Monday. There’s always a good crowd to see those guys because it’s the best bluegrass in Nashville. The first time I played a headline show in Nashville was three years ago at Madison Guild Show on a Monday night at Dee’s. There was an ok crowd there back then but these Mondays are great, there’s huge crowds there. It’s also always hard to make money in Nashville and its never about your artistry, but if you leave Nashville with Nashville players you’re respected more, paid more and the shows are better. It’s a tough balance and I always realise that when I leave to go on the road for a couple of weeks and come back and am picking and playing with my friends, I feel a little bit rusty having been gone for a little while. Everything here is so tight and everybody is pushing it so hard. It’s competitive but it’s good competition, everyone gets along really good here.  

Have you ambitions to get over to us in Europe?

Definitely, as soon as I get the opportunity. I can see where my record is getting played and bought the most – and both Ireland and Germany are the biggest ones. I’d love to get over there.

Interview by Declan Culliton

David Gideon Interview

David Gideon has just released a brand new album that reinforces what is good about country music right now. As his bio points out he was born to artistic parents and often on the move, bouncing between Austin, Key West, and rural Tennessee during his formative years. Early on in his life he was given his access to a drum set. From there he trained in jazz and worldbeat percussion but broadened his skillset to include guitar and songwriting, too. He later headed west, where he performed hundreds of shows. He also worked as a DJ in clubs, logged multiple years as a ranch hand in Northern California, and eventually settled in Billy the Kid’s hometown, the rugged, remote town of Silver City, New Mexico. It was there he wrote many of the songs that would later be included on LONESOME DESERT STRUM. Being mightingly impressed with the album Lonesome Highway took the opportunity to ask David some questions. His honest answers are below:

How long did it take to put the album together? As it would appear some of the songs go back to the Drifter EP and possibly before.

The short answer is twelve years. The writing of my oldest song on the album; Movin' To The Country dates back to my time living in the mountains of Northern California. It was initially recorded for a seven song CD (which was never published) entitled Can't Keep Me Down. I toured the West Coast with that first CD and when it sold out, it was never reprinted. I went back to the drawing board with a much clearer direction and recorded a twelve song CD entitled; Southwestern Skies. Again, it was never published and I only printed a hundred copies. Although decent, it lacked the professionalism of my new work, naturally having been recorded in a home studio. It included early versions of songs like Southwestern Skies, Drifter and Red Boots which would later be re recorded in Nashville for the Drifter EP, three songs of which are on the album LONESOME DESERT STRUM. 

Are you a prolific songwriter with a lot of material or how does that work for you?

I am not as prolific as some of my friends who seem to come up with songs in their sleep but I'm constantly milling about five different ideas around. I know I have a good one when it makes me form a tear. The good ones do. I think every songwriter knows that feeling. Lately I have taken to the Nashville tradition of co-writing with the likes of Wood Newton. If he didn't have a Grammy, I'd probably have passed on the idea. I'm certainly glad I didn't as Ashes and A Woman Like Her are two of my favourites from the new album, both written with Wood.  

Where does the love of such a classic country direction spring from?

Growing up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Austin, Texas and Southern Middle Tennessee, I was exposed to alot of classic Country. My mother dated JC, the bass player for Threadgill's house band in Austin, TX when I was a kid and Threadgill taught me to yodel at six. Since my dad lived an hour south of Nashville, I also grew up with Hee Haw on the TV, George Jones on the laundromat speakers and Hank Jr. and Alabama trading cards in the gas stations. While I have had my phases in life, you can't take that experience away and when your looking at who you really are, those early impressions last a lifetime. I suppose that's why, all said and done, I found my voice in Country. It's just who I am. 

You put together a great bunch of players who excel on the album how did that come about?

I had someone who heard my music online invite me to Nashville to co-write and produce a song, which naturally  I agreed to do. This was honestly my huge break and while that person isn't a name I drop, I owe them a lot.  After being flown to Nashville and while at that session, I met Johnny Cash's five Grammy winning bassist; Dave Roe Rorick who took a liking to me and he invited me to work with him, Kenny Vaughan, Chris Scruggs and Pete Abbott to record anything I had in mind. I took what I thought were the best songs I had and rearranged them. The rest is history. I have been working with Dave, Pete and Kenny ever since. In fact we are cutting new stuff now. 

Did you, as the artist, have the final say in how the songs went down or was it more a collective decision?

There was really nothing collective about the decisions  outside of that time when we all were sitting in different rooms with headphones on discussing the feel or approach to a song. Kenny definitely made a few decisions about a certain vibe like for instance on My Birthday. We played it like my demo felt and then he decided that we should try it really groovy and slow and that's how it got cut. I'm a gigantic Fabulous Superlatives fan so anything Kenny said hit me like a ton of bricks. Most of these were recorded in an old fashioned, live setting with no click track. Some had to be cut remotely due to the pandemic. So other than the sequencing, no. I was open to suggestions in that process and my mastering engineer, Billy Stull lent a hand in that process. The final say on everything was most certainly mine. I was hands on for every tiny detail of the mixes as well. 

It is undoubtably difficult to survive financially as an independent artist, especially in these times, so did you work outside of the industry to make ends meet?

Yes. I rolled sushi at Acme on Southern Broadway while recording these tracks and I also briefly was the chef at a well known songwriter joint named Belcourt Taps in Hillsborough Village in Nashville. I also worked for Gavin DeGraw at Nashville Underground for awhile. Lots of stuff. Painting houses in rural Tennessee, let's see..  I worked as a handy man in a house one of the Dixie Chicks lived in during that period as well and the house was being sold. The owner let me hold court there for months to the neighbors chagrin. I was playing at old bars around town like The Springwater, Belcourt Taps, Tootsie's, Betty's... Wherever I could. I should also mention I had private investors to boot as well as had to sell my mother's inheritance of some very old coins she had gotten while being the art director of Mel Fisher's Maritime Heritage Society in Key West where I spent grades 7-10.  The museum and crew headquarters for the Atocha shipwreck is a place I spent a lot of time roaming the halls as a kid while my mother documented the treasure. Mel was like an uncle and to use those coins he found on the bottom of the ocean and which my mother got as part of her "division" to fund this album is the only reason we are talking, today. It took everything I have. Literally everything and then a whole lot more to make this album. I want people to know it was the hardest thing I ever accomplished and I've done a lot. There's real blood in those notes. Real tears. Believe it. A lot of nights living in a very poor section of Nashville with no power in the dead of winter. Popcorn and jolly ranchers for dinner. Yup. 

Is Ashes a song that mirrors your own wishes in any way or a general nod to the spiritual places of country music?

Good question. In reality, I buried my brothers ashes in Tennessee and when my mother recently died, she wished to be buried next to him after her cremation. I knew there was a song in that and had concieved it to be, "Bury My Ashes". As the story goes.... Manuel Cuevas, the legendary clothing designer to the stars, dropped me off from his house to the "Dixie Chick" house where I was staying in West Nashville and I grabbed my guitar and walked to Neighbor's, a pub in Sylvan Park, owned by former Tennessee Titan, Zach Pillar. Zach asked me to play him a few songs on the little stage (which I informed him would cost him a pint) and upon hearing me, invited Grammy winning songwriter, Wood Newton (Something Said Love - Rita Coolidge, Riding With Private Malone - David Ball, Twenty Years Ago - Kenny Rogers) from off the golf course to hear me play and sing, as well (which I informed Zach would cost him another pint.) I played a few for Wood upon his arrival and after I did so, he took me out to the patio of the bar and played me one of his; I Got The Hank Williams Blues which he wrote with Jett Williams, Hank Sr's daughter.  I then pitched him my idea for Bury My Ashes. He told me I should consider changing it to Scatter My Ashes and invited me to his office to write it. Upon arriving in an Uber to the address at the predetermined date, I realized I was standing in front of RCA Studio A on Music Row. We talked a lot about the direction of the song and the history of the recording industry that day. The song morphed into something about Tennessee's rich cultural heritage and that was fine with me although certainly not something I'm going to hold my friends too. Although, If they can pull it off ... Please do that for me, folks. Thank you.

What inspires you the most to put pen to paper?

A good chord progression or lyrical idea. I'll just write some crazy line down and find it later and add to it or dig through my old fashioned lined notebook and scrap an old lyric and fit it in to something I'm working on. Just a really half hazard process with no rhyme or reason. All I know is that the final product is all that matters. If I have to some words I don't like in the second verse because verse one and three are working for me, two will have a way of sorting itself in private performance. You know when it's feeling right and you know when you’re just making due to get through it. Two different feelings. There was very little making due on this record, lyrically.  

Given the album title is the desert a place you like to visit?

I live in the Chihuahuan Desert in a mountainous region called "The Gila Wilderness". It is the birthplace of The Apache Native people. It also happen's to be Billy The Kid's hometown, Silver City, New Mexico. This is dangerous country. Kenny Vaughan made a reference to my playing in the studio as a “lonesome desert strum”  and I just thought it was such a cool thing to say as is everything that man says, that I kept it as the title. I wrote the song to the title and not the other way around, to be honest. 

You wrote the majority of the material yourself along with a couple of co-writes. Do you have a preference for either way of working?

While I prefer writing by myself for all the freedom it offers, lately I have had some really special co-writes go down which have me believing in there power more and more. Do I want to be stuck in some fancy room with five major songwriters? Not really. I'm only concerned with the song having my soul in it and the final product feeling like 'David Gideon'. I need to be feeling it. If I am writing with someone, there has to be a very special reason. A story. 

There are currently a growing number of artists and bands who are following the path of traditional country rather than looking to the mainstream success at all costs. Do you align yourself with those contemporaries?

I look up to these people. I have met some of my modern heroes like Sierra Ferrell, Charlie Crockett and  and I look up to them. They just have something nobody else can do. I also look up to anyone who can thrive in this business regardless, across the board. Doesn't mean I'm turning on the radio but you won't find me bashing Luke Bryant. I have no idea what he sounds like and I have used a steel guitar player he used. It's all music to me. I can't deal with those records coming from Nashville though. I just can't do that to my ears. I like raw and rough. I like dust on it. The old Country had more dust on it! I like when music was more like that. 

Do you actually see a shift back to a more old school sound at radio?

Ummm ... No. While it's cool, nostalgia music is novelty music. Advancement is needed. There will never be another George Jones or Merle Haggard and some of these new artists never got that memo. It's ok to do your thing any way you see fit, though. Just my opinion. It's just good to be aware it is a box you’re in. I don't want people to be able to put me in a box and I dare them to try. 

When touring comes back how difficult is it for an artist like yourself to put together a band both in terms of finding the right players and make it financially viable?

Well.... not for me. For others it might be. The reason being, I have come from the bottom up, been doing this forever and know a lot of people. If the price is right I'll bring you the players on my record or someone who can play those parts almost as well. The Texas and Tennessee music communities are like a family. There may be fights and squabbles but I think it's all about keeping country music and dare I say, the Country tradition alive. Now, I don't mean that in the way of holding on to the bad stuff or the whitewashing of the role of African Americans in the development of country music but rather the tradition of small farmers, old small town mom and pop joints, traditional playing of instruments in village and pub type gatherings, bon fires and cool vehicles, buisness of every ethnic variety thriving and of course ranching and farming. We all want that for the world and for our Country and we all have a common goal. The real question ... is the world ready for David Gideon? I don't know. That's up to you all to decide. 

What are your hopes for the coming year?

I'd settle for living through the year. That seems to be more than many are able to ask these days. If I can wrap all my productions that are in the works currently, I'll be happy. I don't talk about it much but I produce music for other artists and the world will find out more about that in time. It would be nice if the pandemic went away as well as it's painfully taken some of our best. I'm gearing up to play some shows in Texas and Tennessee. Nothing big.

The Ballad Of Crazy Horse suggests you have an interest in historic storytelling. Do tend to read and research when writing about a subject like that?

I read three books about him, my favourite being The Journey Of Crazy Horse by Joseph Marshall III. I tried not to overstep my bounds writing this song and maybe it made me hold back a little more than I should have. As one critic stated, I made it sound like a football game. It was a slightly sticky subject in that I knew I'd be performing the song in rough Honky Tonks so how controversial did I really want to get in front of a bunch of drunk cowboys and how much license does a white guy from the South really have to sing about Crazy Horse? I just tried to keep it reverent, beautiful and factual. 

How has the pandemic effective your life and music?

I was already a hermit so not much! lol. We lost some great people in music so that's been really horrible to me. John Prine, who I never got to see live and is one of my biggest influences for instance was devastating and Charley Pride really hurt. I could go on and on. As for music, Dave Roe Rorick and I work together to produce these tracks now, remotely, with him charting them out for Kenny and Pete and then I bring in steel and fiddle after we cut drum, bass and guitar tracks. Everything is done remotely now due to Covid. Luckily, most of the album was cut live, with all of us together in a studio. I don't mind working remotely as it saves alot of money I used to spend putting myself up in Nashville whilst recording but yunno ... Nothing like being in a room with those guys. 

Do you write from a personal perspective or create characters and situations for the purpose of a song?

Most always from a personal perspective although my friend Donna Overbey, former back up singer on the Grand Old Opry with Connie Smith, and I, just wrote a song based on her friend Waylon Jennings' style. They were close and she wrote the song for me. It's called Love Is A Gamble and we cut it next week. That's my first time really telling a story that wasn't my own. Thank goodness cause this guy hangs. Wouldn't want that.

Who do admire as a songwriter in country terms or in other formats?

Townes, Guy, Joe Ely, Dylan, Steve Earle, Hank Sr., Willie. Johnny. The one's you'd expect. I also loved Nanci Griffith a lot. The Blues cats, as well. Robert Johnson, Lightning Hopkins, Mississippi John Hurt, etc. I always wished I could write and sing like those players.

Are you thinking about the next album or is it too early to even contemplate that?

I have six songs in production, currently. That would put me about halfway through my next album. Pete Abbott who plays drums on my tracks has been on tour with The Average White Band lately so it's been slowing things down a bit. What can you do? Being this album is just dropping, I'm feeling thankful to be that far along. 

Are you happy with this album or would you have changed anything?

I can honestly say I'm happy with the album. I hope you are, too. 

Interview by Stephen Rapid

Ken Pomeroy Interview

Ken Pomeroy Interview

To release three albums in a four-year period is a notable achievement for any artist, but to do so by your 19th birthday is quite exceptional. Oklahoma singer songwriter Ken Pomeroy has done exactly that with the release of her latest album CHRISTMAS LIGHTS IN APRIL on the Horton Records label. With a voice that is rich in emotion, accompanied by minimal instrumentation, Pomeroy has created a suite of calming and meditative songs that suggest some intense personal searching. An artist with the talent, potential and acumen to establish herself as a serious player in the industry, we caught up with Ken on the day her delightful new album was released. 

Where exactly in Oklahoma are you living?

I’m in Moore, a suburb of Oklahoma City. 

If I had not heard Ken Pomeroy’s music previously, how would you describe it to me?

I’d describe my music as a mix of folk and Americana, with a kind of hopeful sadness to it. I write a lot of sad and emotional songs in a very vulnerable sense.

I understand that you started at a young age so were you formally trained?

My dad has always been in a band and because of that I’ve always been interested in music from a very young age. I started playing baritone ukulele at nine and did get formally trained for about two years. I transitioned into the guitar from there and took my own initiative, and I’m still continually learning. 

What music initially made you set your sights on a career as an artist?

I was definitely influenced by John Denver. He would have been the reason I started playing music. When I was about six years old, I got obsessed with his song Leaving On A Jet Plane. I hadn’t heard that type of music before or music that made me feel like that song did. 

I do not expect that you were listening to the same music as your peers in your early teens.

No, I was always a little bit different in as far as I was listening to Joni Mitchell when I was twelve or thirteen. It was always hard for me to connect with my peers in school because I was listening to very mature music, whereas a lot of people my age were just listening to what was on the radio.   

Three albums to date is a prolific output. Were all the songs on your recent album CHRISTMAS LIGHTS IN APRIL written after the two earlier albums were recorded?

Some of the songs on the new album had been developed earlier, the oldest song on the album, Cowboy Song, is five years old. The album is a mix and medley of songs I had written years ago, and also songs that I had written during the pandemic. 

You won the Jimmy La Fave songwriting contest in 2018 with the song The Sidewalk Song. Did that bring you to the attention of Horton Records who released both HALLWAYS and CHRISTMAS LIGHTS IN APRIL?

The initial Horton Records’ relationship started when I played Folk Alliance in 2017. That was just after I had recorded my first record MINUTES TO HOURS. I was working on and in the process of recording my second album, HALLWAYS, at that time. Horton had seen me play previously and wanted to work with me. They have been so helpful, recording my music and helping me to go overseas to perform and get my music out there. They have also helped tremendously with promotion.  They gave me a complete free hand with my music, which is the really cool thing about them. First of all, they are a completely non-profit record label and only want to help musicians. They allow the artists to do there own thing, what and where they record, all those kinds of things.  Their artists are generally out of Tulsa orr Oklahoma City. 

Your songwriting is extremely personal and honest, leaving little to the imagination.

I sometimes have to separate Ken the person and Ken Pomeroy the writer. I’m a pretty introverted person when it comes to everyday life. I’ve always had to be extroverted as a musician, maybe putting on a brave face at times. I could record records the rest of my life and never release them. I think the recording process definitely helps me, it’s like going to therapy in a way, emotionally releasing. Performing live can only go two ways, really good or really bad for me. When it is good, performing live can be an out of body experience in a way where I get to feel what other people feel, like an emotional gain and loss, which is pretty special. 

The songs are also very forthright, intimate and sad. Are they mostly fuelled by actual experiences?

Well, Flannel Cowboy was originally about the first time I felt I was truly in love with someone, and then it transitioned into the story of Rip and Beth from the television show Yellowstone. The song Joan is actually about my take on Bob Dylan and Joan Baez’ relationship. Most everything on the album is about something that I have experienced or witnessed.  

Where did you record the album?

It was recorded at Fellowship Hall Sound in Arkansas with Jason Weinheimer, who engineered the whole thing. It was such a good emotional experience, we did it over a weekend. Most of the songs were recorded live. Joan was the only one where I recorded a guitar track first and sang over, but the rest of the album was recorded live.  

What songs on the album are you most proud of?

That is always a difficult question. I was almost not going to release this record because I find it really difficult for me to put myself out there. These are the most vulnerable songs that I have written, and it’s hard to be young and not always understanding how you feel or how others perceive how you feel, it can be overwhelming. My favourite tracks on the record would probably be Joan and Truth.

Kyle Reid features prominently on the album playing guitars, pedal steel and Hammond M3. I’m familiar with his work on albums by other Oklahoma artists, Carter Sampson and Samantha Crain. How did you connect with him?

We have a concert venue at my dad’s shop, which is a hot-rod shop that my dad works out of. My dad created this super cool music venue at his shop called The Shop @ Skippy’s. It’s very much a strictly enforced listening room and we hold regular shows there.  The first time I met Kyle was when he was playing a show at our shop. While I was wanting to become a musician, my dad would expose me to local artists. I’ve been playing music with Kyle since I was thirteen, so I’ve known him the longest of anyone in the music scene. 

I expect that your dad has been hugely supportive of your development as an artist. Is that correct?

Absolutely, he and my step mom have helped me so much. They have been so supportive from the beginning. I hear stories from friends of how their parents were not supportive of their music careers, telling them that they needed a real job. My parents supported both my music and my college career where I’m studying psychology, I want to get a PhD in psychology and psychoanalytics.    

What are your options to play live shows at present and in the near future?

It’s quite difficult. My album launch is happening at The Shop @ Skippy’s. Because of Covid, it is going to be the first show at the shop in about a year and a half, so I’m very excited about that.  A lot of the artists that didn’t get to perform during Covid are getting the roll over from shows previously booked into this year and next year. It means having to book two years in advance for festivals. I’m actually working on more music right now and recording with producer Chad Copelin to try and get singles out and have them rolling out about once a month. That’s my big goal for the next year alongside trying to tour.  

Given that you are writing more music and may not be touring for some while after this album is released, does that create a dilemma in choosing setlists?

The setlists will probably be a selection of the new compilation that I’m working on now as well as this album: it will be a medley on the songs that I’ve written over the past years. It’s difficult because I’m actually in the midst of finding a new and hopefully improved sound. I’ll keep to my folk and Americana roots but closer to a mix of Fay Webster and Phoebe Bridgers is the vibe I’m going to. I will definitely also try to tour with a minimal band. 

Given that your music is so considered and mature for a young artist, what age profile would a typical show of yours attract?

Since I started performing my audience age profile has been late thirties to beyond. However, recently I’ve been playing in a band with guys my own age, playing sort of folk/rock which has expanded my profile to younger people, which is cool. That’s a new thing for me.

Are you a listener to music as well as a creator?

Yes, I’m a huge music listener. I have a very diverse palate when it comes to music. I’m the type that dives deeply into a genre or sub-genre and listens to that for a bit before moving on. I’ve got into classical and modern classical music recently. When I was in high school, I listened to a lot of Ska, hardcore punk and black metal. I also love and listen to alternative folk.  

Final question. Do you set yourself long term goals?

Yes and no. I do like to have a logistic plan to back up my goals, although I haven’t got that far yet. My five-year goal is to be successful enough that the people that I care about and look up to know who I am, while being content with what I am releasing. I want to reach out to as many people as I can with my music and not get sucked underneath the tide and get lost. I feel that sometimes with a lot of folk and Americana artists, it can be hard to listen to a whole album of sad songs, even though it’s my favourite type of music and I’m grateful that I’m able to create it.

Interview by Declan Culliton

Gary Waldman Interview

Gary Waldman has been in music all his life. He is an entrepreneur, with interests in a number of areas across the industry, and a track record that has seen him wear many hats as he juxtaposed different interests. He is the owner of  Morebarn Music and TourProLogic, two companies that are involved in covering artist, producer, and musician management, as well as tour production. Gary is one of life’s gentlemen and very humble in taking credit for the huge support he lends to artists over his many years of advice and sharing his experience in an open and generous fashion.

The reason for my interview request with Gary is to learn more about his life-long friendship with the gifted musician Neal Casal, who sadly died two years ago. Gary was a true friend, manager, and confidante throughout the entirety of Neal’s career. His role in mentoring and guiding such a great talent throughout his life, cannot be understated. Today, he also acts as the founder and executive director of the Neal Casal Music Foundation. Gary is also the executive producer of Highway Butterfly: The Songs of Neal Casal, a tribute to his life and music and this collection features 41 artists performing Neal’s songs on 5 LPs or 3 CDs.  Gary is also the perfect custodian of the legacy that Neal has left behind.

Hi Gary. It’s good to talk with you and are you currently in New York city?

No, I'm actually in Woodstock, New York. I was living in New Jersey for years, and then I lived in New York City from 2003, up until earlier this year. And then I moved up here. So, now I live in a 200-year-old farmhouse that I'm renovating and it's probably going to take the rest of my life to finish! I'm actually right across the street from the Bearsville Theatre, which is a somewhat famous music venue, and the land behind me, up in the woods, was once owned by Albert Grossman, Bob Dylan’s manager. He was the guy who kind of got everybody to move up here in the 60s. 

Did you actually go to school with Neal in the New Jersey area? Is that how you first met?

No, I did not go to school with him. I was a few years older and we lived a town apart, about ten miles from each other. When I got out of high school, I was going to college and I got a part-time job at a record store. Neal was in his last year of high school and he had a hard rock band called Exire. The bass player in that band used to shop at the record store I worked at and one day he came in, and gave me the band's cassette, which they had just recorded. I gave it a spin and I actually thought it was pretty good. I then went to see them play. They were playing at a venue right down the street and I thought that Neal was really good. And we just became friends; we had a lot in common. I had been working at the record store, and I had a pretty good record collection. So, Neal would come over and, you remember the back in the day, recording albums onto cassette? He would pull out albums and be like, ‘What is this?’ And I'd be like, ‘Oh, that's Free, they're one of the great English hard rock bands and you’ve got to record that.‘

You were something of an influence on his early music education then? 

Well, I turned him onto a lot of music and, I just started helping him out. One of the things that we really bonded over was our shared love of a band called Blackfoot. They were a Southern rock band and they were really popular in the 70s. But they had moved to New Jersey in the mid-70s when they were looking for a record deal, so they could be closer to New York City. And when Neal and I were teenagers, everywhere we went, everybody was like; “Oh, Blackfoot, Blackfoot, Blackfoot.” And so, we both, separately of each other, had become big fans of theirs. And by the mid-late 80s, Southern rock was out of fashion, but they were still going as a band, with one original member and you know, playing clubs and not doing all that great in their career. I had become friends with their manager when I worked at the record store. I would just call him up and be like, “Hey, is there anything we can do to promote the band?” And then eventually, he was like, “Yeah, we're looking for some new musicians.” And I said, “Ah, I’ve got a great young guitar player.” How old is he? Yeah, he's 19. And they're like, he probably can't do it. I said I'll bring him out there to Detroit where you guys live and let him audition. And so, we went out there. Neal was just so good - he was so prepared and he knew every song inside out on guitar and he could sing all the harmonies. They were rehearsing and Rickey Medlocke, who was a fairly legendary rock and roll singer and an original member of Lynyrd Skynyrd, and Blackfoot, when they had been a big band; he looked around, and was like, “Who's this kid at 19 playing so great?” And so, Neal got in the band and played with them for a couple of years all over the world.

So, you played a key role in getting Neal his first start on the road to being a full-time musician back then? 

Yeah, I mean, I was a guitar player as well. So, I knew enough about guitar to, you know, help him there too. But he eventually met a guy named Davis Jaynes, who worked at a music store where we lived. Neal got a job there and Davis had played for years with Leslie West of Mountain. So, Davis was really Neal's guitar mentor and really got Neal to pull his own style out of himself, rather than trying to copy other people, which, you know, when you're 18 years old, is all about “ I'm going to be Eddie Van Halen.”

Did you continue as a musician, Gary? Or did you go into management at a fairly young age?

Well, after I was working at the record store for a few years, I got a job at a record label. I worked there for seven or eight years. And then, I started my own management company. So, I always had a guitar around, but I didn't play all that much. But in the last 15 years or so, I've been playing endlessly. Learning all kinds of stuff on instruments. 

And when you say you started your own company, was that MoreBarn music? 

No, I started that in 1994. Actually, MoreBarn was a term that Neal and I loved. It was a Neil Young story. And Neal Casal, his original publishing company, was called MoreBarn, and then we morphed that name of my management company. (The story goes that Young shouted to his producer on the album, Harvest, that it needed "more barn" ambiance – from a rowboat in the middle of a lake with Graham Nash…)

You've been such a true friend to Neal over so many years, and I know that he gave you a production credit on the Rain, Wind and Speed album (1996). 

Well, you know, could I sit there in the studio and offer Neal, my opinion? Sure… You know, if he wants to call me producer; I don't know if I'm really a producer. I've been involved with a lot of records over the years. And so, with Neal, I think we kind of had a shared vision for what we wanted it to be. So, he trusted my opinion. He gave me a producer credit, but I wouldn't be the guy who's like setting up microphones and going for a sound. I was more like a sounding board, which a lot of times, that's what a producer is, right? The producer is somebody who can listen and go, that's the best version right there. Or, that part you need to do again, or we should switch this. So, I helped him out a little bit here and there. But he didn't need much help. Neal had a very clear vision of what he wanted to sound like, especially in those early days.

We will define your role as spiritual guidance then…

Yeah, that’s probably better (laughs)!

Neal first came over to Dublin in 2001 and the trip was arranged as part of his promotion of the album, Anytime Tomorrow. He played shows in Dublin and Cork on a short visit.

He was helped a lot by a lady, Pierangela Manzetti, who was building an awareness of Neal’s music at the time and booking tours in England. She wasn't, per se, really in the business. She was trying to book some shows. She'd become a fan of Neal and just through sheer will - you know I've always said this; you could sign with a big booking agency and get nowhere, yet somebody like her, who really believed and really was going to push, made a lot of things happen for him. And you know, he toured quite successfully in the UK for a few years there, from 1998 through 2001, and she was great.

Neal loved Ireland, and he was particularly proud of the television slot he played; it was a perfect performance. Yeah, he loved coming there. And I know that the Ryan Adams in the Cardinals gigs he did there; he was so excited about those. He said those were great shows. (Neal played on Open House,  RTE 1 and you can watch the performance at; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8LdKR8qWaU ).

There's so much to talk about. I think that the new tribute album, HIGHWAY BUTTERFLY, is absolutely incredible. I'm so delighted with it, even though there is no distribution for the music into Ireland. To try and get the album stocked over here is really difficult as there are so few record stores left. These are the barriers that you're up against in trying to break it into markets overseas. 

It's due to be distributed by Proper in the UK. They told us that they sold out of the initial batch of CDs  and I'm always asking our US distributor, “What is going on with Europe?” We're getting orders, and I get so many messages from people. The vinyl also was very delayed and I'm hoping that we'll have it shortly after the New Year. You've probably heard about a worldwide vinyl shortage and also because of the Adele and Ed Sheeran new albums co-opting all the vinyl plants to print their vinyl?  I'm glad that people want to buy vinyl, but it's very difficult right now, and also with our box set, it's five LPs. We've had some quality control issues and we've gotten a few test pressings that just didn't sound as good as it's supposed to sound. We also had a couple where the centre hole is not centred, it's a little bit off centre. So, if you're going to print vinyl, like job-one, print these center holes in the exact center, or else the music is gonna sound weird.  

So, we just can't in good faith, say that it’s good enough to put it out. I hate that it's delayed but we're getting a new test pressing tomorrow morning, which we've been assured is ‘the one,’ and then we're going to be on a fast track to pressing them and hopefully have them fairly quickly. But it's been very frustrating because we put a tremendous amount of effort into this, you know, obviously the quality of the recordings, the sequence, everything we wanted to be perfect. And we've run into these delays with just quality control because vinyl is just difficult right now.

There's the whole issue of vinyl in the first place because of the eco-friendly argument; people are saying that you shouldn't be buying vinyl. But given the resurgence of an interest in vinyl this is hard to reconcile. 

It's a really difficult thing. What's happened with streaming, and I like streaming as much as anybody, when I want to be able to find anything I want so quickly. At the same time, just for musicians, I mean, it's not free to make music, it's not free to record it. It's not free to devote your life to it and not have a normal life. So, you know, you go in there and you record, and then people are getting your music for free. It's really tough. And I know you hear these people saying, ‘Oh, stop your whining.’ Well, I mean, how do you expect musicians to continue? Sure, there's always going to be the Adele's and the Ed Sheerin's but, you know, for working musicians like Neal was, or for a lot of the people who are on this record - they have to go out there and work endlessly on the road because record sales are just not really a thing any more; certainly not for mid-level artists.

Talking about the new album, did you allow the artists complete discretion on which tracks they picked?

You know, the way it worked, it's funny, because there were a lot of songs where definitely we thought, ‘we got to get somebody to do this. We got to get somebody to do that.’ Well, it didn't quite work out the way I imagined. Each song has a little bit of its own story. There were some, where I was, ‘Ah, I know the perfect song for her to do, like Feel No Pain,  Lesley Mendelson. I knew that I wanted her to do that one. And then there were some that Dave Schools and Jim Scott, who were the co-producers of the record, directed people towards. A lot of the time we got surprised by the songs that people wanted to do. So, let's say, myself, or Dave would send five or ten songs, that we think could be suggestions for an artist, and a lot of the time they would choose one that we didn't expect. There were also some people who had something in their mind, like, ‘Oh, this is the one I want to do.’

It was just that there's so many songs; that was the thing, right? So, we didn't really pay attention to let's make sure each album is represented. It was more like, “here's a bunch of songs we think would be good for you,” or a lot of people came to us with,’ this is the one I want to do.’ And I think you see a lot of people did songs from Sweeten the Distance, because Neal’s renown had grown from the time he was with Ryan Adams and the Cardinals. And then, when he was with the Chris Robinson Brotherhood, a lot of people had discovered Neal by then, and Sweeten the Distance was one of the main records he'd put out in that period. He didn't put out a lot of solo music while he was in those bands. And so, a lot of people fell in love with Sweeten the Distance. We had so many people like; ‘I want to do this one. I want to do that one.’ So that's why I think that the focus was on that. There's so many great songs, particularly on Basement Dreams, and The Sun Rises Here, that haven't been touched. Zephaniah O’ Hora, for example, did  Best To Bonnie, which is on The Sun Rises Here. That's one of my favourite Neal songs, and I was like, you gotta do that one. So luckily, he was good enough to do that! There are lots of other songs. I thought that someone would pick Real Country Dark, or Reason, which were suggestions put forward.

I always liked Dandelion Wine and Bird In Hand, neither of which are included either.

Do you know that band, Railroad Earth? They've been playing Dandelion Wine in their live set for 15 or 20 years now. The main guy in that band, Todd Sheaffer, is a friend of ours who grew up near us in New Jersey. And many times, when they played, Neal with joining them for that song - which was always great. And I said to Todd, “do you want to do Dandelion Wine on the record?” And he really wanted to do a solo version of December and I just love his version of that song – it’s one of my absolute favorite songs on the record, it's just so beautiful… 

Bird In Hand is one of my favorites too.  Actually, the guy that I mentioned earlier, who was Neal's guitar mentor, Davis Jaynes. I wanted him to do a version of that song. He's In his early 70s now and he was having some health issues, he wanted to do it, but we just couldn't get it done by the deadline. So, I’ve kind of held that song for him. So, you know, if we do have a volume two, will get it on there for sure. 

I wanted to ask was about the Music Foundation. You're a registered charity, so I guess that the only form of income that you have is through donations. Unless you receive grants in the United States for setting up such a foundation?

There are grants that you can get as a non-profit charity that we're working on. We've been lucky enough to also have a couple of very generous private donations. We also sell some merchandise on the Neal Casal website. So, there is a steady flow of income. We really are trying to make the foundation something that can live on for a long time, and we've been able to raise enough money to help some musicians who are having health issues. We’ve also given away quite a few instruments to kids in schools, young musicians, and we're working on much more of that - we're about to roll some out next week. 

We are just trying to make it a place where people want to help musicians, and we can help facilitate that. And, you know what a difficult lifestyle it is for musicians. You're doing a long drive; you're going to a truck-stop for food. You do that for 200-some days a year. It's exhausting. And, musicians wind up ignoring their health; “Yeah, I’ll go to a doctor next year; I'll do this next time. Yeah, I'm going to be healthier on this tour.” It's just hard to do. So, musicians need assistance, and we want to assist them because we love music. 

It's such a wonderful thing you're doing. The health and welfare of musicians is something that has been ignored for so long. It's great when you're young, and the world is at your feet, but when you get to the middle years, and suddenly you're looking around and thinking, ‘Well, how much longer can I keep this up? That's a really tough realization.

When you're young and you're doing this, yeah, you can go and do it. And you could do a nine- hour drive, and you can laugh about it and have fun. When you get into your late 40s, early 50s, you're looking back and going, well, what is my life now? And I think this is what happened to Neal and unfortunately, to me, it was obvious what Neal could do. He could have such a nice run here in his 50s and 60s, you can play guitar on other people's records, you can produce records, you could have a lovely career; go on the road less and we talked about it many times. But it just got to the point where he burned himself out. The exhaustion and the lack of a (quote), ‘normal life,’ I think just really caught up with him.

How do the daily activities of the Foundation work?

Really, the main bulk of the foundation work is done by myself and Michelle Augis. She is the marketing director, and she was a close friend of Neal’s. She has been amazing. You know, she's worked in the music industry for years and she's phenomenal. And the other people who are on the board; it's really for them, the occasional meeting and to check in. Willa Scantlebury has known Neal since he was born. Her mom and Neal's mom were best friends. So, basically, Neal and Willa were close enough to call them cousins. When Neal would come back to New Jersey, he would stay with Willa and now she is helping us with a lot of the musical instrument donations. So, in the schools that are in the area where Neal grew up, Willa is interacting with them and helping us set up donations. Kenny Roby as well. Kenny was a great friend of Neil's and a great artist. And Kenny has been helping out too. Neal was due to produce Kenny’s new album before he died.

And with that, it’s time to say goodbye to Gary.

He is a very generous and accommodating person and we could have easily continued on for another hour – swapping stories and speaking about Neal and his legacy. One of Neal’s last wishes was that a book be made of the photographs he has taken over the last 20+ years, while he traveled the world as a musician, surfer, and global explorer. 

Jay Blakesberg and his team have brought to fruition a 240-page hardcover coffee table book that features over 250 beautiful photographs all taken by Neal. The book is titled Tomorrow’s Sky: Photographs by Neal Casal. It is available to order on the music Foundation website, as is the wonderful music project that deserves a home in every music lover’s personal collection.  https://nealcasalmusicfoundation.org/

Interview by Paul McGee

Margo Cilker Interview

It’s always rewarding to come across a debut album from an artist previously unknown to you that stops you in your tracks. Such was the case with POHORYLLE, released in November on the Loose label by Margo Cilker. With echoes of a young Lucinda Williams, the album is packed with tender and bruised lyrics across nine perfectly- tailored songs. Cilker knew precisely what she wanted from them when she brought her demos to the door of Sera Cahoone to work her magic on them. Cahoone’s input ensured the songs were swaddled in warm and rich arrangements, the perfect accompaniment to Cilker’s sweet vocals and thought-provoking stories. It’s easy to form the opinion that the material on the album was just what Cilker was born to make and a stepping stone to an artist with lots more to offer. We chatted with Margo recently to learn of the interesting backstory that led to the new album.

Where are you living at present?

I am in Washington as my husband and I moved to a farmhouse for the winter on a ranch here close to the Columbia River.

I understand that you have shared your time between America and Europe for quite a number of years?

I studied Spanish in university and was intending going abroad to Europe to be immersed in language. My father had studied in Madrid in the seventies, he was there when Franco was still in power, so it’s interesting to understand what ties the history of Spain together from that perspective. I was following in my father’s footsteps in wanting to travel to Spain. I picked Bilbao because the Basque country is just so off the beaten track. It’s a place where the culture is so rich, the food and wine is exquisite, I was really drawn to it. I moved there and eventually extended my trip, I could not bear leaving. Ultimately, I did head back to the States and started doing music but travelled back to Spain every couple of years. I’ve been there five times, staying in Bilbao for between three weeks and nine months at a time. My adopted mother, Judy, over there, is a woman from Wexford in Ireland, actually.  She moved there when she was seventeen, married a Basque man and has spent her whole life there ever since. She’s my companion over there.

Were you writing music when you went there in your younger days?

Yes. I was still a student when I went there first. If you ask any of my teachers, they will say I was always missing classes, showing up late, but I was always writing songs, ever since I could string a few chords together. I started putting together my own songs when I first moved to Bilbao and I recorded my first EP there.

And that songwriting from an early age eventually developed into a career choice?

As a songwriter you just feel lost if you are not pursuing it as a career and it gets to the point where nothing is going to stop you making it your life’s mission. As far as making a living out of it, I’ve done a lot of different jobs to make sure that my life remains inspired and that I can also afford myself the time to write songs. That’s the focus for me. If I were not making time for that I would feel very lost.

For a debut album, POHORYLLE has been on the receiving end of glowing reviews.

Yes. It’s really so encouraging to read people’s responses, particularly when there is so much music coming out.

Listening to it I got the impression that I would be talking with an introverted person, but that does not appear to be the case.

Oh my God, I could not be any more of an extrovert (laughs)

You describe your music as ‘not country and western’, just ‘west’. Is that accurate or whimsical?

No, that’s probably about right. Music is so inextricable from my being that it’s hard for me to accurately describe my music. Growing up on the West Coast, the spirit of The West Coast has definitely left an indelible impact on my music. It does tend to be eclectic because I’ve been absorbing music obsessively for so long, my whole life in fact. I started taking guitar lessons in school when I was twelve. I was into Cat Stevens and Simon and Garfunkel back then. I was so hooked. In high school it was Bob Dylan and Gillian Welch. I was diving into their music then. Alternative rock, too. Me and my buddies would call the radio stations and request songs on rock stations. That’s another interesting vein of influence. Funnily, moving to Bilbao is where I really got into Americana music. They’ve always had a strong love for both American and English music in the north of Spain. My friends over there really turned me on to Lucinda Williams and the cult of Lucinda took over my life for a while (laughs).

When were the songs on the album written?

One of those songs was written in 2017, so it has really been a long time in the making from start to finish. The songs were basically written from 2018 with the exception of that one song. OK, here’s the timeline. In 2016 I move home, lived with my parents and worked in a German bakery. My grandfather died on January 1st 2017, as mentioned in the track Wine In The World. I got on a flight to Paris and stayed in Europe until June of that year. That time in Europe was awesome. I was touring but wasn’t writing, just busy playing shows. I got really burned out and moved back to California to rest and settle down. I worked on a dairy farm for a while and I had a lot of spare time in 2018 and that’s when I started writing the songs for the album.

You then brought the bones of the songs to Sera Cahoone to produce the album. What drew you to her?

Yes, they were acoustic demos at that stage. The inception of the album was happening and I was getting ready to record. I had heard of Sera but had not dug into to her music. I checked out some videos of hers and was so overcome and smitten with her approach. It’s funny, with some people, especially in the world of country music, the music serves as a bravado and a means to project something that is maybe an aspiration. It can be the bravado that the artist wished they had. With Sera there is none of that. It’s not at all pretentious but exactly who she is. She simply radiates love with her music and from an earnest place. That was what was so important for me, finding a producer with that goal, not hiding or projecting anything. Because she’s also a drummer she knows how to make the drums sound productive in the mix. They’re never overpowering, they chug the songs along in a beautifully lush way. I hear her influence and her own albums in my album, and that’s exactly what I wanted. She’s a musician that just has that basic organic sound and her arrangements and style are so lush. 

You engaged some big hitters to contribute to the album’s sound. Jenny Conlee (The Decemberists), Jason Kardong (Son Volt), Rebecca Young (Jesse Sykes) and Mirabai Peart (Joanna Newsom) and Kelly Pratt (Beirut) all feature. Were they selected by Sera?

Yes, she corralled everyone together and I did not have any say in who she was bringing on board. We tracked drums, bass and guitar, and a scratch vocal as a trio, and then added everything else. It was super fun and very easy arranging all the songs from there.

When did the recording take place?

This was in the fall of 2019 when we were making the record. Because it’s my debut album, we needed the time to iron everything out. With Covid it was very hard to coordinate everything, including signing to a label at the peak of Covid. I had to drive to the city to meet John Skepsi of Fluff and Gravy Records. It was strange having to meet wearing masks but I wanted to know who I’d be working with. I didn’t get the chance to meet Tom (Bridgewater) from Loose Music in person, but that will hopefully come soon.

Are the songs in general autobiographical and who is Kevin Johnson, the title of the second track on the album?

The songs are generally autobiographical. Kevin Johnson is not a real character but it’s inspired by a real character. Kevin Johnson is a placeholder name, and it was inspired by certain individuals’ actions. 

Chester’s is a song that speaks so elegantly of escapism and uncertainty. Where did that song come from?

It’s very much a traveller’s song. I actually wrote that song in chunks. I had the line ‘I’ve seen the drunks in a line at Chester’s’, and I had the idea of this roadhouse bar called Chester’s.  I remember when I was living in Petaluma, working outside on the dairy farm and just singing that line, probably singing it to the cows (laughs). When I moved to Oregon something evoked the rest of the song, probably about being in a desolate place at that time.

The closing track Wine In The World invariably has me hitting the repeat button. No doubt it was inspired by your times in Northern Spain?

Yes, most definitely.  There is something about living in the Basque country and enjoying wine together. There is so much affection for the actual experience of wine drinking there, which is totally different to the drinking culture in the U.S.

For someone who travels so much, how did you cope with the enforced lockdown?

Obviously, it was peaks and valleys. Last winter was very difficult when it was very cold and I couldn’t visit my family but I had some fruitful times during Covid. I already have another album of songs written. I was blessed to have some stability; I had a roof over my head and some fabulous housemates to share with and we made the most of it. Something that was fruitful and a blessing was having a lot of time to spend with my husband, working on domestic life together. We were able to really galvanise our relationship. 

He is also a musician I understand. Is it ever a case of too many chefs in the kitchen?

(Laughs) He’s a musician too but also a cowboy. He keeps pretty busy also working on ranches as well as his songwriting projects.

Are you intending touring the album solo or with a band in 2022?

I tour both solo and with a band. One of my backing bands is actually located in Brighton in the UK. In 2019 I was able to get them over here for a tour. We went from San Francisco to Nashville and back, which was really fun.  I don’t know what the next year will hold for me but I’m grateful to be in a place where I don’t have to be say ‘yes’ to every little show I’m offered. It’s a blessing to be at a stage where I can be selective about shows and I know some great opportunities are down the road for me. I’m putting my songs out there and letting them do the work and I think the right people will come to me.

Will we see you over this side of the world in 2022?

We are working on it. I’ve never been to Ireland and I’m afraid I’ll never leave if and when I do get there. 

Interview by Declan Culliton

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