Bronwyn Keith-Hynes Interview

Grammy winner and IBMA Fiddle Player of the Year on two occasions, Bronwyn Keith-Hynes’ sophomore album I BUILD A WORLD finds the Charlottesville native taking the lead vocal alongside her stunning fiddle playing. It’s a first for Bronwyn, whose debut album, FIDDLER’S PASTIME from 2020, featured several guests adding their vocals to that record. Household names on the bluegrass circuit, Wes Corbett, Scott Vestal, Jerry Douglas, Dominick Leslie, Bryan Sutton, Jeff Picker and Bronwyn’s husband, Jason Carter, add instrumentation to the new album. Jason also contributes backing vocals, as do Molly Tuttle, Dierks Bentley, Sam Bush, Dudley Connell, Brit Taylor and Darrell Scott. Despite the presence of the bluegrass royalty that lent a hand, the album strays from traditional bluegrass into country on a number of the well-selected songs. Bronwyn follows in the footsteps of her peers Alison Krauss, Molly Tuttle, Billy Strings and Sturgill Simpson in breaking down traditional boundaries. In doing so, she has created a stunning eleven-track album that not only identifies her as a superb vocalist and bandleader but also marks a significant evolution in her musical progression, alongside her parallel career as a member of Molly Tuttle’s band, Golden Highway.

Firstly, congratulations on your recent marriage to Jason Carter. Does having two fiddle players in the house lead to competition or support?

Support for sure, but it does mean that I have not seen him since the honeymoon; he’s been on tour since then.

You have secured the Monday residency at Dee’s Cocktail Lounge in Madison, Nashville. How did that come about?

East Nash Grass started that residency and had been doing it for about six years. At the beginning of this year, they got to the point that they were doing a lot more touring and also playing bigger shows in Nashville. I was asked if I would be willing to do the residency and was super excited to do so; I’ve always loved going to see their shows. With putting out my new record this year, I wanted to play more around town and do my own music, and it is great to have a weekly gig somewhere.

I really enjoyed your show there in September during AmericanaFest week. I recognised Frank Rische from seeing him play with his sister Lillie Mae and Jim Lauderdale numerous times. Who are the other players, and do you rotate band members?

It mostly rotates because everybody has so much going on. Frank has been there every week except for one and has been the steadiest band member. Often, it is Vickie Vaughn, who plays with Della Mae on bass, Wes Corbett on banjo, or Frank Evans, sometimes, and a couple of different mandolin players, Tristan Scroggins, Reed Stutz, and Thomas Cassell. Doing it every week, I also like to rotate it and keep it fresh for everybody.

What drew you musically to the fiddle?

The first traditional fiddle music I played was actually Irish music. All my dad’s side are Irish, my grandparents emigrated to here. I picked up the violin very early and started off with classical music. My classical teacher would then teach me a few random fiddle tunes, which I liked, and when I started really getting into fiddling, my parents got me a fiddle teacher. I ended up going to Ireland a lot for family events, and I’d hear the music there. I did that until I was a late teenager, and when my family moved to Virginia, I began hearing bluegrass music and loving it.

You studied music at Berklee College. Was that a positive experience for you?

For me, it was a really positive experience. I started there in 2009 when they started the American Roots Music Programme, the first year you could officially study that music at Berklee. That year and after that year, the college attracted a lot more kids who played bluegrass and old-time music than before. That was the glory years, I was in school with Sierra Hull, Molly Tuttle, John Mailander, Alex Hargraves, Courtney Hartman, Dominick Leslie, all my Golden Highway bandmates. We would have jam parties where you would learn so much; Sarah Jarosz, who was at school in New England Conservatory just down the street, would come over to your house for your birthday party; it was a crazy time.  

You have taken the lead vocalist role on your new album, I BUILT A WORLD, having used guest vocalists on your debut album, FIDDLER’S PASTIME.

Yes, this was the first time that I recorded lead vocals, I had been working on my singing for a couple of years leading up to that. It was definitely scary doing something new like that, but each time I make an album, I learn so much from the process, and by the time I’m done with it, I am a lot more confident. It’s a really good way to learn.

You are essentially the band leader rather than a band member in your parallel career playing with Molly Tuttle’s band, Golden Highway. Has that experience been rewarding?

It’s cool and it’s a different thing than being part of a band. It’s a good way to experience the music; when you are a singer, you experience the song differently than when you are the fiddler. It has taken a while to get used to, and that is where the shows at Dee’s have been coming in handy; it gives me the opportunity to practice that, which is fun.

Your stage performance is also quite animated, which is not always the case with bluegrass performances, though there is also quite a bit of country on I BUILT A WORLD.

I’m definitely influenced by a lot of country music, as well as bluegrass. By playing with Molly Tuttle in Golden Highway for the past couple of years, I’ve become more comfortable moving around on stage, and playing in a plugged-in set-up allows me to move around more. What I like is being able to connect with the other musicians on stage more; you can walk over and jam or trade solos with someone, facing them rather than facing the audience. That feels like a more interactive experience and hopefully more exciting to the audience.

In recent years, artists like Billy Strings, Sturgill Simpson, and Molly Tuttle have been pushing the boundaries of bluegrass and drawing more people into the genre.

Yes, and I do feel that these days, all the genres are blending together in a beautiful way. People like Billy Strings and Molly Tuttle know so much about bluegrass and are bringing other influences into it and connecting to a broader audience. Sturgill Simpson grew up with bluegrass but has been better known as a country artist. He has brought a lot of his fanbase into bluegrass.

This has made the industry take notice, even if they primarily tend to promote more mainstream crossover pop/country.

Once you are mixing it up because you genuinely like the different genres and not just to sell more tickets, I do think the artists that I like are doing it for the right reasons and, by doing so, are connecting with more people. I do think that there is a roots revival happening, and more mainstream people are accepting of roots music, country, and bluegrass as they get more of an opportunity to hear it.

The credits on I BUILT A WORLD are like a ‘who’s who’ of household names in the bluegrass world, with Wes Corbett, Scott Vestal, Dominick Leslie, Bryan Sutton, Jeff Picker and Jerry Douglas all noted together with several others who added harmony vocals. Were you able to get them all into the studio to play together?

It was recorded live for the most part, and all of the musicians were in the studio at the same time. Jerry Douglas came in for a day to play on all the songs he was on, and the other guys were in for three days of song tracking. I get very picky, so I sang rough vocals in the studio, went back and added my vocals afterwards, and redid some fiddle; it gave me more time to hone in on what I wanted to do without other people having to wait around. Once I got to a point with the tracks I liked and my work on them and the core band was good, that was the icing on the cake. I then got to the point that I had to pick out who I wanted to sing harmony with.

You chose Brent Truitt to co-produce the record with you.

Yes. Wes Corbett produced my last album, FIDDLER’S PASTIME, and had a big hand in selecting the material. I co-produced this album with Brent Truitt. I had a good idea of what I wanted for the album, but I also wanted another voice and someone I could bounce ideas off. I selected all the material myself, had a lot of it arranged, and had a clear idea of what I wanted before we came into the studio.  

The majority of the songs selected to record are not well known, even if several of the writers are.

Half of the songs on the album had yet to be recorded before, which was what I was looking for, as I wanted the first cuts of a number of the songs. I had been sitting on a couple of the songs for a few years, but the majority came about in the six months leading up to the recordings.

The title track is a Matthew Parsons written song.

It is and hasn’t been recorded before. I heard him sing that song live on the radio when I was driving through Kentucky. I went home and googled the lyrics and whatever else I could remember. I hadn’t heard of him, but I found him. He is a Kentucky singer-songwriter, and I emailed him out of the blue and asked him if he would be okay if I recorded it. He couldn’t understand how I had come across it but was very generous to let me record it.

Why did you select that song as the album’s title?

There are a couple of different ways to read those lyrics. I grew up as a home-schooled hippy-like kid who was pretty independent. That’s what I’m thinking about when I’m singing that song, being a wild kid in the woods, thinking that I’m going to grow my own world. It also could be a metaphor as to how I’ve structured my life; I’ve lived my life outside a lot of convention; I never went to school, did a music degree and have never had a job outside music, and I’ve had to figure that out and make it work.

Jamie Hartford, son of John Hartford, wrote Can’t Live Without Love, which is a standout song for me.

My husband, Jason Carter, has been friends with Jamie since the 1990s when Jamie had a residency in Downtown Nashville. He had a country band that would play all his original songs Downtown. Jason really liked that song, and when I was fishing around for material, he brought it up. It had originally been recorded by Jamie with a rock band and hadn’t been done in bluegrass, as it’s from a different genre.

The Peter Rowan written Angel Island could relate to any decade.

I knew that song for a long time. My grandparents being immigrants had me interested in immigration stories, and this song just seemed very interesting and particularly compelling.

I must also congratulate you on the album’s artwork.

Thank You. I put a lot of work into the music, and I wanted the presentation of the music to match that. The photographer was Alexa King Stone. I found her on Instagram and love her work. We did a two-hour photoshoot on a farm outside Nashville.

Is the album available on vinyl as well as CD and download formats?

I do have vinyl out now. I did my first pressing on blue translucent vinyl, which is just about sold out. I’m trying to figure out the next pressing, which might be a light translucent pink with blue starburst.

Having now added vocals to your skillset, will you consider songwriting going forward?

That is the next step that I want to focus on. I have a few months off from touring at the beginning of 2025, and I’d like to get a bit more serious about songwriting and see if I can write the next record.

You’re back on the road next year after a few months at home.

Yes. Next year is going to be busy. I’ll be on the road with Golden Highway and doing my own touring. There will be no free weekends.

Interview by Declan Culliton

Mindy Smith Interview

There may be twelve years between the release of Mindy Smith’s self-titled album and her new album QUIET TOWN, but the Long Island-reared singer-songwriter, currently living in Nashville, has packed a lot into those last dozen years. She wrote and co-wrote a number of songs for the television series Nashville, helped raise funds for the non-profit organisation Captain Planet Foundation and recorded songs for the animal rescue benefit compilation album SONGS FOR SHELTER ME. Her most significant experience was in 2014 when she connected with her biological family in Southwest Virginia in the Blue Ridge Mountains and learned of their musical leanings. Much of the material on QUIET TOWN was written after discovering her birth family. After releasing her song Little Wings in 2023, she decided to forge ahead and record the eleven songs on the album. Mindy recently spoke frankly and passionately with Lonesome Highway about the songs on the record and her team of close friends, which helped bring to life one of our favourite recordings of 2024.

You grew up in a religious household on Long Island, New York State. Did you embrace that or rebel against it?

I didn't rebel against it. It wasn't an iron fist situation in our household, even though my dad is a Minister. My parents wanted us to believe, but it wasn't 'you must do things this way.' They encouraged us to try and figure out how to cope with life ourselves and make good decisions. It was just something they instilled in us, and they hoped we would take what we needed from it. Ministry to my parents was exactly that. So, I didn't have a lot to rebel against. I don't go to church now; music actually makes me feel closer to honing in on that side of things. I'm also too easily distracted, focusing on lots of other things.  

Was there a country music scene in New York when you were young?

No, it's so different now. Country music is a big deal in New York now, but when I was growing up, I recalled that there weren't any country music radio stations; if there were, they were A.M. stations, which I spent little time tracking down. I did listen to John Denver, and Kenny Rogers was someone that my mom and dad played, and I loved him. The artists that crossed over from country to mainstream, like Dolly Parton, were popular in New York but less with traditional country music, though I occasionally listened to Loretta Lynn, Patsy Cline, Johnny Cash, and Willie Nelson.

What was your 'go-to' music back then?

As a kid, I didn't have disposable cash; it wasn't like now when you have Apps that your parents can dump some money into. So, when I ventured out into my own music world, and in the era of cassette tapes, I had to wait for my favourite songs to come on the radio and then press record on my cassette player and build my own catalogue of mixed tapes that way. I loved The Police, Sting, Prince, and Cyndi Lauper. Then I crept my way into discovering the gateway into alternative music by listening to Depeche Mode, The Cure, The Sundays, and U2, music that was a little darker and sonically drew me into those progressive bands. Every step in my musical journey would take me to the next step.

When did those steps lead you to country music?

When I moved to Knoxville, Tennessee, I discovered John Prine, Nanci Griffith, Patty Griffin, Shawn Colvin, and Gillian Welch. All those steps created the monster that I am. 

Was that move to Knoxville to pursue a music career?

I always wanted to do music, but as a child, I was not encouraged by my music teachers at that time and almost gave up on the idea. My mother, who had studied music, was a choir director, and another gentleman was very encouraging, but other than that, no one else. When I found myself in Knoxville, I had a neighbour who was into going to open mics and took me along. My eyes were opened, and I started singing again, mostly a capella. Eventually, I wrote a song in the middle of the night, and then I picked up the guitar. From there, I just went out and threw it out to see what would stick. 

Discovering your biological family in Appalachia and their musical backgrounds must have given you a rationale for being drawn to country music.

Yes, that's what is interesting. I've always loved traditional Irish music, which is a huge part of the Appalachian and Blue Ridge Mountains style of music; it is so much a part of all the other styles of music that grew up in that area. I found myself being drawn to their music and bluegrass, Americana and folk music. I then found out that I'm a 'Long Island Hillbilly.' I say that with love and the utmost pride because there are many beautiful things about the Appalachian people, their history and their music. I was really excited to find that all my biological family were musical.

At what point did you decide to seek out your biological family?

I knew I was adopted from a very young age, and as I got older, I got to know the story about my biological mother. I heard what I needed to hear to allow me to process it; that was my journey, anyway. I had a song that I did with a little-known artist, Dolly Parton, called Jolene. Dolly graciously agreed to participate in the video for that song which was for an album that Bob Ferguson produced celebrating Dolly's songs called JUST BECAUSE I'M A WOMAN. That video was played on CMT and some of the other bigger stations that played videos back then. That is when my biological mother pointed out to my biological sister that it was her sister in that video. I was contacted through My Space by her back in 2006, and I would talk to my sister and mother, but it took me a while, until 2014, to have the courage to go there and actually meet them. It does take time and courage because I'm very thankful to my adoptive family, my mother, father and siblings, and I just had to be ready to make that move. My adoptive Dad was amazing and offered to go with me; my adoptive mother had passed away when I was nineteen, so she couldn't join in. I'm sure she would have loved to.

Your new album, QUIET TOWN, is such a great listen. Before we discuss the songs, tell me about the connection with Neilson Hubbard, who produced the record. 

I've known Neilson for years. I did a couple of songs on a project for public television called SHELTER ME, which is an animal activist programme and a beautiful concept. One of them I did with my good friend Matthew Perryman Jones and was a duet called Who Saved Who. We pitched it to Neilson to produce, which he did, and a couple of years ago, I ran into his wife, Audrey Spillman, who is also an amazing songwriter and vocalist, and we both spoke about me working with Neilson again. He is a tremendous person; my understanding of his philosophy is to allow artists to be who they are musically. 

Great players, including Megan McCormick, Will Kimbrough and Lex Price, joined you in the studio. Were they your selections, or did Neilson bring them on board? 

We talked about who we wanted to play on the album, and Neilson brought them in to participate; it was a team effort in terms of building the band.  I had worked with many of these people previously; they are all artists in their own right, and I trusted them to bring their own brushes and paint to our painting party in the studio. I adore Megan McCormick and love her presence, music, and spirit. I also love Will Kimbrough; he has played on my records before, and Lex Price, who I've worked with for many years. He has done so many wonderful albums and is one of Nashville's 'first call' bass players. 

Was your single Little Wings from last year the springboard for writing and recording the album?

Yes, it was. The cool thing about that song was that it told me, as an artist and writer, that I had to make a record. I was getting further and further into this not-so-happy cocoon, and I had to figure out a way to get out of it. That song was the scissors that cut me free.

Yet, you did not include that song on the album. 

The way that fell apart was weird. We had twelve songs done for the album, including that song. When it came to the process of putting the songs in synch and getting them to flow together, I kept moving that song around. The record is a journey, and I couldn't find a place for it, so I rang Neilson and asked him how he felt about not putting Little Wings on the record; as producer, I wanted to know how he felt about leaving it out. We agreed to leave it on the back burner, and we may find a place in the world for it someday. 

You include a number of co-writes on the albums, although the stories are most definitely your own.

When you get to sit in a room with some of the writers that I've been fortunate to spend time with and be creative with, I do try to indulge in giving in to their strengths, but it's not always hunky dory. You can have a great friendship with someone but not be a good co-writing team or relationship. I got really fortunate with my co-writers on this album. Some of the songs were written shortly after I met my biological family and were based on how I was feeling and the sounds that were coming out of me. Some of the songs were cold starts where you have an agenda and have a conversation before the writing, like the song Jericho, written with the iconic artist and songwriter Matraca Berg.

I love that song, Jericho; it is so full musically and has a classic Bobby Gentry feel.

It was fun to track that song. It could have gone further and wilder, but we had to pull the reins in. We had Danny Mitchell in the studio, a tremendous keyboard player who plays in Miranda Lambert's band. He also plays flugelhorn and played beautiful, heart-wrenching, and intense horn notes over that song. It was as intense as it was supposed to be.  

Quiet Town became the record title and opening track.

Neilson, Heather Moody, who is also part of this project, and I had a conversation about how that song encompassed what we were doing; walking through life or walking through a changing town. We had the album mastered with the sequencing that I had done, but something was not working. I sat with it for months before calling Neilson and agreeing to change it. Quiet Town, as well as the album title track, became the first song on the record.

The hymn-like Hour Of My Departure, written with Daniel Tashian, who also contributes his vocals, sounds like it has been around forever.

I love writing with Daniel. He is one of a number of artists with whom we get really self-indulgent when we are in a room writing. We wrote that song several years ago, and I always felt drawn to it. At that time, Daniel was a relatively new dad, and his daughters were young, and he was writing from a father's perspective. For me, it became about the interaction that I had as a child with my parents. 

Is the song Peace Eludes Me a statement of your past or present frame of mind?

It's always present. I'm always trying to figure out how to have some sense of calm with the things I personally deal with on a daily basis and the struggles that everybody has. There is always a constant push forward to find peace, and I tend to gravitate towards people who have a peaceful outlook on life. The problem is that if I ever figure this all out, I don't know what I'd write about. 

The industry is presently different from when you released your self-titled album twelve years ago.

The new approach is so different even in the twelve years since my first independent record. Even with STUPID LOVE, my last album with Vanguard in 2009, it had started to change. Keeping up with the pace of how much music comes out and how rapid and fleeting it is, is difficult, and attention spans, including my own, are so short.

Country music has enjoyed a resurgence in recent years, and female artists are leading the charge.

Absolutely. I have some really close friends in the country music scene who have been at it for a long time and are now getting their dues. There was a long time when we ladies were going, 'Hello, we're still here, writing songs with these people.' It is cool, and I hope it continues to swing a little more, embrace more women, and be more inclusive of people's lifestyles, African American people, and the gay community.  

Interview by Declan Culliton 

Lindi Ortega Interview

Canadian-born artist Lindi Ortega's latest and eighth full-length album, FROM THE ETHER, follows a traumatic number of years. An enforced break from performing as a result of damaged vocal cords, the death of her father, and a breakup in her marriage all left her in a distressed state both physically and emotionally. Reflecting on those issues and restarting her career, her new album is a change in Lindi's musical direction. Never one to be pigeon-holed in any specific genre, FROM THE ETHER is a collection of 'ghostly' themed songs produced by Grammy-nominated producer Mike Meadows. The album was selected as the first release on Truly Handmade Records, the label recently formed in honour of Texan legend Guy Clark. Lindi spoke openly with Lonesome Highway recently about emerging from that difficult period and embracing the opportunity to return to her lifelong passion for creating and performing her art.

Welcome back to performing and recording. Experiencing damage to your vocal cords must have been devastating for you.

It was distressing and very difficult to have that issue with my voice, and consequentially, I had to give up music for a number of years. I felt that I lost my whole identity as a musician. I was getting panic attacks before shows, feeling that I couldn’t sing properly. I just did not feel right having people come to see me and not being able to perform what I felt they deserved. It was a very difficult decision to step away, but I felt I needed to do that. I had to start figuring out who I was outside of music.  

Despite what we punters and observers might think, many artists experience struggles with confidence at various stages of their careers. 

A lot of artists struggle with confidence issues, and you can also find artists who are great stage performers but are introverted off-stage and struggle with being in the limelight. I had never had stage fright before I had my vocal issues, and I felt like I was unable to perform, which gave me a lot of anxiety and made every show stressful. I thought that it was not what music was supposed to be like, feeling horrible after every performance. I had to step away.

How did your recovery start and progress?

I really had to work at it and I had a few setbacks. At one point, I tried to sing some harmonies for a friend in my town who was playing a show, and I felt very defeated because I knew I wasn’t there yet. I’m very stubborn and just kept working at it; I didn’t like being taken out of the game. I just knew there had to be a way to figure it out, even if it meant finding a new way to sing. What was really inspiring to me was Joni Mitchell; she had a beautiful soprano voice when she began her career and then did the BOTH SIDES NOW record, where her voice had changed quite significantly, but it was still beautiful and amazing to listen to. I’ve noticed that with a lot of singers who had to adapt, and I started to understand that for myself, maybe it was just a thing where I had to adapt myself. It took quite a lot of time. I started out doing a children’s concert in my town with another local musician. We did a few shows for some very cute young kids, and it was lovely to have fun with that and not have so much stress; it was a way for me to ease into starting to perform again. I was working on my vocals all the time. Every day, I would get up and pick up my guitar, and if there was a note that was not coming out correctly, I would sing it over and over to get it right, which it would eventually do. My voice has come a long way from where it was back then; I know there are still things that I have to work on, but I’m so pleased that I can play a show and have fun without being full of nerves and anxiety.

From there, you have progressed to playing live showcases again.

I played some shows at AmericanaFest recently, and just before that, we were doing some practice runs at some small bars. I remember one bar where we played that was really noisy, and everyone was chatting, which would have really annoyed me before. Instead, I liked it because it reminded me of when I first started, and I was just so happy to be on a stage and get my songs out and sing them. 

Can you identify any positives from that break from the music industry?

Absolutely, some of the positives were feeling that sense of being rooted that I hadn’t had for a very long time. I had missed so many special occasions, such as people’s birthdays because I was out on the road. It was hard to create strong friendships with people because I was never around, so I was able to find a friendship group and feel that sense of community, which was nice. The other thing I found was simply discovering who I was outside of music because I had at the time been living in Nashville for a number of years. When you live in a music city, and all you do is music, you get caught up in work; people don’t always understand that music is work; it’s a job. Like every job, it has its struggles, ups and downs, and it was very hard to disassociate my identity from who I was as an artist and musician for many years. It is sad to lose what you love and are passionate about, which gives you confidence. It was good for me to rediscover things that I could do outside of that world and learn that I could survive outside music and not fall apart. Coming back to music after having that experience makes me appreciate things so much more because I didn’t realise that I would be back here and able to put out music and tour again. I feel very grateful and humbled by that experience and everything that I get to do. I have no agenda whatsoever it just comes down to dealing with hardships and channelling those hardships through my music. Having my outlet and passion and being able to do what I do through my music is enough for me. 

Your new album FROM THE ETHER is the first release on Truly Handmade Records, the label formed to continue the legacy of Guy Clark. That’s quite an honour. How did that come about?

Yes, the label name came from a line in a Guy Clark song. The manager I worked with was good friends with Tamara Saviano, the person running the label. She was curious about the fact that I was coming back to music and asked me if I wanted to be the launch artist for the label. I thought at first that it was a joke and wasn’t looking for a label, thinking that I would release my records independently. It’s truly an amazing thing, I met them all in Nashville when I was there for AmericanaFest and I’m so lucky to have crossed paths with such genuinely honest and lovely people. You don’t often find that in the music industry, sometimes people will sell you the sun, moon and stars, especially when they are signing you, but I believe that Handmade were happy to have me, and I’m certainly happy to be there. 

It’s refreshing that they were prepared to run with a somewhat experimental album. 

Tamara’s response to me was that Guy Clark was a fan of storytellers and original songs. She believed that it would be a good legacy for what he was trying to support: artists doing their own thing. I don’t think she was trying to sign a bunch of John Prine clones; she was just trying to find interesting and unique music.

The 'spirits' theme that prevails on the album was stimulated by a visit to the Oakwood Cemetery in Austin, Texas. Were any of the songs written prior to that?

I had a few songs written, like the one about my dad. Cemeteries have always been inspiring to see. I love reading old headstones and wondering about those who came before us, and there are few places that I have gone to where I haven't visited a cemetery. What was interesting about that one is that we originally went there to get some sound samples for some of the songs. We were researching the cemetery and found out that John and Alan Lomax, pioneers of field-recorded music, were buried there. I love old blues music, much of which is just vocals, and they recorded a lot of that type of music, including Vera Hall, who I really love. We came up with the idea when we were there because we were at the graveside of the people who had done the early field recordings. Maybe we should do recordings at their grave to pay tribute to them. It was an on-the-fly thing, but as I hadn't got a song written, why don't we take lines from different epitaphs, rhyme them and create a song out of the different lines? It was all done in about twenty minutes.

Did the experience of the death of your father and a marriage breakup lead to you writing songs by way of coping with grief?

To be honest, it was a little bit of both. The marriage was not meant to be part of this album, but it crept in there with the addition of metaphorical ghosts on the record. I was thinking about all the ghosts I could write about. The idea was to have a concept record about ghosts. People can be haunted by things from their past, and I ended up putting a little allusion to that on the record.

You engaged Mike Meadows as producer. Was that decision driven by your intention to record a more unconventional album than your previous records and musically head in a more experimental direction?

I've known Mike online for many years and was a big fan of his percussion work. While living in Nashville, I went to see him play in Hayes Carll's band and was very impressed with him as a drummer and percussionist. I followed him on Facebook and Instagram and watched videos that he would post when he would go and visit India or Africa and would be playing some wild instruments that I had never seen before. I always thought that I would love to work with him at some level, whether that would be him playing percussion or whatever. Before I made this comeback to music, I had been painting people's houses for a number of years and didn't know where to start getting back into artist mode, I was so out of that world. I was initially going to go to England to record because I had nothing against Nashville, but I had recorded a number of albums there, been there and done that. I wanted to do something completely different; for me, it was 'What do I have to lose? I've already lost my voice and my career.' I decided to pick Mike's brain and messaged him, telling him I was thinking of going to England and would ne be able to send me remotely recorded percussion if he were to be on the record. He responded, saying that he could but that he had a home studio and why not come there to record. He also mentioned that it was warm in Texas in December, and with that and the understanding that he had a home studio, it made sense. It was a risk because I wasn't familiar with much of his recorded work, but I liked him as a person and player and decided to go for it. 

The end product sounds like that risk was well worth taking.

Yes. Our working relationship, understanding of each other, and rapport worked so well; we always seemed to be on the same page and making suggestions that one of us had already thought of. Our common remark was, 'Yes, we are on the same pages again.' Mike was a magician and had spent time touring the country, which was also interesting. The whole recording process was magical and fun; I felt like a kid in a candy store, except that I was making a record.

The interludes, titled Dial No.1 to Dial No.6, which lead to several songs, giving them a séance like feel. 

I wanted it to feel like when people go ghost hunting and record voices, turning a dial and trying to tune into the paranormal. 

The videos for some of the songs, particularly The Ghost In You, add to the atmosphere and are positively frightening at times.

That is exactly as it is meant to be (laughs). 

The song, The Spiritual Advisor, written about your dad, is particularly moving. Its presentation is almost childlike.

I have such great memories as a kid when I was with my dad, and those are the memories that come through the clearest when I recall him. I have his ashes in my house, and I had a listening party for the record at my house. I brought his ashes out and put them on the table as part of the listening party. The song just came out, wishing he could come and hang out with me again. 

The Ghost is hugely passionate and another stand-out song for me. At what stage of your marriage breakup is it written? 

It was written at Mike Meadow's house sometime after the breakup. He was away touring and playing shows with Hayes Carll, and Mike has his childhood piano, which he played when he was young. I love pianos and am always drawn to them. I went downstairs in the dark one night, sat down and started to play the piano, and that song literally just came out without even really thinking about it. I recorded it on my iPhone and sent it to Mike, and he said that we should put it on the record.

Another highlight is The Ancestors. I get a strong PJ Harvey vibe on that song and its presentation.

That is the most amazing compliment you could give me because I love PJ Harvey, and I can see how that influence could pop out on that song. I went to see her play in Toronto at The Pheonix Concert Theatre many moons ago, and I thought and still think that she is the coolest person. I love her and also Tori Amos. I loved those 90s feminist icons and musicians. 

It's hardly a coincidence that the album was released approaching Halloween.

No. That made sense since it is a ghost album. I am a huge Halloween fan. I dressed up in three different costumes this year, and I host a witch walk in the town I live in, so I'm all about Halloween.

Is it a pointer towards the new Lindi Ortega or a one-off venture?

I don't want to put myself in one box; I want to have the freedom to do all sorts of things, and I'm just going to continue to explore music and my influences. Every record I have made has been different; there may have been country leanings in some of the records as a common thread, but I've made records that have been more soulful, bluesy, and maybe a little jazzy. However, my content does veer slightly on the dark side, even if it is 'tongue-in-cheek and will never change.

You have also recently recorded two Tom Waits covers with the young roots artist Jack Barksdale. How did that come about?

Jack is amazing; he is young, but he has an old soul with a wealth of knowledge of music history. He's a very talented friend of Mike Meadows, who produced a few of his records. Jack and his family were rolling through Austin when I was there, and we happened to meet. This young guy was sixteen then, and I was astounded that he was into Leonard Cohen and knew obscure Leonard Cohen songs that I didn't even know. I found out he was also into Tom Waits, which I am also into, and, like me, had a penchant for the macabre. He picked Yesterday Is Here, the shortest Tom Waits song, and I picked How’s It Gonna End, the longest Tom Waits song, and we recorded them.  

Interview by Declan Culliton

Emily Haden Lee Interview

Emily Haden Lee is a creative artist and a singer-songwriter of great perception and sensitivity. She grew up in a small town in Missouri before moving to the city of Chicago, where she currently lives with her musician husband Alex Lee. Her debut album The Woman I Would Be was released in September 2024 and is a work of real insight, impressive depth, and hard-earned wisdom. Tackling issues such as self-doubt, depression, addiction, grief and self-realisation, it is a work of lasting quality and wrapped in timeless observations of all that it takes to be human. On the verge becoming a mother for the first time, with the birth of her daughter imminent, Emily sat down to reflect upon her life journey thus far and gives valued insight into the process behind what is without doubt one of the albums of the year.

Congratulations on the release of your debut album. Have you been pleased with the media response so far?

Thank you! I have been pleased – I honestly didn’t know what to expect and tried to go into it without any expectations. It’s been great to see people understand the music and relate to it.

The songs were written over a number of years. Can you let us into the thought process in choosing the final twelve tracks that made the cut?

Like the songs, the recording the album was also drawn out over a number of years. I would write a new song that I liked and then go into the studio with Steve to record it – so it came about in a very organic way. Around January/February of this year was when I decided to put it all into an album and release it – I also got pregnant around that time and figured I needed to get this out there before the baby comes!

Has your writing process changed over the years?

I have a notes list on my phone where I write lyrics as they come to me. Then when I sit down to write a song, I will just play and sing whatever comes out and when I get stuck on words I refer to my notes and gain inspiration from that. I don’t think that process has changed a whole lot over the years actually. My writing spots have changed – these days my favourite place to write is sitting by our bedroom window and looking out at the street, watching people walk by. Usually with our little corgi Gus sitting next to me.

You come from a very musical family. Did you start playing guitar from a young age?

I didn’t actually – my dad and brothers played guitar, but I started with the piano. I started piano lessons when I was six and then (against my mom’s wishes!) quit in early high school. I am so thankful to have had that musical foundation, along with singing in different choirs along the way (church, school, etc). I didn’t really learn how to play the guitar until I was in college – the first song I learned was “You were meant for me” by Jewel. It’s a finger picking song, which I think is why I tend to always pick my guitar songs rather than strum them – it’s how I learned and how I’m most comfortable playing guitar. My last year of college was when I wrote a song on the guitar for the first time.

The new album is co-produced by your husband, Alex Lee, and also music legend Steve Dawson. How did you come to meet Steve and collaborate with him?

I met Steve when I took his song writing class at the Old Town School of Folk Music in Chicago – such a wonderful place and Steve is such a great teacher. That class really opened up song writing for me – I loved meeting people from all walks of life and seeing the different ways they interpreted the world through their music. Writing songs just for the catharsis of it, in such a supportive environment, and not viewing it as a way of competition (which I had with music my whole life doing singing competitions, etc) has been really revolutionary for me. Everyone has something to contribute.

The album was recorded at Chicago’s Kernel Sound Emporium which is run by Steve. What was the experience like and how long did the recording process take?

It’s a great experience recording with Steve – I would go in and record my guitar part and vocals, and then he would usually pick it up from there -  adding in whatever he felt was right, whether that be bass, guitar, percussion, lap steel, etc. Then I’d usually take it home and listen to it with my husband and we’d decide if we felt anything needed to be added or taken away. He makes it very easy and I’ve grown so comfortable there.

The playing on the album is beautifully restrained and in perfect synergy with the lyrical content of the songs. How did you discuss the overall approach to the song arrangements and did you have the final say on what was kept in the final mix?

I can honestly say that we didn’t discuss it much – I think Steve understood the songs and my taste, and a lot of times we would add in a few instruments on top of my vocals and guitar and decide that it didn’t need much else. And I did have a say in the final mixing – what I usually had the most opinions about were my vocals – I would decide to take out or add in harmonies here and there, etc.

You used very few musicians on the album. Was this a deliberate decision when working out the delicate song structures?

I can’t say that it was deliberate! Like most else on this album it just happened that way – I was lucky to have Steve who can play anything and my husband who plays guitar, drums and basically anything else you throw at him, so I didn’t feel the need to have any more musicians. Other than Bill Evans – who is a wonderful musician and close family friend – he was very close with my dad and I grew up going on camping trips with his family and many others. On the trips he would play guitar and sing by the fire - it just felt right to have him contribute to the album too.

The album content strikes me as deeply personal and I know that you lost both your brother and father during the writing of the songs for the album. Was it difficult to bare your inner feelings with such a vulnerable approach to the project?

It is extremely personal. I have to say, the day the music was released I had a real feeling of “oh no, what have I done…” But when I’m writing the songs and playing them for people, for some reason I never feel self-conscious about them being so vulnerable. I think being that vulnerable is how you get the best and most honest songs. It would be hard for me to write in a different way.

Do you always write from personal experience or do you consider writing in character occasionally?

See answer above – it’s definitely harder for me to write in character! I have tried, but it never feels genuine. I would love to be able to build that skill more.

Your vocal tone and delivery is very emotive and nuanced. Did you have voice training over the years?

Thank you! I did have voice training – when I was in middle and high school I took voice lessons and I went to Boston University’s Tanglewood Institute in Lenox Massachusetts the summer after my junior year in high school. It was an opera program, and I quickly realized through being there that opera wasn’t my passion. But I have such an appreciation for it. Folk music and the music that I grew up listening to is what really feeds my soul.

You are also an accomplished artist and your drawings and paintings are very evocative. Do musical ideas and melody come to you in the same way that artistic creations translate to paper for you?

They are very different to me – art is calming and music is how I really feel my emotions. When I sit to write a song, I think that’s when I give myself permission to let it all out and express myself.

The album cover has a beautiful drawing of a moth. Is there any significance to the image in terms of the music?

Yes – moths represent death, rebirth and new beginnings. It felt like the perfect cover to me, given the content of the album. The vines around the moth also represent growth and new beginnings – the white flowers start as buds at the bottom and blossom as you get to the top.

Songs like Sugar and Dirt suggest the dichotomy in being human; the good and the bad in trying to balance personal feelings. What lay behind the original instinct in writing this song?

I wrote that song in 2023, which was a tough year for me. Alex and I had been trying to have a baby and it took a bit longer than expected. I think that brought out a part of me that I wasn’t always proud of – so I was just reflecting on myself and all of my contradictions. The line “I am everything I have always been, for whatever that is worth” is just saying – I am who I am, take me or leave me! And then it felt right in the second verse to relate that to life, how it’s all sugar and dirt as well, and that will never change.

On Time Is A Thief you question the relevance of memory; whether it can be trusted over time. Do we hold on to memories like a crutch, in a way to reconcile mistakes of the past?

I am a very nostalgic person, probably not a surprise. After my dad died, I made a list of everything he would say to me and all of my favourite memories of him because I was so afraid of forgetting. And then I think I realized that you can try all you want, but time always makes those memories fade. And I’m sure as they fade, we do distort them somehow to make them less painful - our minds try to protect us in that way.

The song Wraith seems to deal with the price we pay for supressed emotions and feelings. Is the ghost in the song a metaphor for depression?

It is – the wraith is a metaphor for alcoholism and depression, both of which run in my family. I was speaking with my aunt on the phone one day, and she was talking about someone in our family who struggled with alcoholism and said she viewed it as their “wraith”. I immediately wrote it down and thought it was a good idea for a song. I wrote that song towards the end of the pandemic. It was a time when everyone had an excuse to be isolated, which is a tough thing for people with addiction and mental health struggles. I was having my own struggles and was worried that the “wraith” that is so strong in my family was coming for me too.

New beginnings is a theme and a thread that runs through the album. In moving to a big city like Chicago do you enjoy the anonymity of being a small part of a greater whole?

It is! I think sometimes, all you can do is just begin again. I realized after the album was done how many times I reference starting over. In Anyway “I will rise again and start my day, and I’ll think about you anyway”. In On a String “each morning start again, with myself make amends” and obviously the song Begin Again is all about the same thing.

Yes – I love the anonymity of living in a city where most people don’t know me. I’m from a town in Missouri that isn’t super small, but I know a lot of people there. I think living out my twenties in a place where I was mostly ‘anonymous me’ has been so good for my growth. I was able to go to open mics and it didn’t matter if I messed up, because I didn’t know anyone who would remember it. And a big city is so inspiring when it comes to song writing – so many different kinds of people with so many different stories to tell.

Have you toured much in support of the new album?

I had a release show at the end of September, but I haven’t toured. I am due with our daughter any day now, so after the album release I have been mostly preparing for that big change in our lives. That has made it hard for me to do any sort of touring, but I would like to in the future.

Do you have plans to play outside of the United States in the near future?

That would be an amazing experience, I am definitely open to it.

In our opinion you have produced one of the albums of the year. How does it feel to receive external recognition after all the internal battles to hone these songs into their final delivery?

Wow, thank you for saying that – I can’t tell you how much it means to me. It definitely feels good – I feel really proud that I was able to make art out of a period of my life that was so difficult. Releasing this album feels like I am now able to release that time in my life and move forward.

What are the next steps for you in building a career?

My goal was to get this music out there before our baby is born and after she is born I hope to slowly get back into playing shows and writing more music. Maybe some lullabies ☺

Is there anything else that you would like to leave us with in conclusion?

Your thoughtful album review and wonderful questions mean so much. Thank you for really listening to the album and appreciating it like you have.

Interview by Paul McGee

Peter Bruntnell Interview

Three decades into a career that has yielded fifteen albums, Peter Bruntnell remains one of the standout U.K. songwriters. Coupled with that writing flair is his ability to transform those words into exquisitely hook-filled and melodic pieces of music that bring to mind the classic sounds of The Beatles, REM and The Byrds. His latest album, and arguably a career-best, HOUDINI AND THE SUCKER PUNCH, is a testament to his capacity to combine, side by side, breezy and upbeat anthems alongside painful and mournful ballads. Backed by some exceptionally talented players, contributors include Son Volt members Jay Farrar and Mark Spencer, pedal steel supremo Eric Heywood, James Walbourne of The Pretenders, composer, multi-instrumentalist Peter Linnane and regular members of Peter's band, Peter Noone, Mick Clews and David Little. We spoke recently with the ever-engaging artist about the album's origins and the exciting journey of its creation.

You are regularly placed in the Americana genre, which, for me, does not necessarily fit your profile. Does that bother you?

No. It did about twelve years ago, but I did a tour with a band on the Loose label who weren't considered Americana, and I saw how difficult it was to tour in the U.K. if you're not in the Americana bracket. So, I suddenly realised that the Americana label and tag, even though everything is now called Americana, is not all that bad. Richard Thompson is called Americana today; they would call Planxty Americana these days. I really don't mind; I just want to sell more records.

Tell me the background to your recently released album HOUDINI AND THE SUCKER PUNCH? 

The biggest influence on the writing for the record was me having a bouzouki. I wrote The Flying Monk, Yellow Gold, Houdini and The Sucker Punch and Sharks on the bouzouki. Those songs are initially slightly folky but ended up differently. Houdini and The Sucker Punch is more of a jangly pop song, and adding the pedal steel on it was a really good addition even though it's not a country song. To have Eric Heywood play pedal steel on it was a joy; he can play any music genre and is one of the most talented musicians I have ever come across.

Your relationship with Eric Heywood goes back over twenty-five years when he played on your album NORMAL FOR BRIDGEWATER. 

He did, I had met him when he was playing with Son Volt. For this album, I asked Eric if he was up to putting pedal steel on a few songs from his home. He was up for it, and I had to decide how many songs to send him and which songs to send. I got him to play on three songs. Because I don't have a pedal steel player in London that I can use, I wanted pedal steel on only some of the tracks because I could never replicate that, and I needed to be careful not to overegg it. 

That Son Volt connection also resulted in Jay Farrar and Mark Spencer contributing to the new record.

Yes. To get Jay Farrar on the album was great, especially because he doesn't do much of that. And, of course, Mark Spencer from Son Volt also plays on the album.

Peter Linnane, who mastered the new album, also worked on NORMAL FOR BRIDGEWATER.

Yes, he was the engineer on NORMAL FOR BRIDGEWATER. When I realised Peter had mastering skills and the facilities to master albums; I started using him on my records. On my last record, JOURNEY TO THE SUN, I was home on my own during lockdown and had recorded some songs. I wanted to send them to someone whose ears I trusted and who could tell me whether I had over-compressed the songs. I sent one of the songs to him, and he was happy with it. I mastered it and added some keyboards, which sounded great. That became the pattern for that album. I sent him all the songs, and he added some Mellotron, pump organ and organic-sounding instruments.

That continuity with artists and your band members suggests a relationship much more than just professional 

Yes, I have mostly had the same people around me; they are great and more like family to me.

That also includes your writing partner Bill Ritchie. Is he a sounding board for you?

Yes. Sometimes I've got an idea or a title for a song, like Houdini and The Sucker Punch, which I thought of as a title. I sent him that tune, which originally was a different tune than the one I ended up with. At times, I may not have any lyrical idea and might send him something where I'm basically mumbling over the tune, and we go back and forth with ideas and eventually will get on the phone to fine-tune the song. He is great and often comes up with lyrics I couldn't possibly think of. 

The recording process for HOUDINI AND THE SUCKER PUNCH was a combination of studio sessions and remote recordings, which is standard procedure these days. Do you miss the dynamic of having everyone in the studio to record? 

You can't beat the band being all together and capturing those performances, which is quite magical. Still, it can also work remotely when you have people like Peter Linnane, Jay Farrar, Eric Heywood, Mark Spencer, and James Walbourne, who can all work from their studios.

Are the lyrics to the title track autobiographical in any way or simply a Houdini tale?

It's all metaphoric and not necessarily just about someone punching Houdini in the stomach. There is also random stuff in there that isn't self-explanatory to create an atmosphere. It's not necessarily autobiographical. We also had this notion or idea that a sucker punch didn't kill Houdini but might have died of a broken heart which seemed more romantic, and we liked the idea that a woman's rejection slew the great Houdini. 

For me, the absolute standout track on the record is the breakup song, Stamps Of The World. 

That song was actually on an album I recorded on my own in my house about ten or twelve years ago. I played drums on it, and it was called RINGO WAS HERE. It was a bunch of misfit songs which was never officially released, I just made some copies at home and sold them. Stamps Of The World was on that record and the last song chosen for the new album. I needed one more song and didn't have one written at the time; I was thinking of including a cover version of That Lucky Old Son, which I had recorded with a guitar player called Robbie McIntosh, who is absolutely amazing.  I didn't include that song on the record because I didn't want to get into copyright complications. A couple of songs from the RINGO WAS HERE album were possible options to use, but once I heard back from Eric Heywood that he would play on the record, I knew that Stamps Of The World would work. When I was recording and mixing the album, I nearly left that song off, and since then, a couple of people have said that they love it, and I'm like…Really?' 

If that song is a heartbreaker, the love song Sharks is the other end of the scale.

It is a love song; I don't do many. I did a tour about ten years ago with Jay Farrar and Garry Hunt, who was playing with Jay, and we played in Rocky Mountain, Virginia. We were driving in Jay's Mercedes van and played in Rocky Mount, Virginia, and Tennessee Johnson City. I wrote down the names of those two towns when I was on that tour, and I managed to get them into the lyrics of Sharks without sounding too cliched. Because I had played in both of those towns, it was okay for me as an English person to namecheck those towns without sounding like I was singing about trucks and whiskey.  I was so pleased about that.

 I gather that the song Yellow Gold was also born in The States.

After I finished the tour with Son Volt in September 2022, I drove up to Montana with my girlfriend. We drove through Wyoming, where I had never seen a landscape in America like that before. There is literally nothing for a hundred miles, no farms or settlements, and absolutely nothing but the Rocky Mountains on your left; it was very atmospheric. When I got to Montana, I bought a book about that part of the West in a bookshop. I read the book, and when I got back to the U.K. I also listened to some podcasts about the West, and that song almost wrote itself after that. It's the perfect song for James Walbourne to play on with his fast, ripping guitar style.

I'm hearing a lot of psychedelic era The Beatles and The Byrds in the song, Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump.

That was completely my intention. I basically thought that I wanted to rewrite The Beatles' song Rain. I had that in my head, sat in the studio, got a drum beat going, and wrote the bass lines.

And is Out Of The Pines mirror gazing by Peter Bruntnell, warts and all?

Yes, I was terrible at getting up and going to work when I was young and left school; work can be antisocial anyway. I really like Ron Sexsmith and wanted to write a song that sounded like his work. It probably doesn't sound at all like him, but that was as close as I could get. It is slightly different from all the other songs. 

Where did the idea for the album's cover artwork come from?

It's very simple. We were playing the last show of the 2022 tour in Colorado and were in a pub called Lulu's Downtown in Colorado Springs, and that picture of the cock was on the wall in the dressing room. I saw the photo, liked it and thought it would be the album cover. Mark Spencer actually took a picture of it on his phone and sent it to me. I just thought it was a beautiful image. 

Interview by Declan Culliton

Nathan Jacques Interview

‘Old Westerns and Western music are some of my favourite works of storytelling for their luscious sounds and vistas, emotionally driven narratives and their sweeping dramatic sequence. All of those things I sought to capture with this album’ explains Nathan Jacques in the press release for his latest album, DARK WANDERER and the BOUNTY HEART. In many ways, paying homage to the classic singing cowboys of yesteryear and with a previous career in the film industry, Jacques’ music exploring the cowboy concept is a thing he feels truly drawn to rather than market-driven. The album arrives when other like-minded artists like Charley Crockett, Kaitlin Butts and Orville Peck have also cleverly used videos to promote and breathe new life into their recordings. Jacques’ passion and love for his work was palpable when we recently spoke with him.

You are currently living in Los Angeles but from Massachusetts?

I'm originally from Massachusetts in the New England area and moved to Los Angeles to work in the film industry. That didn't stick, and I've always been doing music and loved it a lot, so I got back to it and haven't looked back.  

What was your earliest introduction to country music?

I grew up hearing a lot of my parent's music around the house and in the car when I was young. Country and folk music, which I didn't necessarily gravitate to right away, but when I got to the point that I was making music, it just naturally came back to me. It's nice playing music that you grew up being exposed to. There is power in finding music you like, but it also feels very true and wholesome to return to music that you remember hearing so much as a child, which was very impressionable.

What was your 'go-to' music at that time?

Varying forms and degrees of intensity of rock and roll. The classic rock genre of AC/DC and distorted guitar sounds of the 70s, from there, I moved into punk stuff and the pop-punk scene. I also had an interest in the heavier metal scene that was prominent in New England. I was playing in pop/rock bands at that time. I could never really sing high enough to fit that genre, and when I started making my own music, I found that my voice was more suited to folk and country styles. 

Where did your love of Western-themed music come from?

That came from my deep love of film. I've been exposed to movies and television, literature and narrative storytelling all my life. My family was very much into all that, and I quickly latched on to it. I grew up watching Western movies with my father a lot and became very familiar with that form of storytelling and the heroes' journeys in those movies. I love how connected music and movies are and always had a deep interest in writing cinematically. Hollywood westerns and the music industry are a wonderful collision, and I've always wanted to play in that space. I'm running with it and making it my own now.

Your new record, DARK WANDERER and the BOUNTY HEART, follows a similar theme to LOUD MIND from 2021.

It's technically a sequel to LOUD MIND with the same characters and a continuation of that story. They're both concept records; now it's one bigger story if you dive into it. I don't know how to write not in concept, and I wanted to take that story and expand it, breathe new life into it, and give it a conclusion. Make the world a bit bigger and put a bookend on the story. I rallied with many of my film friends to help make it more visual, and that turned out to be a very exciting and rewarding experience, which was the initial goal.  

Tell me about the recording process for the new album.

This record took a long time; I started writing it around the time that LOUD MIND came out in 2021.  The full band foundational recordings happened in February 2023, so it all took a couple of years. We actually started making the record and scrapped it halfway through the process. It just wasn't working, and we had to go back to the drawing board and start again. We had made LOUD MIND in a 'paint by numbers' way, writing the songs, recording the scratch tracks, bringing in the drummer on top of that, and building everything piece by piece. We started doing the same thing with the new record, but it felt very inorganic, and it wasn't exciting and wasn't working. I realised that I had this amazing band as I was staring a gift horse in the mouth because I wasn't putting us all in a room and just playing the songs, which was foolish. So, I took about six months building the record as a group rather than trying to do it all on my own. I just brought the songs to the band and asked them to make an epic western record together as a band. 

The interludes that precede each song are both exciting and timeless.

My producer, Ed Donnelly, should take most of the credit for them. I wrote the baselines and guitar parts and got the foundation going for them. Ed took that and ran with it, arranging the orchestral parts that were very purposely heavy-handed and homages to Morricone and John Williams. We wanted the listener to feel that even though they were not looking at visuals, they felt that they were listening to the soundtrack to a movie. We worked with the wonderful mixer Jordan Koop to make them sound like they were heavily aged recordings from the 1950s.

Your vocal style suits the country and Western genre.

That's my natural voice. I haven't had much training. Growing up, I tried to sing in bands but didn't start singing seriously until I started these projects. I've been developing my vocals over the past number of years for these records, and I've tried to have character and personality in my voice, and it's not 'put on.' That's my natural voice.

Is the album title a pointer toward Nathan Jacques' alter ego?

Definitely, I play an alternative historical version of myself. I'm playing off what Elvis, Gene Autry and Roy Rogers used to do. Especially Elvis, who would make those often-silly movies that would have the companion record, 'Get GI Blues, the soundtrack, six more songs than are in the movie.' I always loved the marketing and imagery that went with that, it was fun. Nathan Jacques is the fictional, unsuccessful, weird and convoluted singing cowboy movie star who is not very well received. From the start, I wanted to make the record like the counterpart and a reverse marketing thing for this big movie that you will never see. I find that concept fun even though the concept of the record is dark, really sad and heartbreaking. I wanted to pair that with a lighter visual world concept that could be more approachable for people consuming it and also for me. It's also a love letter to a part of Western history, Hollywood and filmmaking. 

You have created a number of videos to support the album, which is a natural addition to the project.

Yes, that was important for me. Fortunately, I have a wonderful core group of friends with whom I've made some videos for the album. I could do more, but we had pretty clear visions from the start of what we wanted to do and have achieved that.

Can you recreate the album's sound at your live shows? 

It would be difficult to recreate the album's sound without such a kickass band. I play with the best musicians I've come across in my life; they are wild and make my job so easy. Not all artists have the privilege of recreating what they do on records, and we don't try to play exactly like the records, but we have a hell of a time expressing what we do in the studio in the live setting. 

How are audiences responding to the shows, and does a particular age profile attend?

A healthy mix; it all depends on where we are playing. My matrix is across the board age profile-wise. There has been an explosion of country music in the last two years in Los Angeles, you can pretty much go to see live country music every night of the week here. The resurgence of country and Western music is hitting all demographics, including a younger audience. The pop and radio country music probably also helps a lot, which I'm not too partial to, but it can also eventually bring people into country and western.

The profile of country music has been expanding in recent years, which is refreshing.

Yes, I think about it in two categories; there is that pop/country that is cultured to hip/hop often, and the more traditional side like Charley Crockett, Sierra Ferrell and Tyler Childers. They are the two zones, and then there is this middle zone where I fondly put Sturgill Simpson, who, for me, is one of the biggest keys to this resurgence. He lives in that middle point which dances between genres, not necessarily going to the pop side and yet not entirely traditional country. Sturgill's A SAILORS'S GUIDE TO EARTH is one of my favourite records, it's like a funk/soul record and is very inspiring, and I intend to try and live in that space. I find that space very liberating, where you can swim between the aspects of a funky country sound.

Interview by Declan Culliton. Photograph by Alexander Karavay

Hannah Juanita Interview

Intrigued by the traditional music scene happening on Honky Tonk Tuesday Nights at The American Legion in Nashville, Chattanooga-born Hannah Juanita decided to check it out for herself in 2018. Her first visit there was as a punter and two-stepper, but a few years later, she was fronting bands in Nashville and working on her debut album, HARDLINER. That album was released in 2021, and since then, Juanita has gone from strength to strength as a performer and recording artist. Supporting like-minded artists Kaitlin Butts and Jesse Daniel has brought her to the attention of a wider audience outside Nashville. After touring over the past two years, she booked recording time at The Bomb Shelter in Nashville, where she, her producer Mose Wilson, and a host of big hitter session players recorded her second album, TENNESSEE SONGBIRD. It’s a full-on and joy-filled collection of traditional country songs that cements Juanita’s growing reputation as another strong-willed woman making music on her terms and having a blast doing so. ‘That’s the beauty of Nashville; you have the best of the best players here, and I think I was a good enough singer to pull it off,’ she told Lonesome Highway when we recently spoke with her.  

Growing up in Chattanooga, was Nashville on your radar music-wise?

I wasn’t close to the Nashville music scene growing up at all. Nashville was very different back then, and I never thought I would ever live there, even though it was only two hours away from where I lived in Chattanooga. More people are doing real country music in Nashville now than when I was growing up. 

I understand that you sang in church as a child. Had you ambitions of a music career then?

I was raised Southern Baptist and was a harmony singer in a youth band, and a music career didn’t seem like an option back then. I was raised to go to college and get a job. My dad wanted me to be a pharmacist, and I used to say, ‘Dad, can you really see me working at Walgreens?’ Things have changed so much since then, with social media and so many independent and DIY artists. It is so much more accessible now.

When did you develop an interest in songwriting?

I remember when I was younger than ten, I wrote a song with the lyrics ‘I love you like a hurricane’ or something like that (laughs). I was writing songs when I was young, but not seriously.

Your debut album, HARDLINER, was written while you were living in Washington State. Several songs on the album depict an angry or frustrated person.

That period was a time when I was trying to figure out what I wanted in life. I had bought land with my ex and a couple of friends in Washington State and my ex was away a lot on tour, working with a circus for weeks at a time, and I would be alone in a cabin, miserable and lonely. That is when I started writing a lot. I was by myself at night by candlelight; we didn’t have electricity, and I was sad and angry and would sit by the fire and write. So, many of the songs on HARDLINER are inspired by that period.

Was the move to Nashville a calculated one to follow a professional music career, and what part did Honky Tonk Tuesday Nights at The American Legion have in that regard?

It was not a calculated move at all. When I went back to the South, it was to Ashville, North Carolina; I then went back out West to work a harvest season. Nothing was tying me down to Ashville, so on the way back South in late 2018; I just thought I should stop in Nashville on a Tuesday night to go to Honky Tonk Tuesday at the American Legion. I sought out The Legion because I had been a fan of old-time country music for years and was singing it on Instagram. I knew that people were playing this music live and two-stepping at The Legion, and it sounded like fun. I wanted to go and hang out there. I met a friend of a friend there who introduced me to a whole bunch of people; we hung out all night and went to Santa’s Pub after The Legion. I probably made more friends that one night than I had living in Ashville for six months.  I went back to Chattanooga for two weeks at Christmas and moved to Nashville on New Year’s Eve. It just felt right, everything seemed to fall into place, and I’ve stayed here since then.

Having seen you perform a number of times, I’m struck by how much you have progressed in a relatively short time, both in your live shows and recordings.

I feel really great at the moment. I had toured for a year and a half with my first record, HARDLINER and performed in different situations, I play with Mose Wilson as a duo sometimes and also with a full band. I had only been performing for six months, mostly as a fireside singer, up to the time I came to Nashville. I had no experience fronting a band, so I have grown a lot in the past five years. That’s the beauty of Nashville; you have the best of the best players here, and I think I was a good enough singer to pull it off. I’ve also really dug in in terms of my songwriting, I wanted to write songs that I was proud of. It’s been a journey, and I feel good about it.

HARDLINER was the title of your debut album. It’s also featured in the name of your band and the opening track, Hardliner Blues, on your new album, TENNESSEE SONGBIRD. Is ‘hardliner’ an accurate description of yourself?

I reckon it is. Mose Wilson actually wrote that song, Hardliner Blues. It’s one of the songs I didn’t write on the record. I like the nod to my first record with that song, and the moniker, hardliner, is sticking.

TENNESSEE SONGBIRD is very much a ‘happy’ record, upbeat and lots of fun. The duet with Riley Downing of The Deslondes, Granny’s Cutlass Supreme, is a case in point. His whisky-soaked voice works so well with your sweet, high-pitched vocal.

I can’t tell you why, but I heard Riley on that song right from the beginning. He’s a buddy of mine, and The Deslondes were in Nashville working on a record at The Bomb Shelter, where I recorded the new album.  Everything was finished on my record, and that song was already recorded. I sent it to him to add his vocal; it was the last thing we did on the recording.

Your grandmother inspired that song.

I was writing for a project I was hired to do with others that aligned with Open Table, an organisational resource for homeless people in Nashville. We were making a record that could sell in the street, similar to selling newspapers. The producer for the record gave us a list of hooks and prompts for the songs; one was Grandma’s Cutlass Supreme. I started writing Granny’s Cutlass Supreme from that prompt and brought it to the other guys, and we finished writing the song that night. My grandmother drove a lavender Lincoln town car with a white leather interior and was always dolled up. I love how the song turned out about an empowered older woman who, some might say, is past her prime. She knows what life is about and has it all figured out, and I liked that image of a strong older woman doing her own thing. It’s a fun and groovy song.

Would you consider recording a duets album in the future?

Mose Wilson and I talk about that all the time. We have a studio date coming up, and we may work on that, but Mose is also working on his own second record now, so he’ll want to finish that first. We tour a lot together, so it would be something worth doing together.

The title track, Tennessee Songbird, is autobiographical but also has a deeper meaning.

It has. It’s about me but also about how I feel about the music industry, country living, and how country music is in some people’s blood, and it’s what they have to do.

The players on the album read like ‘who’s who’ of Nashville, big hitters with Chris Scruggs, Dennis Crouch, Bruce Bouton, Micah Hulscher, Billy Contreras, and Fred Eltringham, all credited, alongside Mose Wilson, who also produced the album. How was the recording structured at The Bomb Shelter Studio in Nashville?

We cut the record live with the band, the rhythm section, bass and drums, acoustic guitar, keys, pedal steel, and accordion; all of that was cut live in one day. There was a scheduling conflict; we had two days to do the bones of everything, but we ended up doing it all in one long day. Mose and I had done a lot of prep work and knew what we wanted. We had already met with the players, and they knew what we wanted. So, we got the foundation of every song laid that day and went from there.

You’ve already been busy touring this year. What plans do you have to tour the new album?

I was out for two and a half months last year straight. We are just back from a month-long tour, and I’m about to go to Minnesota and then to New York for Honky Tonkin’ in Queens and I have several shows in Nashville during AmericanaFest, including my album debut show at Cannery Row.

You’ve joined the elite company of women who have recorded great country albums this year alongside Wonder Women of Country, Sierra Ferrell, Emily Nenni, Sarah Gayle Meech, Kiely Connell, Kelsey Waldon, Kayla Ray, Eliza Thorn, Kaitlin Butts, and India Ramey. It seems like a concerted movement by a bunch of talented artists leading a charge. 

More and more women are coming out and playing and recording this music. I find that the community of women here is super supportive, though I’m not sure that I’d call it a movement. The audiences are calling out for more women, and the industry certainly is taking notice. It’s a case of ‘women are here too.’

Interview by Declan Culliton. Photograph by Starla Little

Bob Sumner Interview

What may often be bleak themes are handled delicately and tellingly in the songwriting of Vancouver-born artist Bob Sumner. His 2019 album WASTED LOVE SONGS and SOME PLACE TO REST EASY, which will be released this week, delve into troubled relationships and alcohol abuse by an artist unafraid to lay bare his vulnerabilities. If the former record could be filed under singer-songwriter/ Americana, the latter is more ‘country’ influenced, blending the classic Countrypolitan sound of the 60s alongside some more modern country. Signed to the Fluff & Gravy label, SOME PLACE TO REST EASY should herald a well-deserved industry breakthrough for Sumner. We spoke with him recently as he prepared to bring the new album on the road with shows that include three appearances at AmericanaFest in Nashville later this month.

You developed your love of music from your brother Brian. 

Yes, my brother Brian, who is two years older than me, has always been my hero since I was a toddler, and whatever he was doing, I wanted to be doing too. We both picked up guitars fairly late; he was sixteen, and I did the same a few years later. When I was in my early twenties and going to college, I started playing open mics, and he had already been playing in bands. We started playing in the garage at home; we were being turned on to the late Johnny Cash recordings by Rick Ruben, and that music had a huge impact on us. I could barely play a few chords, and 'three chords and the truth' made a lot of sense to me.

What were you listening to growing up in Vancouver?

Growing up, I discovered my folk's old records, Zeppelin, The Doors, The Band and other early 70s rock, but also, growing up in the suburbs, I was exposed to hip hop and gangsta rap, Smashing Pumpkins, Nirvana, that what all my buddies were listening to. My brother Brian was and still is pushing boundaries musically, which is also important to me, and that got embedded in my psyche playing music with him. He was always adamant that we didn't make anything that he called 'museum piece music' by mimicking things that others were doing; we probably weren't good enough to do that very well anyway. All the songs we were playing were written as folk songs on acoustic guitar, and we would have called what we were doing back then indie-folk or indie-rock.  

Your 2019 album, WASTED LOVE SONGS, ticks the singer-songwriter box. Your new record, SOME PLACE TO REST EASY, has more of a 'country' flavour. Was that your intention? 

It's so interesting to hear people's perspectives on my music and the albums because, for me, they both fit together really well, but they are being received quite differently. WASTED LOVE SONGS was born out of this need, and I felt it should be listened to from front to back without any real change in the vibe. It is a subdued singer-songwriter record, and that was something that my brother would never be interested in doing. With SOME PLACE TO REST EASY, I want to bring it up and have some fun. I wanted people to tap their feet a bit more, and that's where it ended up being more country.

Given the dark theme of many of the songs on the new album, were they more suited to a country theme?

You are right, but it actually happened organically. Alcohol had a lot to play in the writing of this record; I lost three people to alcoholism and mental illness, and the first three singles, Bridges, Motel Room, and Is It Really Any Wonder, are all written for loved ones who were alive at the time and have since passed. Also, my own relationship with alcohol and how that was affecting romantic relationships and otherwise. For better or for worse, that is a very country trope. The life that I was leading at the time and what surrounded me, as well as listening to a lot of country music at the time, seemed to point me in that direction. 

I was particularly impressed with the strings, credited to Trent Freeman, on several of the tracks. They give them a rich mid-60s Countrypolitan sound.

You're dead on; I love the Countrypolitan sound, and I don't know if you come across this, but people often bemoan that production. It's a sweet spot with rich country music that sounds good to me. That's exactly what we were going for on some of these tunes. We couldn't afford a full string section, so Trent Freeman created layers to build that sound, which my producer, Erik Neilson, loved hearing in the studio. It's a little different because it lacks the low-end sound because it doesn't have a cello, but it worked, and I'm really proud of it. 

I get a sense of Lee Hazlewood on the track Lonesome Sound.

My producer and friend Erik will love that comparison, as do I. That song actually almost did not make the record, but Erik loved it, and it became his baby. Actually, a lot of what we were listening to and referencing were old Gordon Lightfoot records. I hadn't realised until Erik pointed out just how interesting Lightfoot's production was. All these weird little synths are nearly hidden in his work and he used some interesting guitar work, Lonesome Sound came from those ideas.  

Your fellow Canadian, Kendall Carson, adds vocals to one of the tracks. 

Yes, Carson is a dear friend and an absolute wonder; she is a fiddle player mainly but also does her own solo work. She sang on Didn't We Dream, the next single from the record, and she added such beautiful power to that song, which would be completely lacking without her input. I always love to tell people – because this is a big deal to me – if you Google Kendal Carson, you can find her singing duets with John Prine. She did a bunch of touring with John Prine and sang In Spite of Ourselves and others with him.

Tell me about the recording process for SOME PLACE TO REST EASY.

We started at Christmas in 2022 at a studio in Vancouver called Afterlife Studios with my producer, bass player and best friend Erik Neilson, who had also produced WASTED LOVE SONGS. It's not a very 'live' record; it's layered and one we worked on piecemeal. The drums and bass were done, with all of us in the room working on the scratch tracks for the vocals and guitars. Once the rhythm, drums, and bass were done, my favourite days were working on the strings and synths. The synths are something that we do a bit different, and we brought in this friend of ours and local player in town called Chris Gestrin, who is an enigma and an absolute robot of a player. His face should be on the album cover; he is so important to the music on it. He brought all his collection of vintage synths to the studio, and what he added to the record and my last album, WASTED LOVE SONGS,became paramount to the songs with the hooks and tones he comes up with. I have a complex guilt around him because when he comes in, he is so important to the end result of the music. 

The synth work is particularly striking in the opening track on the album Bridges.

Yes, that song has a pulsating synth because I wanted the sound of that song to be epic in that way, and he brought that song to life.

You are scheduled to play a number of shows at AmericanaFest in Nashville in a few weeks.

I'm doing three shows in Nashville when I'm there. The show at Dee's Cocktail Lounge will be one with the full band, and we'll try to bring the new record to life with a band that includes keys, pedal steel, and fiddle. The night before, we're doing The Bluebird Café, which will be a paired-down set with three of us, and then for the record label Fluff and Gravy showcase on the following Saturday, we are going to do a string band-style show with mandolin, dobro and fiddle.

You signed to the Fluff & Gravy label. How did that come about?

I feel so fortunate to be on the Fluff and Gravy label. I've known the owner, John Shepski, and Tommy Alexander, a wonderful songwriter, is on that label and has been a good friend and champion of my music. Jeffrey Martin, another wonderful lyricist, has also been very helpful. It's a small but mighty label, and I have to pinch myself because it makes all the difference in the world, calling a place like that home and having so much trust and faith in the person running the label and so much love for the other artists on the label.  

There is government support for the arts in Canada. Was that available to you?

There is grant money available, and they supported this record; with their support, I was able to make it and acquire the publicist for the record. Unfortunately, what we don't have in Canada is opportunity, especially on the West Coast, but we do have Government support. I love my country, and Vancouver is beautiful. All my family is here where I live. What I really need to do with the music I play is bring it to Nashville, try to spend time down there, and tour from there.

Interview by Declan Culliton

Jessica Lynn Interview

Singer-songwriter Jessica Lynn’s backstory reads like a movie script and one that is most likely to have a very happy ending at that.  Starting her first band at thirteen years of age, she encountered the cruel downside of the music industry as a teenager. Pursuing academic qualifications while still performing and writing, Lynn disregarded the standard music career path and instead, with the help of her father, self-managed her occupation and, in doing so, became the only woman and female artist to reach the Top 5 on Amazon Music with her debut full-length album LONE RIDER in 2022.  Obstacles such as being financially defrauded by a promotion company in 2020 and undergoing major surgery earlier this year were further issues that Lynn has overcome. Going against industry norms seldom leads to long-term survival in the cutthroat music industry, but Jessica Lynn is living proof that with talent, coupled with dogged determination, astuteness, and a strong work ethic, that model can be challenged and overcome. 

Given your qualifications, did the idea of an academic career rather than one in the arts ever appeal to you? 

No, I've always been playing music as long as I can remember. I started my first band when I was thirteen. I quickly found out how horrible the music industry can be. I was close to a record deal when I was a teenager, which fell apart because of other people. I studied because I wanted to have something else to do if I ever decided to leave this crazy life that I'm in. So, I decided to study Maths and Adolescent Education and have a Masters in both. When I was recording my first television special, I was recording and teaching school every day.

Did those specific qualifications help you in your music career in any way?

Yes, particularly working with children with special needs, which teaches you so much, including compassion and patience, and you learn to be a better person. The people with special needs I have worked with are such beautiful people with pure hearts and spirits, which I've really taken with me. 

You have had to undergo serious sinus surgery earlier this year. How has that affected your plans for 2024, and, more importantly, has the surgery been a success?

This has been a very difficult year for me. It's been one of the busiest touring years I've ever had. We started touring in mid-May, and we go to Christmas. I had major surgery in January that I'm still healing from; I basically had every single thing that you can have to your sinuses done. I have been chronically ill for years; every tour that I've done, I've been ill at some point, and it has been not easy. I had been on so many antibiotics, and it is a big risk having sinus surgery as a singer, but it was taking such a toll on both my physical and mental health that I had to do it. It has been a success; they reconstructed the inside of my nose so I could function better.

Your band includes both your father and your husband. Is that a blessing, and who calls the shots? 

It's hard in this business to have people around you who genuinely love and care for you, so I'm very lucky. My family and all my crew have been with me for a long time, so I have a very solid support group. It is an interesting dynamic, okay, because I'm the boss. My parents and husband are employed by me, which is funny, but everybody knows their role and works together.

You remain self-managed.

Yes. My dad took that role on for many years while I was still learning the business, but I've self-managed for the past three years. I'm type A, organised to a fault almost, and enjoy being in charge and ensuring everything is as it should be. I'm a Capricorn, and anyone else who is also a Capricorn will understand.

How does that pan out, given the obstacles that women still encounter in the music industry?

That's true about the many obstacles, but I'm not a quitter or one to give up even in the face of adversity. I'm an entrepreneur running my own business. It's funny the number of times I have gone to meetings, and people would totally ignore me and start speaking to my husband or my father. I've gone into music stores with my husband to buy something, and they would start immediately talking to him rather than me. It's interesting, but it also fuels my fire.

Your album LONE RIDER, written during the pandemic in a desperate time, catapulted your career in many ways.

I didn't have any publicity engaged for that record. I had all of my money stolen from me before that record came out by a company that was supposed to be promoting it. It made that time even more difficult for me during the pandemic. I had my biggest tour booked for that time, with a hundred dates in fifteen countries, and all of them fell apart. So, I started streaming online; it was the only thing I could do. I went to work and did six live streams a week, and my numbers started to fly through the roof. I was honoured that I was one of the top forty live streamers in 2020 and a top twenty live streamer in 2021 up there with Stevie Nicks and the Zack Bryan Band, and it was just little old me in my living room with my piano. It felt like I had a hundred thousand people sitting in my living room with me, and I made lifelong fans and friends after having that severe personal loss with I had with the record. On the day of the release of LONE RIDER, I didn't expect a lot because I didn't have anyone promoting it except my own social media; it went to No.1 in so many countries, making for a very special time in my life.

Did the live streams and where your fans were streaming from give you ammunition to plan where best to tour when the world opened up again? 

Yes, it did. I built my social media from nothing and worked very hard to do that religiously using my insight. That helped us decide where to tour and where to target, both in the U.S. and in Europe, where I've been touring for eight years now. We've built up a big fan base in Europe, especially Germany, France, and Switzerland.

Given the hectic touring schedule and administration responsibilities, when did you get time to write?

Not when we are on the road; we are too busy then. Normally, I will spend a month of the year writing before we go on the road; our touring season tends to be May through to December, and we do a huge Christmas tour in November and December. Those months are usually downtime for a lot of artists, but they are the busiest time of the year for us. This year, as I've had the surgeries, I wrote from the end of March up until May, and we also recorded a new record in those two months. It's been a difficult year for creating; everything has been so rushed, but I'm so excited about the new record; we literally sent the album to the mastering guy to prepare for distribution at 3 a.m. on the day we left for the U.S. tour.   

You have already released three singles from the new album, including Shame, which was co-written by another artist and academic, Rachel Walker Mason. How did that connection come about?

We initially connected on Instagram sometime during the pandemic. She's an amazing songwriter and musician; connecting with her was great. That's the amazing thing about the internet: You can connect with people you would have never met otherwise.

Where did you record the new album, and when will it be released?

I have a home studio, and I co-produced the record, so I was there for every single session. Everyone came over to the house, and we recorded the tracks one at a time in the small but mighty home studio. We released a few of the singles last year and then recorded six songs in two months, which was a race against the clock, but I am so excited that we got it all done. It's coming out on January 17th next year. We decided not to do a fall release because we have a lot going on with the Christmas tour. It's our biggest one yet, and I wanted to focus on that. We've been playing the songs on the road for a few months now, so it's funny; they sound like old songs already. 

You have opened for household names like ZZ Top, Keith Urban and Joe Dee Messina as well as Loretta Lynn. What highlights do you draw from those experiences, and how does it increase your fan base compared to your own headline shows?

It's very different. Opening for artists like the ones you mentioned is like a pinch dream moment, artists that I've listened to since I was a little kid a lot of times. To be introduced to their audiences, who then can become my audience, is exciting. I also love watching from the administrative and logistic point of view how they operate, how many crew members they have, and their roles. I'm always watching and learning. We do a lot of festivals here and around Europe as headliners, which consistently increases our fanbase.

Despite your busy schedule, you also find time to support worthy causes like Animal Shelters, the military and various charities.  

That is very important for me; music is one of the most powerful mediums that can make a difference in the world. Ever since I was a kid and started my first band, I have always played at nursing homes, animal shelter benefits, and children's hospitals. I have continued that into my career. We have done a ton of work with the military, veterans, and charities. I have a disabled rescue dog myself who is missing two back legs; she has prosthetic legs.

You are an extremely structured person. Do you set yourself short-term or long-term goals?

My goals are never hard set, and there is a reason for that. I've learned throughout my career that if you are too focused on a particular door, you're going to miss other doors. Those other doors can often lead you to the most amazing things in life. If I had been told years ago that I would be doing country music and touring in Lithuania, Latvia or Mexico, I would have thought that was crazy. My goal is to love life, wake up every day, be happy with what I am doing with the people I love most, and be a little bit better than I was the day before. As long as I am progressing in some way mentally and physically, that's an achievement. I think I have been able to keep building my career by always keeping an open mind.

For anyone unfamiliar with Jessica Lynn's music, how would you describe it?

A magazine described it perfectly a few years ago as 'country arena rock.' You couldn't say it better: high-energy country mixed with rock 'n' roll.

Interview by Declan Culliton

Ordinary Elephant Interview

Ordinary Elephant is the performing name of husband and wife duo Pete Damone and Crystal Hariu-Damone. They have been active on the music circuit since their formation back in 2013 and their albums bear testament to their growing reputation that has drawn much praise. In 2017, they were honoured with the International Folk Music Award for Artist of the Year for their album, BEFORE I GO. The duo create insightful songs and beautifully honed harmony vocals. Their sound is coloured around Folk/Roots influences and the pair have been praised for the authenticity and honesty in their performance. Their superb songs are reflections on life, love and the vagaries of human nature, in addition to celebrating the gifts of mother earth and nature. They spent five years on the road in a RV, continuously travelling across the United States, building a fan-base and experiencing life in a unique way. Now settled down in Louisiana and with the challenges of Covid lockdown behind them, Lonesome Highway wanted to catch up with Crystal and Peter and enquire into new album and their future plans.

Congratulations on the launch of the new album. Have you been pleased with the response from the media so far?

(Pete and Crystal) Yes, although it can be hard to gauge how much any one thing moves the needle. But then there are people that you meet at the shows who say they saw the album review somewhere, and that's what got them to the show. And that's really the ultimate goal: to connect with people directly; so that feels like a success. It’s really encouraging to have journalists who listen to a lot of music, and have well informed opinions, say kind things about your work. We certainly are very thankful for the reviews that we have received so far.

Why did you decide to name this album eponymously? It would normally happen on a debut but on your fourth release I wondered what led to the naming decision?

(Crystal) It took us a while to decide that. We were circling around some things, but nothing was feeling quite right. Then that idea came to us since it's just us on the album, and was recorded with us performing the way we do live. Self-titling felt like the most sure-footed move since this album so accurately captured what we were at that moment in time.

The previous album, HONEST (2019) used stellar musicians like Will Kimbrough and Neilson Hubbard, who also produced the album. Post-Covid did it just feel right to get back to the source of your song writing and play as a duo?

(Pete) We worked with Dirk Powell to produce the new album. We just assumed that he would bring his instrumental talents to the songs since he is such a legendary fiddle and banjo player. After laying down our tracks, and some initial mixing, he said that while he certainly could add things, he didn’t feel like he needed to. We were a little scared at first honestly, but to have someone like that endorse the songs as they were, said a lot, and was really special.

How did you come across Dirk Powell in the first place?

(Crystal) It was at AmericanaFest in 2019 in Nashville actually. We had performed at the Station Inn, and after the show he said how much he enjoyed our set. I was waiting in line for water and didn’t think that he was talking to me. Later on as we left the gig, Dirk was playing fiddle outside with Rhiannon Giddens, and we stopped to listen. After they finished the song they were playing he saw us and said again, “hey, that was a really beautiful set,” making clear he was actually talking to us. We thanked him, and then emailed him once we got back home to say how much we appreciated him listening to our set, and taking the time to share that with us. He responded and offered to show us his studio which is in Breaux Bridge, just a 40-minute drive away, which we visited in early 2020. So that started the connection that later led to recording with him.

How does it feel now to put your roots down after so many years of travelling the USA?

(Crystal) It was the end of 2019 when we bought this place, after 5 years of living on the road full-time. We were changing the way we were travelling, wanting to put down some roots and have a consistent place to come back between touring…which of course abruptly ended very shortly after that. But we felt very fortunate to have a place to be during Covid. Especially since my parents were just 30 minutes down the road, and so we were able to be with them during that time. At the end of 2021 we started picking up again on touring, moving to what we were aiming for back in 2019. It feels good to have a rooted place to keep returning to.

What do you miss when you look back at all those years of travelling constantly on the road using camper vans as your home?

(Pete) We have gone through a few different road situations. When we started it was so much different, as we weren’t doing music as a full-time thing. Travelling was more of a lifestyle choice. We could play concerts around the country at our own pace, while I was still working 40-hour weeks remotely as a computer programmer. That gave Crystal time to delve back into songwriting.

(Crystal) Yeah, I have always been a writer since I was a kid. That was my way to get things out. At the end of high school it turned into writing songs, which I continued doing during college. After graduating, I moved on to a lot more schooling for something totally unrelated to writing or music, which did not allow me much time to spend on the creative side of things. So backing away from that part of my life when we started traveling allowed me to revisit my creativity, and realize that maybe it's what I was really supposed to be doing.

Did you get to visit every State during your regular travels?

(Pete) We just checked off two more this last year, Delaware and North Dakota. We are missing only South Dakota and Hawaii.

Did you notice a perceptible change with political divisions in city and rural areas of America as you travelled around?

(Pete and Crystal) I feel like it’s hard because it’s been almost 10 years since we took off, and in 2014, that was starting to come to a boil. I think that it’s gotten worse since then. Being who we are, I don’t think that we get any crazy sideways looks. Everyone is super friendly to us, and being in the folk world, our lens is also skewed. We are not doing bar gigs and things like that anymore, so people are coming to see us with intention, and many of them tend to have a similar mindset as ours. There are probably pockets of people who are outside of that bubble, and we may not realize that they come to our shows since we are not overtly political. There are definitely things that you could say that would rile people up, but if you can say it in a different way, then maybe it doesn’t trigger that reaction from them, and there's a better chance of them being open to hearing you. We do try to be conscious of that. There are certain songs and certain things that we touch upon that we could introduce in a way that would close people off, but we try to not have that happen. We want people to be open to listening to our music, to let it in, and if people change the way they’re thinking, it's on their own accord. Which, to us, feels like a more resilient change.

Has your writing process changed much over the years?

(Crystal) Just doing it more consistently, finding our writing voices, and being inspired by different things that we come across. In the beginning, Pete wasn’t really a lyrics listener even, but we've been doing these writing exercises every morning for several years now, and it has been really wonderful to see him grow over time to appreciate lyrics, and then start writing them himself.

(Pete) I grew up in Austin and listened to bands in the Seattle grunge scene, angsty and cryptic, but The Beatles were my first musical love. Their experimentation, their harmonies and melody in their music is just incredible.  Then the appreciation of the Texas songwriters came along, with writers like Guy Clark and Townes Van Zandt. The simplicity in their songs was so accessible to me and allowed me to focus on their lyrical brilliance. It just blew me away. That was the first time that lyrics made me feel in the way that melody and harmony had before. That started maybe 15 years ago.

Crystal, you were really into poetry, and I know that you both met at an open mic night. How did that come about?

(Crystal) I didn’t get a guitar until after I had graduated high school and I didn’t get on a stage until 2008, the year before Pete and I met. After high school I decided I wanted my poems to be songs and got a guitar to be a vehicle for songwriting. Ten years later, in 2008, I was living in Florida and found an open mic night there. I knew I'd only be living there for a short time, so I promised myself that I would play that open mic before I left. It was terrifying, but something about it made me want to keep doing it. When I moved to Texas, I found another one there, and we both happened to go to that open mic for the first time on the same night.

Now that Crystal is back home in Louisiana, has there been many childhood memories showing up and influencing the songs that were written for this new album?

It’s been great being near my family again, and being able to see them so often. The combination of being near where I grew up, and having a permanent home base, has me feeling more rooted and has definitely informed a lot of the writing on this album. We are finding our space, and how to best take up that space.

Crystal, your maiden name Hariu. Is this Eastern European?

It's Finnish, and I keep it because the name won't go on. At least in the parts of our family that we know about, it ends with me. Also, in all the schooling and certifications I had in my previous career (veterinary cardiologist), I was Doctor Hariu. I was still practicing full-time when we married, so I also wanted to keep that as part of my married name to maintain that link.

A lot of the songs seem deeply personal. Is there a concern that showing your vulnerability will lead to feeling very exposed?

It feels like we have always done that. It’s a goal to be open and vulnerable, and it doesn’t feel like a new thing…maybe we're just pushing more into it? That’s what people connect with. At shows we often have people thank us for being so open and vulnerable. And so it feels like it’s wanted, and that it's what people need, and that’s what makes it not quite as scary…that maybe it’s helping someone.

Songs like Pigeons and Birdie Was An Oak Tree are celebrations of nature, the circle of life, and our place in the grand scheme of things. That sense of acceptance balanced with the songs that show inner vulnerability, give a nice dichotomy.

Thank you. It doesn’t always feel like we are aging gracefully! But, we like to think it is the case.

Are there any plans for a European tour in the months ahead?

We’re talking at the moment about when it is best to come back over. Nothing firm yet but we do have a booking agent in the Netherlands who is eager to get us back. We are working on it, but it will be at least another year.

We certainly want to try and have you visit Ireland and to play a few shows here. Hopefully that will eventually happen?

Yes, we would really love to do that, so much! We definitely want to come back over and visit places that we haven’t been before.

Is there anything that you do as a discipline now as a daily process?

(Pete) I think when we are home it allows us to establish routines like practicing our instruments or writing separately from one another. When we were on the road full-time, we were sharing a small space, and it didn't allow us time to carve out room for ourselves to develop lyrics and instrumentation separately before working on it together.

(Crystal) It’s definitely harder when we're on tour, but one thing that we do every day is a practice called object writing. A lot of my poetry and different song ideas come from that. We started it back in 2017. You pick a random object/word, and use that as a jumping off point, trying to touch on the senses as much as you can, in a sensory, stream of consciousness way. Not thinking too much, just letting things flow for 10 minutes, being open to whatever comes up for you. It often strays from the original object. It is a door to let you access things you may not have otherwise.

(Crystal and Pete) Our other unique practice is a songwriting technique called The Translitic Process. You take a poem that is in a foreign language that you don’t speak, and you "translate" it. You are not trying to write what you actually think the words mean, but rather let the way the word looks or the way that you think it may sound like lead you. It's like word association, and you just write down what comes into your brain. You work on the first draft (which is usually gobbledygook), and keep rewriting the drafts in that same manner, until the song reveals itself to you, and what your subconscious was trying to get out. There are several songs on the new album that came about through this process.

Songs on the album like Walk With You and Relic Of the Rain are love songs that reveal your deep bond. All those years of travelling in a camper van on the road, living in such close quarters. Many couples would not survive that close proximity together on a daily basis. How do you make it work for you?

(Crystal) I guess that before we ever started travelling, after we first met, we just did everything together. It felt natural, and we didn’t feel that pull to have much time away from each other. It works for us, and we realize it wouldn't work for everyone. We often joke that between the two of us, we are one musician!

Interview by Paul McGee Photograph by Olivia Perillo

Teddy Thompson Interview

Teddy Thompson took to the stage in the small marquee at the back of Colfer’s pub, Carrig-on-Bannow, Co Wexford to the slight bemusement of some of the mainly local audience, who were there for the annual Phil Murphy Trad Weekend and were expecting Irish traditional and folk music. However, John and Pip Murphy, the two musician brothers who run the venue in the small village near the sea, have put it on the map for Americana music too and there was a hard core of fans who had come from all over the Sunny South East to hear Teddy. They weren’t disappointed either, and he treated them to a set list of songs ranging from his first solo album in 2000 through to his latest in 2023, a collaboration, with Jenni Muldaur, of classic country duets. Favourites like I Should Get Up, In Your Arms and I Wish It Was Over were interspersed with covers of classics like Felice & Boudleaux Bryant’s Change Of Heart. Thompson’s intense performance was interspersed with his usual wry observations and self-deprecating sense of humour. Just before the gig, Lonesome Highway got the chance to catch up with him and get a little insight into his world.

You’ve been doing a little road trip around the countryside during this tour but do you have any Irish family connections?

We do but we haven’t followed it up, unfortunately. Most of my family is Scottish, especially on my mother’s side and her surname is Pettifer, but it’s too far back and we haven’t researched it.

What are the origins of your well-known love of country music?

I listened to a lot of that stuff when I was a kid and then when I was getting into music the first thing I heard was the Everly Brothers, who are not really country but it leans that way for our ears now. Then later on I would be in the car with my dad (Richard Thompson) on road trips and he was the one that had the tapes, he would play the Everly Brothers and country stuff and I’ve realised that it’s from him that I got this love of country music. This was in England when I was growing up, until the age of eighteen when I moved to the States.

How do you feel about touring - do you enjoy it or it is just something you do because you have to?

Well, it depends … (laughs ruefully) I feel like I have to do it now to make a living. I don’t feel like I have to do it creatively. I like playing but if I didn’t have to do it to make some money I don’t know how much I’d do. It makes you wonder, you know, if you didn’t need the money would you still do it when you’ve done it a million times? I mean, most of the time I like the gig, but it’s the other 23 hours, the travelling, that can get you down. And it depends on how you’re doing it, like most things in life, what kind of style are you doing it in. It’s a tougher job the lower down the totem pole you go. It gets tough for me, but even down from me it’s even tougher, you have to drive yourself around, you have to sell your own CDs. The further up you go, doing a gig is still some effort but it’s not as much effort if you’ve got someone driving you there, if you can travel business class etc. So for the working musician it can be a slog, but the gig is usually ok. But then if you have a bad gig, you’re thinking ‘ugh ..and I’m staying in this horrible hotel somewhere and I’ve just driven seven hours and I’m exhausted’ .. so it’s all the stuff that comes with it.

What are your thoughts about digital music compared with physical and what effect has it had on your life generally?

Like most of us, devastating is the word I would use. Approx 75% of my income has disappeared and that’s true for everybody and it’s been very difficult. So what has happened is that a lot of people have just stopped doing it - the industry is just a fraction of what it used to be and it’s just a numbers game. It went from being something like a £10 billion industry and now it’s a £1 billion industry, so at least 50% of people just got out of it, and that’s artists, managers and agents. It was bound to happen, I guess, and there are good things about it but unfortunately there wasn’t a strong enough lobby or union at the time when the laws needed to be adjusted for the new technology to ensure revenue streams. The big companies made sure it didn’t happen and that chance is gone, so it’s all over (laughs). It bothers me as a music consumer too, it bothers me that music is such an undervalued thing now, because once you make something free it then, in society, holds very little value for most people.

It follows that you probably can’t afford to bring a band over now? It’s quite a few years since we saw you with a band over here. You’re based in NY - do you tour over there with a band?

Sometimes, yes, if it’s in a small enough geographical radius but it’s tough to pay to fly people around these days. We can do it if it’s drivable and we can do a few shows close together. But I don’t really play in America any more than I do here. Like most touring musicians, it doesn’t really matter where you live. It would be the same if I lived in London, just because you live there doesn’t mean you could play there every week or every month. It’s the same cycle - you can only play a certain amount of times in any place.

As regards songwriting, are you a disciplined person, do you set aside time every day to write? 

I wish I was, but no, not at all! I don’t have that sort of mindset, the creative urges to do it just for the sake of it. I like it as being a job, and it’s become a lot more difficult now because there are fewer people wanting you to do it, with the demise of record companies etc. Basically, I usually just have some songs on the go, and every couple of years I get a sense that it’s probably time to do another one. Then I’ll sit down and try to finish things that aren’t finished. I like to have time to let things percolate. 

You’ve done some producing - you’ve worked with Dori Freeman and Roseanne Reid, as well as with your mother (Linda Thompson) and other Thompson family projects - would you like to do more of that?

Well, I’m not really a proper producer - I don’t think of myself as being that and, again, I’m a bit of a ‘man out of time’. Producing for me is old fashioned producing, having a good set of ears and just telling people what to do and making decisions and there’s not much call for that anymore. The business is so small now that if people really want to pay a producer, they want someone who can do the engineering as well, which I don’t do. I like it, doing bits and pieces, but I think if it was thirty years ago I’d probably be doing more of it, because there would be more opportunities. But it’s nice, being a producer is like making music without the heartache, and you can sleep at night!

You always play a Lowden acoustic guitar exclusively when you’re touring. Do you know George Lowden, have you worked with him on anything?

I’ve met him, but I really only play a Lowden because my Dad does and the guitars were around and I liked that sound. I can’t, of course, do what he does on a guitar - nobody can - but I gravitated towards that sound, and I’ve had a couple of them. They’re really good for playing solo, because you can do a lot, and they’re very versatile. 

What’s next in the works for you?

I’ve almost finished an album, with producer David Mansfield, who also did the last two country albums. It’s my own songs again and it’s not particularly country.

So you’ll be back touring again soon

Probably, when will it ever end?! That’s the other thing - in the old days I always had this thing in the back of my head ‘maybe someone will cover a song or it will be in a movie’, those things that would have happened in the days before streaming. They were retirement plans for musicians, bits of luck you might get along the way, other people doing your songs, and it only takes one and it doesn’t even need to be a hit, it could be on an album that does well. Lots of people I know and admire had this happen to them and I used to think, ‘I’ll get good at the songwriting’ and now that’s gone too. So now when you’re touring you’re thinking ‘am I going to be doing this until I die? I’m already tired!’

Interview and Live photo by Eilís Boland

David Newbould Interview

One of the many highlights at the Static Roots Festival in Oberhausen, Germany, last month was a blistering set from David Newbould and his band. The Toronto, Canada-born artist honed his skills in New York and Austin before moving to Nashville, where he currently lives. His signature sound is very much 70s-driven guitar rock, and for those unfamiliar with his music, a listen to his latest album, LIVE IN GERMANY, is the perfect starting place. We recently caught up with David in Nashville via Zoom, where he spoke of, among other things, his early influences and how the pandemic shaped the direction of his gilt-edged 2022 album POWER UP.

Can you recall the song, band or show that set you off on your musical career?

There were a few stages to that, but my ‘Beatles on Ed Sullivan moment’ was when I heard Dexys Midnight Runners song Come On Eileen on the Top 40 when I was young. That opened the door for me. I’m not quite sure why it was that song, but it was probably the first one that appealed to me. It definitely set something in motion. I knew that this was what I wanted to do right away. I started as a drummer and then switched to playing guitar, but in terms of putting it all together in line with what I’ve been doing ever since, I watched the Neil Young LIVE RUST video that a friend loaned me. That hit me like nothing had ever hit me before, and from there playing guitar, writing songs and being able to sing equally meant everything to me. That was in my later adolescence, and there was no turning back from there.

You moved from your hometown of Toronto to New York and Austin before settling in Nashville.

Yes. I finished High School and didn’t want to stay in Toronto; all my heroes had gone to New York City. L.A. was far away, and I didn’t know anything about the scene there, and England, where some of my favourite bands came from, was not an option. New York was only a bus ride away, and I had a cousin there. I loved it there, but things evolved, and I felt I had spent enough time there. Austin, Texas, seemed really appealing to me, so I moved there. That gave me a whole new set of musical parameters. I stayed there for a while and then ended up in Nashville.

What drew you to Nashville?

Two specific things drew me to Nashville. One was the touring aspect, as Nashville is a place where you can cover more territory being based here. I loved Austin with all my heart, but I had been touring around Texas for a few years. I had a good booking situation in Nashville, which was good, and I could hit so many more markets from here. I was also interested in songwriting and publishing. 

You are regularly pigeonholed in the Americana genre. How does that sit with you?

I’m okay with that; I guess I’ll throw the term into my bios. I certainly don’t make music thinking about parameters. I don’t have anything against these terms, so whatever Americana is, I’m closer to it than hip-hop or jazz. Firstly, it was country rock in the 1970s, roots rock in the 1980s, and alt-country in the 1990s. Now, there is Americana from all different countries, which is weird.

When did you record your latest album LIVE IN GERMANY? 

That was recorded on tour in the fall of 2023. It was completely random; our sound engineer asked us if we’d mind if he multi-tracked a recording of the show. So, we set up a few iPhones to see if we’d get a decent YouTube video. He sent me the tracks, and I went to work mixing them. I really liked the way they came out. I put them on YouTube, and a few people asked if I’d put it on Spotify. So, I listened to them without the video and felt that it held up pretty well. I wanted to have something to sell when I went over to Europe on tour again this year, and Blackbird, the label I had been working with, were all for it, and we put it out. I had played there a couple of times before Static Roots last month. I have an agent in Belgium, and his territory consists of Germany, Belgium, and Holland. That is where most of my playing overseas has been in the last few years.

Your last studio album, POWER UP from 2022, was recorded during the pandemic with Scot Sax producing. It ended up somewhat different than you had initially intended.

Yes. I had the songs mostly in the can, though a few of them came about during the early days of the pandemic. We started recording simply for something to do at that time. Scot and I have sons around the same age, and I would bring my son over to hang out at his place. One day, we just came up with the song Power Up, which Scot produced. It came out differently from anything else I had done before. I had been figuring out who I would make my next record with and how that was going to happen, and I thought working with Scot would be great. We didn’t know how long the pandemic would last. We worked safely, turning his garage into a studio and doing most of the playing ourselves. The album came out entirely differently than it would have without the pandemic. Still, I was grateful because it was a different recording experience and inspired me to build my own studio, which I had been putting off. I have had the studio room in my house for a few years. As I said, I started as a drummer as a kid, so I began relearning instruments and recording my own stuff; up to that, I had only been demoing vocals and guitar on GarageBand. I’ve been doing a lot of that since then.

Given that you play both with a band and solo, do you intentionally write songs that can be performed in both settings? 

I usually start the songs as a laid-back acoustic ballad because I write with an acoustic guitar, which is just the natural way for me. Once the song is done, I start thinking about whether it will work well with a band. There’s a song called Last Letter on POWER UP which I wrote years ago as a finger-picking acoustic, but at some point, I thought it would be cool to turn it into a rock and roll song; I just changed the key and figured out an arrangement, and now it’s definitely a ‘big song’ with the band, even though it didn’t start that way.  In most of the songs I write, I have in mind that they will eventually get there.

You have also co-written with Roger Cook, who has written chart-topping hits in the U.K. and U.S. for over five decades. How did that connection come about?

Roger lives in Franklin, south of Nashville, and there is a club there called Kimbro’s, where I play fairly regularly. We played there once before John Prine’s brother, Billy. Roger, who was great friends with John Prine, was there. I knew who he was because I had a job at The Bluebird Café when I first moved here, and Roger would play there. He came up to me after the show and said, ‘Man, that was great. What have you got going on? Anyway, I can help. Let me know; maybe we can write together.’ About six years ago, I started writing songs with him, and we’ve written a couple of dozen songs together; he’s a fun guy.

You’re just back from touring in Europe. Have you shows lined up in the near future?

I’m heading up to Illinois this weekend for a couple of shows and some sporadic stuff playing around town. We have a couple of semi-residencies, and we play Acme & Seed downtown a fair bit. I’m working on returning to Europe next year; I’d love to do an Irish tour when I’m over this time.

Interview by Declan Culliton. Photograph by Ryan Knaack

Kiely Connell Interview

Raised in Hammond, Indiana, but residing in Nashville for over a decade, Kiely Connell’s sophomore album, MY OWN COMPANY,explores emotionally raw terrain.  A relationship falling apart, the suicide of a close friend, unwelcome lewd advances and alcohol and substance abuse are candidly addressed. With lyrics drawn from often bitter personal experiences, Connell’s powerful vocals, combined with a hand-picked supporting cast of musicians, the album shows remarkable growth from her impressive debut 2021 album, CALUMET QUEEN. ‘I feel that we really did something special with this record,’ she expressed to Lonesome Highway when we recently spoke. We couldn’t agree more.

What was the music scene closer to home for you before moving to Nashville?

You had a lot of blues happening in Chicago, but I wish that it had a better music scene because I may not have felt the need to come to Nashville. I’m glad I did though, because moving somewhere like this encourages you to be the best writer, singer and performer you can be. When you’re in an environment where music is all around you and there is a lot of competition, it forces you to sink or swim.  

However, you are proud of your home scene, having titled your debut album CALUMET QUEEN.

I am. It’s funny being from North West Indiana; when I play elsewhere in Indiana, people will come up and say, ‘You’re not really from Indiana,’ because you are that close to Chicago. Even when I attended University in Indiana, people would say, ‘Well, you’re from the region,’ and call you a ‘region rat,’ which I was proud of because it means that we are scrappy and resilient people who keep going no matter what.

Your songwriting is very personal, dealing with matters of the heart and real-life issues. I don’t expect that came from attending songwriting classes and writing with strangers. 

I never did songwriting classes. I’ve never been a person who thrives in a writing room. I want to write with people who inspire and deeply understand each other.  I think that is how you come up with the most authentic and truly heartfelt material. When I first moved here, there was a small publishing group that I started co-writing with, having never written a song with another person before. By doing that, I met other writers who would become some of my best friends, and over the years, it became common for us to call one other up and share ideas, come over for coffee, talk about it and maybe something really cool would come out of it.

When we recently posted a review of your new album, MY OWN COMPANY, we also featured two other albums released by Nashville-based women that were similarly confessional. Is it a coincidence, or is there a movement developing?

I think that is probably coincidental. I remember something you wrote about in your review, wondering if it was brought about by the pandemic, where people seek emotional comradery to feel that they are not alone in what they are experiencing. That is certainly true for me, and that is what I try to do as a songwriter by speaking from a place of struggles that I have gone through or awakenings that I have had, hoping that that might help someone else.

You name-check the author Neil Gaiman and also John Prine as inspiring your writing.

I have read more of Neil Gaiman’s work than any other author. He has this wonderful way of weaving reality into a fantasy world I can relate to. There is so much metaphor in his work. His book NEVERWHERE is an incredible read, classic Gaiman. He talks about this whole class of people who live in a society called London Below, a place that exists below the surface. All of these people have slipped through the cracks, and the whole book is not only entertaining but also poignant and really touching. I have always been drawn to the heavy issues that he addresses; I love his word choices and phrasing, which get my brain working thinking about how I can express certain things differently in my writing. How could you not be influenced by John Prine? Back in April, I was touring with John Prine’s son, Tommy. He’s also a great storyteller, and I recently listened to a bunch of John Prine’s records again, which are classic songwriting that teaches you everything you need to learn.

Tell me about the song Restless Bones on the album, which deals with the suicide of a close friend of yours many years ago. Was that a song you always intended to write but needed to wait until the correct time?

I had the realisation a long time ago that the event influenced how I viewed my life and how I navigate things. My friend Jake Anderson, who wrote that song with me, we realised that we had lost friends in the same way. Sometimes, when you are writing songs, you will just reel off titles for songs, and strangely, it was Jake who had the title Restless Bones.  I immediately said, ‘ Do you know that makes me think of my friend who I lost in high school.’ From there, we just talked about the type of people that they were, and there was a strange overlap of this shared trauma. It was such a painful thing.

Through To You is a reality check of wasted lives in an industry that can quickly draw artists down a dark road and one that not everyone recovers from.

Originally, that song was written with one person in mind, but over time, it evolved into the realisation of the many people I know who are that way, especially in this town. People begin to get some success, and all of a sudden become used to drinking their lives away, and there is not a drug at the club that they are not going to do. It’s extremely unfortunate; I have watched a lot of people lose themselves. Truth be told, it’s even hard for me. You’re bonding with the listeners and want to bring people together; I truly feel that is my calling. People may come up to you and wax poetic about a specific moment in your set and want to buy you a beer. Suddenly, you’ve had a lot of beers, and if you have a gig the next day and may have a six- or eight-hour drive, you have to learn how to say no. Otherwise, there is no longevity in it. Personally, with all of my anxious and depressive tendencies, drugs are something that I have very much stayed away from. I know alcohol is technically a drug and depressant, but the other things make me really uneasy, and that’s probably why I am not exposed to it. maybe I give something off, and people know that.

The song Damn Hands comes bursting out of the speakers and finds you spitting fire in the direction of persons that show zero respect towards women. Does that phenomenon still regularly occur from your experience?

Unfortunately, it does still happen. It’s not just the music scene but just in general. If I need to decompress and have a bite and a beer after a show, I want to sit there and be left alone. Sometimes, people come over to you, and just because they talk to you for five minutes, they think you’re going to want to go home with them. It’s an assumption with no respect for boundaries. 

The track listing on the album is most impressive. Bookending the album with On The Mend and the title track My Own Company, are well-placed and honest statements of where you are at presently.

Thank you. Honestly, I spent hours going through the track listing to put all the songs strategically in order so that the story made sense. You’re quite right because the first three tracks and those last two tracks relate perfectly to each other. I wrote On The Mend last winter when I was on the road touring alone through a lot of the Midwest. It was my first holiday alone, which the song Anaesthesia is about.   I was trying to put a lot of things behind me, sort through all of my thoughts and, hopefully, heal myself. To me, there was no other way that I could end the album but with My Own Company, and it also needed to be the album title. 

Tucker Martine came on board for the production. How did that come about?

I wanted to work with Tucker for over a decade. When I first moved to this town and was going through many changes trying to meet friends and trying to prove myself, I heard the record THE WORSE THINGS GET THE HARDER I FIGHT by Neko Case, whom I am a huge fan of. That record was so heavy and relatable; she had gone through all of these big moments in her life at that time and was horribly depressed, and I related to that. Not only that, but the way that the whole album was put together, there’s a song on the album called Nearly Midnight in Honolulu, and she practically chants the whole song, and the way that song was put together was incredibly impressive to me. I love all her albums, but I thought there was something special about that album. It stuck with me to the extent that if you knew me at all, you would probably be forced to listen to that record, so when I was thinking about producers, even for my first record, I wondered if I could ever afford to get Tucker to produce. I had looked up the work that he had done, and I thought that he would never be in my budget; he had done all of The Decemberists’ albums, whom I love, Sufjan Stevens and Madison Cunningham, who I had toured with. Over the years, I would joke with people that Tucker Martine was going to make my next record. When I met up with Thirty Tigers, we talked about producers, and they said they were thinking of something not traditionally Nashville for you and asked me how I felt about Tucker Martine.

That must have come as a pleasant surprise.

My jaw dropped, and I asked, ‘Are you kidding me? Is that an option? They sent him some demos, and he immediately responded. We had a phone call, which was probably meant to last about thirty minutes but ended up lasting about two hours, talking about all the things that we loved sonically and TV shows. I knew then that we would get on as we had similar musical tastes and a sense of humour. The whole recording was magical. I ended up having Nate Query from one of my favourite bands, The Decemberist’ on bass. I had been crammed into a room in Chicago watching The Decembrists about a decade ago in Chicago and never thought that I would be playing music with him. Andy Borger, who has toured and played records with Tom Waits and Norah Jones, played drums; it was an amazing experience. We recorded in Portland in the spring, although it was raining, andeverything was growing, lush, and alive. You feel so inspired, and I feel that we really did something special with this record.

Did Tucker bring the players on board?

Yes, he brought Andy and Nate, and I brought my longtime musical collaborator and friend, Drew Kohl, who also played on my first record and comes on tour with me. He plays everything, any guitar, organ or piano you hear on the record, he played. What I love about him is that there are a million guitar players in the world that can come in and play something nice but may not be quite right for the song. Drew is incredibly thoughtful; he will listen to a melody that you sing and all of a sudden, he will be playing a lead guitar part that sounds like he was there when I wrote the song; he’s very gifted that way.

How did the connection with Thirty Tigers come about?

They got on board because Trigger, at Saving Country Music, sent David Macias at Thirty Tigers, my name. He listened to my music, and within a few days, I had an email from David saying that we needed to talk about working together. I thought, ‘Do they really mean me.’ They are the largest independent record label with so many acts that I love from every genre. I learned that my project manager at the label was also the project manager for Mary Chapin Carpenter and Dwight Yoakam. The whole thing was magical.

Interview by Declan Culliton Photography by Alysse Gafkjen

Keri Latimer (Leaf Rapids) Interview

Leaf Rapids is a four-piece band of very talented musicians who are based in Winnipeg, Canada. Over the years, chief songwriter Keri Latimer has crafted superbly structured music and words that represent the unique sound of the group across three albums. The music they make is insightful, inspiring and lovingly layered with a natural grace and elegance. It is also hugely enjoyable and sprinkled with lots of magic dust. Keri is also involved in many other creative projects and Lonesome Highway spent some time with her recently and put these questions to her regarding her career in the music business and the evolution of the band.

Congratulations on the release of your new album VELVET PAINTINGS. Have you been pleased with the response from the media and the public to the new songs?

Thank you! It’s really sweet to hear that something you’ve put much work and love into is resonating with people. The album reviews have been thoughtful and positive, and people have been kind enough to let us know how a certain song maybe comforted them through a tough time, or just to offer encouragement. We even had interest from a couple of labels, so it’s all been super validating and heartwarming.

It’s been five years since the previous release CITIZEN ALIEN and had you been writing during the Covid crisis towards this new release?

Oh boy. I was supposed to be writing during the “Pandy” as my friend likes to call it, but like a lot of folks, my brain and heart were all OVER the place. It got a little dark at times around the ol’ household, with our 2 teenagers ready to spread their wings and taste independence only to be locked down with the very people they are wired to rebel against. I think I used a lot of my creative energy just trying to keep it together, so there wasn’t a lot of poetry. I mean, I tried to write, in fact the song, Starling to a Starling, went through about 14 versions of itself. It just couldn’t land, but it wouldn’t let go either. Thankfully I did finally find my way back to songwriting just in the nick of time.

This time out you co-produced with John Paul Peters. How was that as a new experience?

I can’t say enough good things about JP.  He really threw his heart into this project, and kept the whole process inspiring and stress free. He is a wizard in the studio, and can comp tracks, set up a mic, massage your ego and order banh mi sandwiches all at the same time. We had actually booked 2 weeks for tracking and ended up only using 1, since we used a lot of the bed tracks live off the floor. They had such a good relaxed vibe, and the band just seemed to be ‘on.’ A lot of this is due to JP making us feel so comfortable in the studio, which is not always the case. Co-producing with him felt really natural and surprisingly we were able to accomplish a lot in a short amount of time. I say surprisingly because we’d often get caught up in conversations about all kinds of things and have to reel ourselves in.

What is your creative process – a little and often, or more like waiting for the spirit to visit you?

A bit of both. I think we all probably have a little gear secretly spinning in the background of our brains, picking up frequencies from the ether, processing, then randomly tossing out little nuggets here and there. The trick is to capture them before they disappear. I have a lot of embarrassing audio clips of melodies with gibberish-temp-lyrics in my iPhone, and texts and scribbles on scraps, which eventually get sifted through when I make the time to write.

Are your songs rooted in personal or observational experience?

I’m having trouble answering this question! I guess I would say both. Most of it is made up, imagining what observations the characters are making, but definitely drawing on personal experiences to keep it real. So, I guess I don’t write songs specifically about my personal experiences, but they are interwoven into the songs for sure.

There is a playfulness in the lyrics of songs such as Fast Romantics and Silver Fillings – they are sprinkled with a gentle sense of fun. I wondered if this was something you were striving towards?

Striving to not strive was kind of the theme of the album. As I mentioned earlier, I was really struggling to find lyrics for the past while, and as the recording deadline loomed (our provincial funding for the album was about to expire) I had to make a conscious effort to just get over myself, and let go of any imagined pressure I was placing on the project. They’re just songs and I have an amazing band, so with them in mind, I reconnected with my love of songwriting.  Where it feels more like discovery than creation, and you let the songs go where they will, and try not to get in the way.

In looking back over your career as a songwriter and performer what are the key perspectives that now stay with you?

I think I have always been a slow developer. I didn’t start learning guitar until I was in art college studying graphic design. I didn’t start songwriting in earnest until after college, and I didn’t start understanding how much performing is a give and take experience until recently. I would be so nervous about not screwing up on stage that I wasn’t always aware of the energy coming back. I wish I could go back and point that out to my younger self, but maybe that just comes from experience. It feels much less about me these days, and more about tapping into that beautiful energy with my band and the audience. I have to keep reminding myself of it, though.

In 1996 you released an album with Christine Fellows as a duo, Special Fancy. What was that like as a first experience of the music industry and the release of KING ME?

This was a hugely formative time for me musically, and I was really lucky to be playing music with the calibre of musicians that were in Special Fancy at that early stage in my songwriting trajectory. I kept moving around from city to city back then, looking for my people, I guess. I was completely smitten by Christine’s singing and writing, and still am, she is brilliant. When she suggested we start a band together, I moved to Winnipeg for keeps. She kind of took me under her wing, and Special Fancy was my introduction to the interconnected music community here, which is a beautiful thing that I’m grateful to be a part of.

In 1999 you form the band Nathan and over the next eight years, you release three albums. What are your strongest memories of that time?

The Nathan days feel a bit like a fairy tale. We recorded our first album, STRANGER, in a studio used for teaching audio courses, with a friend who gave us a great deal. We’d go in after work a couple times a week and fool around until we had an album. It landed in the hands of Nettwerk Records who called us up and said they wanted to come to Winnipeg and hear our nerdy little band live. That’s probably the strongest and most cherished memory. We couldn’t believe it, and the show was jam packed with our music community rallying around us in a tizzy. Those were exciting times, as signing with a label was the dream back then. We were super fortunate to catch the tail end of the record label heydays.

Is this a time when you first met your future husband, bass player Devin Latimer?

I had met Devin in the Special Fancy days, but he wasn’t a bass player then. He was and still is a chemistry prof, and had cool scientific looking thingamabobs for a music video we were making at the time. As we spent more time together, he started learning the bass so we could jam. By the time Nathan was forming, he was getting pretty good and it seemed the most natural thing in the world that he be a part of the band. My parents would often caution me not to lure him away from his teaching position at the university, which is pretty funny, but it’s so romantic, right?

In 2012 you released a solo album, CROWSFEET & GREYSKULL, and did you see your career at this point going in a new direction, with Nathan starting to slow down activity?

Yes, I think we were all realizing that being a full-time touring musician was not all it was cracked up to be in terms of maintaining good mental health and balance, especially with children. Devin and I were fortunate in that we could tour together and even bring our family with us, but for most musicians, this is not the case, and leaving your loved ones to go on tour is stressful for everyone. Our bandmate Shelley went back to school and got her doctorate in nursing, and is doing incredible things for under-served people in Winnipeg. I was looking for ways to be musical without having to go on the road, and was dabbling a bit with composing for film and television. And since the songwriting bug was still biting, I also thought I’d try my hand at engineering and producing a solo album.

When Nathan decided to break up in 2015, you had won a Juno Award in Canada (2008), in addition to other industry recognition.  Can you recall the key pressures that resulted in the decision to part ways?

Devin and I didn’t even attend the Juno Award ceremonies where we won the award because I had just given birth to our second child a few days before. That’s pretty telling in terms of how our lives were changing. In the music world it seems like you work hard and hustle while you’re young and ambitious, and if you’re lucky enough to have finally built a sustainable music career, you’re most likely touring constantly by the age you might be ready to start a family, and something has to be sacrificed. I know so many musicians at this crossroads and it’s tough.

Your label at the time was Nettwerk and had they been supportive of your career to that point?

Nettwerk was really a great label to be on. They gave us creative control, a feeling of legitimacy, and amplified our music in ways we never would have been able to. When we started having babies, it was also the time that labels were struggling and fizzling out, so not a good time for us to be slowing down the machine. It was a mutual parting of ways and I have only good things to say about the experience.

You form Leaf Rapids with Devin and release a debut album as a duo in 2015, LUCKY STARS. It includes a cover of Bowie’s iconic song The Man Who Sold The World. As a song that questions the price of fame, I wondered why you included this choice - was it a reflection on your personal experiences within the music business at that stage?

Oh, I didn’t know that was what that song was about! And even more embarrassingly I initially thought it was a Nirvana song until Devin set me straight. I just have always loved the brilliant lyrics and composition of it, and it feels more relevant than ever during these cut throat times. I love how it’s surreal but you get a sense of the greed and consequential loss without really knowing what it’s about.

CITIZEN ALIEN followed in 2019 and dealt with topics such as the shame of Canada’s Second World War-era Japanese internment camps and the shocking fallout that saw the confiscation of homes and land from innocent people. Where did the ideas for the songs on the album come from?

Most of the songs on this album stem from the stories passed down from Devin’s and my  Canadian settler ancestors. Smallpox quarantines, Japanese Internment, sexual harassment by frisky lumberjacks. It’s incredible the challenges they had to endure to survive in this harsh country. I wanted to try to write from their perspectives and document some of the stories in a way that would highlight their love and resilience.

Your maiden name is McTighe which suggests some family roots in Irish/Scottish heritage. Is this the case as I thought that your roots reach back to Japanese immigrant ancestors?

My mom is Japanese and my dad is an Irish/Scottish/British/German/French blend. I’ve only been to Ireland once a long time ago, and I kept seeing versions of my dad everywhere, it was freaky, so there must be a very strong Irish contingent. Apparently the McTighe name originated in Galway, and means poet which is kind of neat. Though from the family stories, I come from a line of crooks and cheats.

I believe that your great grandmother was a mail-order bride who travelled to Canada?

Yes, she was a picture bride who didn’t meet her husband until she emigrated to Canada. She travelled from Kyoto to Victoria, BC as a young woman and began working in a barbershop with her new husband. She was only about 4 feet tall, but incredibly feisty and didn’t take crap from anyone. She really did stab a lumberjack in the leg after being groped while cutting his hair.

I wanted to ask about your current extra-curricular activities. I believe that Devin is a chemist and still works in this field. You are involved in ongoing creative projects, in addition to raising a family, and can I also presume that the other band members have day jobs?

That is a very accurate assumption, as it is a tough slog to make a career of music these days. Devin still teaches chemistry for the U of W, Chris takes on sub-contracting work, Joanna is in high demand for her drum skills so she supports herself with her craft, and I sing backup vocals and compose music for film in my home studio, take part in music workshops and mentoring, and last year I was asked to coordinate an after-school free music program for at-risk youth, which was quite the experience!

Getting paid is increasingly difficult in the music industry. Download platforms and streaming services continue to reduce the revenue flow to original artists. Spotify does help you reach audiences that were never accessible in the past, but the poor rate they pay artists is a basic source of frustration. Where do you stand on this whole debate?

Yeah. Wow. Hmm. That’s kind of a massive question, haha! I can talk myself into seeing how having access to such a huge audience is an incredible opportunity, but you can’t ignore that a few fat cats are reaping the benefits from the blood, sweat and tears of the dreamers, who are not being fairly rewarded. This used to be shocking and now seems par for the course. We’re all chasing an illusion. It seems to me, and please correct me if I’m wrong, but you have to invest in ads leading to your Spotify profile to keep your numbers up, which ends up costing more than what an artist actually makes on the platform. Hopefully the larger profile translates into touring revenue, but that is also an expensive venture. I also wonder what toll it takes on a person to keep feeding the social media monster’s endless hunger for fresh content. It’s really hard to get over yourself and sell yourself at the same time. We actually took our last album off of Spotify in solidarity with Neil Young a few years ago, after hearing about the large sums of money they pay to conspiracy theorist podcasters like Joe Rogan. Then all the festivals we played at who made playlists of the artists weren’t able to include us, and we realized we were just shooting ourselves in the foot. After all this, I still did a happy dance when I saw that Velvet Paintings was almost at 35,000 streams, which is a record for us. I just did the math and that translates to about 140 Canadian loonies.

You are now a four-piece with the addition of both Joanna Miller and Chris Dunn. Does this change the band dynamic from a benevolent dictatorship to more of a democracy?

I love the phrase benevolent dictatorship. Honestly, I think we are all a bit older and have given up on any aspirations to ‘make it’ in the music industry. So, it feels like 4 good friends that have found a nice groove and are genuinely happy to be making music together. I do most of the business stuff, so I guess I am the benevolent dictator! If we make business cards, I’m going to use that, thanks.

But aside from business, I am so in love with my band right now. Joanna Miller is not only a brilliant drummer, singer, songwriter and whistler, but a hilarious and stellar human to boot. The song Night Shift on our new album is the first song she has written, recorded and released. We are massively proud of her, and also gloating a bit selfishly that it is on our record, it’s so good.

Chris Dunn is the real deal. When he plays guitar, you get that he has been in touring bands forever, has experienced the extreme ups and downs that go along with that lifestyle, and has landed in the arms of his true love. My husband Devin is our in-the-pocket and ever-so-sturdy base on the bass, and we lean on him hard because we know he can handle it and look handsome at the same time. We all have a really good chemistry together.

Many bands state that they gain more revenue from touring these days but I’m sure that travelling as four musicians is not cheap, with all the overheads of accommodation, flights, meals etc. How do you make it all pay?

We’ve always considered music as a kind of subsidized travel. Being welcomed into incredibly generous music communities across the world is the kind of payment that means the most to us, though it also means we’re in debt, so I am the wrong person to ask about how to make it pay. I fear that touring musicians may become a thing of the past. We are lucky, because Winnipeg has some of the best arts funding in the country, and a relatively low cost of living, so it’s possible for a musician to own a house and to eek out a living here. Without the album, marketing and tour funding, though? I don’t think we could swing it. Of course, we still dream of breaking even and, dare we say it ... maybe even squirrelling away a few dollars someday.

The songs on the new album concern themselves with many issues of our times but there appears to be an overriding sense of empathy that threads through the songs, especially Starling To A Starling and Paramjit’s Sonnet. Is this the predominant theme - the need for love as our guiding force, even if it can be hard to find in these divided times?

Oh, absolutely. Many people have commented throughout my career on how surprisingly dark my songs are, and yes, I definitely explore that, but hello, the world is dark! For the most part I’ve always tried to highlight the bits of beauty and strength within the bleakness, though, and not just wallow in the mud. I think you’re right though, this last album does tend to follow the threads of love and connection more than ever, and I’m more cognizant of how and what I want to sing for people. I have a song from our last album about a love letter being written from a smallpox quarantine, and then found that I have trouble singing it live, because it’s a total Debbie Downer. Maybe when the world evolves into rainbows and lollipops, I’ll bring that out to remind us of the tough times.

Your vocal has such a warm tone and is a signature sound that highlights the unique sound of Leaf Rapids. Did you take voice lessons as a younger artist and have you changed you approach to singing over the years?

Thank you, one thing I love about the internet is that I don’t have to call up clubs pitching for gigs anymore. Cold calling already made me nervous, but my voice also sounded like a 12-year-old, “Hi, I have this band …” It didn’t go well. Like most musicians I don’t listen to my own music, but I did hear a song on the local campus radio the other day, from an earlier album of ours, and I really noticed how differently I sing now. I will say I like my aging pipes better. I didn’t take voice lessons, but apparently, I never shut up and was always singing as a child. I still find myself experimenting with where in my throat certain tones can be found and I think I’m still trying to figure it out, maybe because our bodies are always changing.

You have been based in Winnipeg for many years now. What is the local community support like for your music?

I was just at the Winnipeg Folk Festival this weekend and was appreciating once again how lucky I am to be a part of this community. It’s a really tight knit and collaborative scene from an artist perspective, and there are many music supporters who you will see at every show, and not just your show, but everyone else’s! It is truly special and I can’t imagine being anywhere else, despite the freezing winters and plethora of mosquitos in the summer.

Are there any plans to bring your music to Europe in the near future?

Funny you should mention that, as the next item on my agenda is applying for a couple of showcases in Ireland and the UK that take place in January, and laying some groundwork for a spring tour in the UK, Germany and Netherlands. It would be so lovely to grow a touring route there and be able to keep coming back.

Any final thoughts that you would like to leave our readers with?

Just a hearty thank you for this interview! I love that your magazine exists when many are falling by the wayside, and I can tell that it comes from a genuine love of music and wanting to connect music to listeners. We appreciate the support, and hope to meet you in January!

Interview by Paul McGee

Emlyn Holden Interview

The Southern Fold is a Kilkenny-based band with its feet firmly placed in the Gothic Country genre. Fronted by founder member Emlyn Holden, their current lineup alongside Emlyn is Madeleine Leclézio (vocals), Stephen Doohan (guitar), Brian McGrath (bass), Peter Flynn (keys) and Gregor Beresford (drums). Taking inspiration from classic country male/female harmonies, the band has included a female vocalist from day one working in tandem with Holden, the latest being the Mauritius-born Leclézio. Holden’s songwriting recalls the lamenting and lonesome treatment of one of his inspirations, Hank Williams, but with an even darker undercurrent. Their debut full album, BIBLE FEAR, was released in 2020 and firmly established them as the standout band in Ireland in the Americana / Alt-Country classification. The overriding impression it made with us at Lonesome Highway was summed up simply as ‘a quality product that compares more than favourably alongside the darker side of roots music being recorded by well-established acts in The States.’ The band is due to release their next album later this year. On the evidence of the material from the album showcased at their sell-out gig at the Kilkenny Roots Festival in May, it promises to equal, if not surpass, its predecessor. What was initially intended to be a stripped-down acoustic album conceived during Covid has blossomed into a fuller recording, as Holden explained when we spoke recently with him.

Was country your 'go-to' music from a young age?

My taste has always been very eclectic, but I've loved country music since my early teens. I had a friend who was my dad's age and was a huge Hank Williams fan, and he got me into that. In my early teens, I loved Elvis; Sun Records and Elvis were major influences. From that, I got into punk rock, but I always found a connection between Hank Williams and punk, as well as the rawness and honesty of the songs. The spirit is in both: heart-on-the-sleeve writing, writing what you know and staying honest. I can't understand the formula in some modern music writing and how it can often take four or five people in a room to write one line in a song.

When did the idea for The Southern Fold emerge?

It started about ten years ago as a solo project.  I had a four-piece acoustic band a few years before called Oleo Strut Collective. We only had one of two gigs, and we didn't get very far. In late 2013, I started to write some songs, and I wanted to put a name on them, so I came up with The Southern Fold. At the time, I put four or five songs up on ReverbNation, but I wanted to go for something with a male/female harmony, like that Gram and Emmylou kind of thing. I was listening to a lot of Louvin Brothers at the time and felt that I had a few songs that would lend themselves to that sort of sound. In 2014, I got asked to do an open mic night at Cleere's in Kilkenny as part of a Kurt Cobain tribute night. I knew a girl in Kilkenny who was a good singer and asked her if she'd like to join me, and we started working on some of my songs. It all started there, and we've been through a few lineup changes since then; I've been the only constant presence in the band ever since.

Laura Hand was your co-singer for a number of years.

Laura was the third singer I worked with, having gone through others who hadn't worked out. I had reached the point that I thought I wouldn't get anyone who would work out, so as one last effort, I put an ad up on Facebook, and Laura answered. It just went on from there. She is a fantastic singer. We worked together for years.

Your current lineup includes Madeleine Leclézio as backing vocalist?

Yes, Madeleine studying at BIMM Music Institute in Dublin. Stephen Doohan, who plays guitar with us and is from the band Blackbird and Crow, is in BIMM with her, and that's how I got in touch with her. I was looking for a replacement for Laura, and Stephen recommended her. I sent her a few songs from my phone, and she came down to Kilkenny; we sang a few songs, and I could tell straight away that she was a fantastic vocalist; she's from Mauritius. English is not even her first language; she speaks French.

I understand that you are working on a new album. How advanced is the recording?

The songs are written and arranged, and some of them are fully recorded. We released the single, Nothing To Fear, a couple of months ago and have another single, Before The Fall, ready for release. A few more of the songs need a little more work but should be ready to go by August, and the album should be ready to be released in late autumn this year.

How long have you been working on the songs?

I had started working on some of the songs during COVID-19, having bought some home recording equipment. I had been thinking at that time that I'd make an album, even if it's just me and a cello, and put it up on Bandcamp. I thought everybody had forgotten about the band The Southern Fold at that stage. Still, our bass player, Brian Mc Grath, listened to the songs and liked them. He put me in touch with Gregor (Beresford) about a year ago and asked him if he'd been interested in putting some drums down on some of the songs I had already recorded. He went out to a local studio in Kilkenny for a day with Brian, and they put bass and drums on the songs I had already recorded. From there, I put some cello on the songs, Stephen did his guitar pieces remotely, and Madeleine did some of her vocals here with me and some remotely. It would be lovely if we could all go into a room and work together for a few days and get them all mixed, but unfortunately, it doesn't work like that.

Have the recordings been mastered yet?

A guy named Richard Dowling in Limerick is at the top of his game, and I've been sending the songs to him to master. Leo Pearson mixed the songs for me in his studio in Thomastown, Kilkenny.

Is Gothic Americana a lazy description of your music by us?

I love it when people call it that because I would never have come up with that description. I'm happy to go with that because it appeals to my dark side. It's almost embarrassing for me when I'm on stage with terribly dark lyrics; people must think that I'm manic-depressive. I couldn't put a term on our music, but it's definitely country-influenced, and everything I listen to is wrapped up somewhere in our music.

Are you an avid music listener, and if so, what would your daily music diet consist of?

Yes, I listen to music every day. When I was younger, I was literally listening to music every minute of the day. I don't have the time to do that now, but I still listen to stuff from all over the shop daily. I was listening to Creedence Clearwater and The Clash earlier. I love The Replacements and William Elliott Whitmore.

Do you have an overall game plan for The Southern Fold going forward?

My ambition since I was twelve years old was to do something great in music. At this point, I only want to make a few plans, as I learned along the way that they sometimes work out differently than you would like them to. Right now, it's all about getting the album finished, getting it out, and getting a few people to listen to it. Hopefully, it will resonate with some people out there and get some gigs. I want to get to tour Europe, so whatever opportunity arises, I'll grab it. Opportunities in the music industry don't come along every day, so if the opportunity does come along to tour in Europe, I won't let anything get in the way of that; I'll find another job when I come back (laughs).  

Interview by Declan Culliton

Kayla Ray Interview

YESTERDAY & ME, released independently by Waco, Texas-born artist Kayla Ray, was an ‘Album of the Year’ at Lonesome Highway in 2018. Showcasing Kayla’s crystalline vocals alongside profoundly personal songwriting and with nods to previous musical eras, it was a noble effort to keep traditional country music alive and kicking. She follows a similar template on her recently released record, THE WORLD’S WEIGHT, released on the Real AF Record label.  With the growing interest in traditional country music and the backing of a record label, this album should raise her profile significantly and introduce her to a much larger audience. She parked her touring van en route to Ohio to chat with us about her move to Nashville, the new album and other significant events in her life since we last spoke six years ago.

You are a resident in Nashville now when you're not touring. How does living in Nashville compare to your hometown Waco, Texas? 

I moved there in early September. I got an opportunity to release my new record and get a publishing deal, so I moved. It's been very different. I left Waco, Texas, about five years ago and have been travelling and moving around since then. Waco has grown a lot in the last five years, but the Waco I did know and the Nashville I'm getting to know are much different. Nashville is far and away the biggest city that I've lived in, but I like it. There's always music happening and no shortage of art, but traffic and lots of people at the grocery store take getting used to. I'm living on the Upper East Side, close to the American Legion, which is supposed to be the hip side of town; it's where I could afford. 

Congratulations on the publishing deal and signing with Real AF Records for your new album.

I'm really thrilled about that. My friend Bryan Martin, whom I've known for a long time and long before he came to Nashville, asked me to work on a movie project, which was really a fun way to write because I got to write from somebody else's perspective, which I'd never thought about trying before. We were working on that, and then there was a writer's strike, and the movie business shut down for a while, and that got shelved. But during that time, Bryan mentioned a few times that he was starting a record label. I was working on an album independently, which was crowdfunded two years ago. So, it's been a long in the works. The record was just done when Bryan started pushing, and since the record was really what I wanted to record, so I told him I'd come on board if he would take it as it was, and he did. I didn't hear from him for about nine hours, which was the longest nine hours of my life, but he took it. It was recorded in Oklahoma City, mixed in Austin and mastered in Nashville; I've never had a project to have been in so many different pockets. Real AF Records is under Average Joe's Entertainment, which is interesting because they pioneer an entirely different type of country music to what I do. But it's cool because they have this attitude of being the underdog and doing things a little differently. So, my publishing deal is just with Average Joe's Entertainment, and my record deal is with Bryan at Real AF Records.

So you had THE WORLD'S WEIGHT recorded before signing to the label?

Yes. As far as the recording went, we had gone into the studio thinking that the album would be independent; that was neat. I got to do exactly what I wanted. My good friend Giovanni Carnuccio produced the album; we had the musicians we wanted and a great room to record in. Because it was crowdfunded, we had complete control and the freedom to do what we wanted. As an independent artist, there is only so much one person can do, so I feel lucky to have the label behind me after the record was finished. Turning over song control has been hard, but they have been good; I can't complain. But of course, any help is a gift. It's hard to be everywhere as an independent artist. It's all part of a learning curve for me and them. The label has a few Americana artists, and that's closer to where I find my home with them than some of the pop/country acts they have.

Are you comfortable under the Americana umbrella? For me, the album is pure country.

I feel very much that it's country music. I don't want to be branded with what many people associate with country music today, but it does often make my music hard to market and find my niche, so I'm okay with Americana if that's what people want. For me, Americana is simply American music.

The album's production is striking. Can Giovanni Carnuccio take complete credit for it, or did you have an overriding input?

It's a joint thing, but he worked so hard on the record, so the majority is Giovanni. We spent months and months sending tracks back and forth to see what we both liked so that when we went in to record, we would have a unified idea of what the mix should sound like. Had he not had the patience to hear me out, it could have been totally different. His ear is impeccable, and he worked the files down to the most minute layers and built the arrangements from there.

Do the songs follow a similarly personal template to those on YESTERDAY & ME?

Yes, they are personal. That movie I mentioned that I worked on was the only time I wrote outside myself. Everything else to this point has been personal, very much so. Because it took such time to release, I got the pick from a big group of songs that spanned quite a few years, but yes, they all are pretty personal. I did include Diesel No.9, a kind of silly crooner swing song I wanted to do, but outside of that, they are all pretty personal.

Should we be worried about your well-being with titles like To Drink Alone, The Least You Could Do and the title track The World's Weight?

It's country music, and that's how it's supposed to be (laughs). But no, you don't have to worry.

Is the pendulum swinging back to traditional country music in recent years?

Yes, I do feel an overwhelming shift in that direction, and I'm happy to be a small part of that. I don't know the roots of that; we all speculate a lot about that. A lot of it is from emerging from the pandemic and listening to music that is real and relatable again. Maybe it is because younger people are getting to an age when they are interested in their grandparent's kind of music. Whatever the reason, I see it happening, which is exciting.

Have you been performing in Nashville since moving there?

I actually enjoy being on the road, and I don't want to be overly accessible in a market that is already so saturated. I enjoy living in Nashville and going to shows there, but so far, I've had no desire to go down to Broadway and play. I'm not above that, but I've worked hard to reach this point and don't necessarily want to go backwards. Right now, I'm focused on touring, particularly the east side of the country, branching out and playing a lot of rooms out there.

You're busy touring solo at present. Will you get the opportunity to bring a band on the road with you, or is that a logistical challenge? 

I'd love to tour with a band; that's my biggest hangup right now. I've been touring solo for six years now. The new album is such a cool 'band record,' and I'm friends with all the musicians, so it's really tempting to play with them. I may before the end of the tour, but for now, it's just me.

When you write, deciding how the material would work in a live setting, is that a factor?

No, that may be really bad business and might not be right, but I don't put much thought into that when I sit down to write. When the songs come to me, I try to latch on to them as they are. Maybe they won't work solo and I'll hold them for a band show later, or maybe I'll pitch some of them to somebody else or work out some funky sparse versions that I can play solo.

You are studying for a Master's Degree at the University of Oklahoma.

I am; it's nuts, and it feels like forever. I am getting right down to the end of it and should have it finished next year if I stay on track. I'm taking the clinical courses next semester, and it's about time to start my internship now. I've always told myself that I would not neglect music to study, so I've been chipping away at it for six years now while I've been on the road, and it's been fun; it gives me something to keep my brain occupied.

You also developed a music therapy course for inmates in Waco, Texas? 

I did that for about two years, most predominately with Waco-based inmates. I previously had a music management degree and came up to Nashville to visit my friend Erin Enderlin. She and I went to a symposium at Vanderbilt, where Rodney Crowell was playing for free. We went along primarily to see Rodney play, but the symposium was about music therapy, which changed my life. I loved all the studies that have been conducted on music therapy, and the progress that has been made since then is remarkable. I know what a huge healing music is for me, so I wanted to learn as much about music therapy as I could. So, I went back to school to study, and it led to this six-week curriculum where everyone brings in songs to inmates and discusses the songs with them. What I took for granted was my freedom to listen to music. Those inmates in there only get to listen to whatever music might be on the TV when they're allowed to watch the news. So, it ended up being a really emotional working with the inmates. Still, I stopped doing it when I could not be as accountable as I wanted to be and thought it would be more damaging where you might coax someone into a vulnerable spot and then leave. I did enjoy it, and the integration system at home in Waco still uses my curriculum, so somebody is still doing it.

Your social media fan club, Room 402—The Home of Kayla Ray's Family & Friends, is a great place for people to get to know you and your music and see you perform.

That's the place I get to be the weirdest. Willie Nelson said, ' If I can't get them all at once, I'll get them one at a time.' That's what Room 402 is, but the beauty of it is that many of the people there are also forming friendships, which is a joy that I didn't think about or anticipate. That group is a great place of solace for me, besides being a lot of fun. The Covid live streams led to the forming of this core group of oddballs that we are all in there.

Interview by Declan Culliton

Kaitlin Butts Interview

The latest album from Kaitlin Butts, ROADRUNNER, was inspired by the romantic Rogers and Hammerstein musical Oklahoma and may seem an unusual choice of inspiration for a country album. But, as Oklahoma-born Kaitlin explained to us when we spoke recently, it reflects her love of musicals from a young age. Also, it touches on themes of love lost and sought, murder and humour, all concepts that have been featured in her songwriting to date. A departure from her previous recordings, channelling country music down an altogether different path with this album works spectacularly well and should further broaden Kaitlin’s appeal and rising star.

Are you settled in Nashville now?

Yes, I live in Nashville, Tennessee. I lived here in 2019, moved home during COVID-19 to my mom's house in Ardmore, Oklahoma, a small town, and we moved back to Nashville in 2021.

Singing and acting have been in your blood from a very early age.

I started singing when I was four or five years old and did musical theatre growing up. I started singing music I loved at a young age, which wasn't always country music; I also loved pop music. As I grew older, the artists that were powerful to me and were starting to get a lot of momentum were The Chicks, The Wreckers and Miranda Lambert, women who sang their own songs, played instruments and had great stage presence. I used to sing their tracks onto my little cassette tapes and make CD's. My neighbour was a guitar teacher, and he would come over to my house and teach me songs on the guitar that I wanted to learn. After that, I fell in love with country music, its history and origins, and it just continued from there.

Your new record, ROADRUNNER, follows from your 2022 album WHAT ELSE CAN SHE DO. There are a lot of tracks on it, seventeen in total.

A lot more than the last one WHAT ELSE CAN SHE DO, for sure. I wanted to deliver a project I cared passionately about, not leave gaps, and tackle the concept well.

It's not quite as dark as WHAT ELSE CAN SHE DO, but it has its dark moments alongside humour.

Yes, there are a couple of dark ones on it; it wouldn't be a Kaitlin Butts album if there weren't some dark humour and moments on it.

That last album was highly personal. Does your writing reflect your mood and state of mind at the time of writing?

Absolutely. My last album was about what I was going through over the course of four or five years. I thought should I put something on that album that might brighten it up but that was not how I felt during that time. That album was about women struggling and trying to find their way.

The theme in ROADRUNNER is based on the musical Oklahoma, which is an interesting concept. What motivated that?

When we moved back to my mom's house in Ardmore, Oklahoma, in 2020, my husband made the mistake of saying that he had never watched musicals growing up. I was flabbergasted because musicals are such a core principle of who I am. So, we started watching Chicago, which is one of my favourites, and my husband loved it. He's a musician, too, so there was no way that he would not respect the quality of the songwriting, dancing and production. We then watched Oklahoma with its cowboy theme going on, and I realised that I had more than one song that matched the theme and visuals of the movie. I just picked it up from there, started writing more songs inspired by the movie, and ended up with ROADRUNNER. If that last album was very dark, this one is a 'daytime' album, much brighter, like the sun coming out in the song Oh What A Beautiful Morning from the musical's overture.

You open the album with that overture Oh What A Beautiful Morning renaming it My New Life Starts Today. Is that a statement of where you are at presently.

Yes, I'm glad you got that, and I hope that people understand that symbolism. When you're going through some of the things when I wrote my last record, the message is, 'Don't worry, there is light at the end of the tunnel, and good times are on the way.' I'm a perfect example of that.

The track listing is very clever, mixing the darker songs with more humorous songs and some ballads.

The listing was very important to me. I wanted to have 'up and down' momentum on the album and humour but also to be very country and dramatic.  I wanted it to showcase everything encapsulating me and what you get at my live shows. My last album was very much rock and roll, and that's not everything that I am. If you listen to this album and come and see me live, it's a great representation of what you will see.

The track You Ain't Gonna Die has shades of Loretta Lynn to it.

Yes, I love that song so much. Every time we play it live, it is one that everybody can relate to, someone to whom they want to say goodbye.

Vince Gill guests on the ballad Come Rest Your Head (On My Pillow). How did that connection come about?

I performed at The Opry, and he was playing the same night. Whenever you play at The Opry, and there are other celebrities on that night, you might walk by them in the hallway or even get to meet them. Vince Gill was sitting in the church pews during my performance, looking up at the stage stream, humming along, and playing at the back. I didn't know this until I came off stage and into my green room, and my team told me this. After he finished his performance, he walked up to me and introduced himself. I could have fallen on the floor; he's such a legend and iconic person. At the end of our conversation, he just said, 'I'm not that hard to get a hold of. If you ever need anything, just holler.' While working on the Oklahoma theme for this album, I thought of artists from Oklahoma who might sing on it. My manager suggested that we ask Vince Gill to sing on it and 'let's call him.' He didn't even need to hear the song; he immediately came on board 

Had you written that song with Vince Gill in mind?

No, I had not. I wrote that song because this woman at a festival had a tank top that read 'Cowboy Pillows' across her chest. I thought that was so funny, and in movies how, it's normally demonstrated that women are resting their heads on men's chests and being the comforting person, whereas in my experience, it's the other way around. It got me thinking about how women are a comforting place to land, and that's where the song came from. Vince is from Oklahoma, and I'm so happy that he sings on that song.

The album has a couple of interesting covers, one of which is Bang Bang, previously recorded by Nanci Sinatra and Cher.

That is one of my favourite songs; I used to walk on to that song in my shows. It's one of those songs I wish I had written; it's so dramatic. In Oklahoma, Jud Fry personally victimises himself; he has been rejected, and he's mad and seeks to murder. I feel like he's saying, 'My baby shot me down; she rejected me.' That's how I envisioned the song Bang Bang's connection to that, and I really wanted to figure out how to work the song into the album.

You also include a more modern country version of Hunt You Down by Kesha.

Yes. I wanted to mirror the Ado Annie and Will Parker's song All Er Nothing from the musical.  It's such a funny song, a tongue-in-cheek murderer; it's like everything that I think my audience knows me for. I also wish I had written that song.  For me personally, I'm not in a place where I'm in an abusive relationship where I want to kill my husband; I'm in a loving relationship. The song's theme, where if a guy does you wrong, he might get killed, works; I thought I like women to have that kind of empowerment.

You have co-written with three women for the album: Angaleena Presley, Natalie Hemby and Courtney Patton. Have you co-written previously?

These were not my first co-writs, but every time I do co-write with someone, it feels like the first time because I get so nervous. Writing with Angaleena was incredible; walking away with the song That'll Never Be Me with her was a dream. I'd been listening to The Pistol Annies since I learned to play guitar. I’ve played her and that band's songs so many times. We clicked right away, and it was so easy to write together. It wasn't as if we were trying to write hit songs; we wanted to write something that was real. I'm particular about who I write with because I like to write independently and take my time; I'd hate to be boxed into four or five-hour windows where I had to write a song. I brought the scene from Oklahoma that I wanted to write with Angeleena and brought it to her.

And the Natalie Hemby and Courtney Patton co-writes. 

I couldn't believe I got the chance to work with Natalie Hemby. Those two songs, Other Girls and You Ain't Gonna Die (To Be Dead To Me), are core moments on the album for me. They were the last two songs we wrote for the album, and they were the two final missing pieces that I knew I had hooks for but had run out of juice. I was stuck and could not think of another creative line; Angeleena had seen the film and got it right off the bat. Courtney Patton is one of my good friends; we wrote that song, Elsa, in 2016. It's a song that I wanted to draw out and tell her story in every way possible. Courtney sat with me while I cried for hours while I was working on the song. Those are the only co-writes, and I feel as proud of them as I am of the ones I wrote alone. 

How does marriage to a fellow singer and musician, Cleto Cordero, work out logistically?

It's all that he and I have ever known. He lived in Lubbock, Texas, and I lived in Ardmore, Oklahoma, four or five hours apart. It was always a long-distance relationship, which we are used to. Cleto understands what I have to do, and I understand what he has to do. The kind of responsibilities, the things that don't seem important to people not in the music industry, like a show poster or a setlist. Those things take time and can take away from everyday things, but we both understand their importance. We may not get to talk to one another until after our shows at one or two in the morning, sometimes when we're all buzzing and wanting to talk. It totally works; we leave the house and go our separate ways, but when we get together with a few weeks off, it's all the sweeter getting into a normal routine for a while. We then feel the need to get going and start on the road again.

Your touring diary is complete for 2024, with your final two shows before Christmas in your home state, Oklahoma. How fulfilling is it to play shows there as your career progresses?

I love going back to Oklahoma; it always feels like going home. I played there last New Year's Eve, and it was amazing to walk on stage and hear the roar. Everyone knows my music and my references; they have been there for me since the beginning, people who had seen me playing around town in little bars. It feels like I'm going to my high school reunion and that I'm throwing the party.

Interview by Declan Culliton

Corb Lund Interview

Canadian singer-songwriter Lund has been on the Lonesome Highway radar for nearly two decades. We first saw him perform with his band, The Hurtin’ Albertans, at the Kilkenny Roots Festival in 2006. His albums regularly feature in our end-of-year favourites. From a ranching background, Lund is a torch carrier for traditional Western music and has received numerous awards in Canada, America, and Europe. We chatted with him recently before his trip to Ireland later this month to play shows in Dublin and Kilkenny.

You are finishing some European dates before you come to Ireland for shows.

Yes. We’re opening for the Canadian band The Dead South, playing in eight countries. They’re much bigger than us, so it’s a great opportunity to get in front of people. I have my band with me on this part of the European tour, but my Irish shows will be solo acoustic story-telling shows.

Do you recall your first shows at Kilkenny Roots Festival back in 2006?

Yes, I do. That was super fun. We had plans to come over again before the plague hit, so I’m glad to be on my way back to Ireland. Ireland and the American West are my two favourite places to visit.

You come from a traditional cowboy family and environment but chose a music career rather than follow that path. 

I’ve had a meandering career path. My family have been cowboy ranchers on my mom and dad’s side for many generations. They first settled in Newton, Nevada, in the 1840s and moved to Western Canada to settle there and raise cattle in the Rocky Mountains around the turn of that century. I grew up on horseback, working with cattle and rodeo. I thought that was normal and what everyone did. I understand now that some people find that exotic and interesting, but to me, it just seemed like daily life. So, when I discovered Black Sabbath and Motorhead, that was exotic to me and opened up a whole new world, it was that kind of music that got me to pick up guitar in the first place.

Your first music venture was in a metal band.

Yes. I was in a metal band for most of my twenties, but I figured out shortly after picking up a Les Paul guitar that I could also play all those old cowboy songs that I grew up with, so I was also learning Western music when I was into heavy bands. I had already made a couple of Western records when the rock band retired, and I just jumped into it with both feet. I think that explains my writing style to an extent. The metal scene I was involved with was very fringe, indie, and underground, and the ethos of that scene was to find your own voice, be unique, and find your own style. My songwriting was forged in that kind of furnace, and when I started writing Western and acoustic songs, I brought a certain element of quirkiness and contrariness to my writing. That was a result of being introduced to an independent and fringe music scene to begin with. So, all these years later, here I am writing strange cowboy songs.

Was the metal scene typical of teenage rebellion?

Maybe in retrospect. At the time, I was not particularly unhappy with my surroundings; I just found metal fascinating and interesting, something fresh and new. That’s pretty common with kids; you hear rock and roll, and it’s a whole new world. Rebellious might be a little strong, but it was a way of finding my own path in the world. My family is very traditional, but to their credit, they were supportive even if it freaked them out a little bit. My dad, in addition to being a rancher, was also a doctor, a Western artist with watercolours, and a cowboy intellectual. If he didn’t totally understand what I was doing, he could partially relate to it on an artistic level. It all worked out, and they were thrilled when I started writing cowboy songs.  

You’ve continued on that career path rather than ranching.

My family still have the cattle ranch. I could barely have a dog; maybe I will someday if I finally retire from music, so I rent out my grass. It’s about five miles north of the Montana border, close to Glacier National Park, a wonderful country.

Your three latest albums have covered a lot of ground. AGRICULTURAL TRAGIC from 2020 was a typical Corb Lund album, SONGS MY FRIENDS WROTE from 2022 was a covers album and EL VIEJO, released earlier this year, was a tribute album to a close friend and mentor.

Although I wrote all the songs, EL VIEJO is a tribute album that is dedicated to and named after a friend of mine, Ian Tyson, who had passed away.  He was a famous folk and cowboy songwriter in Canada. EL VIEJO is Spanish for the old man, which was Ian Tyson’s nickname. The album was something that I had wanted to do for some time; it’s all acoustic, and there is no single electric instrument on the record. We recorded it sitting in a circle in my living room, there’s no computer trickery or layering, just the four of us playing the songs live in a room.

How was that experience compared to the traditional studio recording environment?

The more I do this, the less patience I have for perfect, shiny records. I’ve never been into super overproduced records, and mine are becoming less and less produced as time goes on.  This whole thing that we are doing as artists and musicians is communicating, so I really like it when I hear Johnny Cash’s bass player hit a wrong note, Bob Dylan screw up a melody, or Ramblin’ Jack Elliott start a song, stop and restart it, I love all that, it’s human. I don’t care for perfection anymore; I care more about rawness. That’s what we did with EL VIEJO. We did our best to play well, of course, but it was very organic, and that’s what I’m gravitating toward.

From being a hero of yours and having a huge influence on your career, Ian Tyson became a close friend of yours.

Yes. We did some touring and recording together. He was quite a luminary and presence in my area in Alberta. It was under those terms when I first met him, but as the years went by, it became more of a friendship. The folk music scene in the 60s was huge; it was at Elvis or Beatles level, and his act at the time was Ian and Sylvia. He wrote some of the quintessential folk songs of the songs, Four Strong Winds, Someday Soon and Summer Wages. Neil Young and Johnny Cash have recorded his songs. He was also friends with The Clancy Brothers, who would have been contemporaries at that time. 

The New West label has been very supportive of your music.

They’re great; I have been with them a long time, six records now, I think. I can’t think of a better label to be on for my lifestyle of unusual roots music. They give me a hundred per cent freehand. I think they can tell that I’m incorrigible. I’m fortunate that I’ve never had anyone in the music business try to direct me.

Though you seldom co-write, I’m interested in the people with whom you share writing credits. Hayes Carll and Jaida Dreyer come to mind.

Hayes and I met many years ago at a folk festival in Canada, which I think was in 2005. He’s a really good friend. We wrote one memorable song, Bible On The Dash, and toured together. Not so much lately. I’ve co-written a fair amount of stuff with Jaida Dreyer. She’s a transplanted Canadian; she lives in Nashville now, having grown up in Texas in the equestrian world. We’ve known each other forever and just get in a room and laugh a lot; I’ve written with her more than anyone else. Most of my co-writing, which hasn’t been a lot of it, has been with friends. I haven’t had much success doing official songwriting Nashville style, where you sit down in a room at 10 am with someone you don’t know.

I particularly love your co-write with Jaida, Redneck Rehab, on the new record; it’s hilarious and very clever. I presume it’s not autobiographical?

Jaida claims that it is actually autobiographical. That song was her idea, and I helped to flesh it out.  

Alongside yourself, artists like Colter Wall, Riddy Armen, Sam Munsick, Andy Hedges, Wylie Gustafson, and Chris Guenther are flying the flag for Western/Cowboy music. Are you aware of all those guys, and do you feel part of a movement to keep that genre alive?

Yes, I’m friends with all those guys; it’s a very small group. From what I have read, it was sometime in the 1950s that a radio deejay put country and western together. Before that, there were two distinct styles, country being Appalachian music, which shares some roots with what I do; I like it but don’t personally identify with it as it’s not my background. Western music, on the other hand, is very much in line with my heritage, balladeering cowboy songs. They both have Scots and Irish roots, of course. Not everyone makes that distinction, but there are a few of us still writing music that actually has real agricultural content in it, which is quite rare now. There’s also a guy and friend of mine from Wyoming called Chancey Williams that also writing western music. The biggest example right now is another friend of mine, Cody Johnson, a Texan who writes cowboy stuff and is quite big now.

Colter Wall is appealing to a younger audience, which is encouraging. When he played Dublin a few years back, all the younger punters knew his songs word for word.

Colter has done something magical and amazing. I grew up with a lot of the songs he sings, old traditional cowboy songs that my grandfather sang. I opened for Colter at The Paradiso in Amsterdam before Covid, and all these Dutch hipsters were singing along to these old cowboy songs. Everything old becomes new again. Colter also has his own vocal style, which helps, and he’s a really good writer, too. He also raises cows in Saskatchewan; he’s a good guy.

In a parallel career, you played the leading role in the movie Guitar Lessons. Does that art form appeal to you, and is it one that you may pursue going forward? 

That was an interesting experience. I’ve dabbled in acting but hadn’t done a lead role before. The producer and director is a friend of mine, and he strong-armed me into it. I was pretty freaked out, but it turned out well. It’s one of those things that if I had five lifetimes, I would love to pursue acting, but I have so many musical goals and don’t have time for acting unless it was something that would help my musical career, like Ryan Bingham. I’m also a visual artist, but I don’t have the time to put into that either. I’m actually the only person from my friend group who didn’t get music on Yellowstone, even though I have a lot of background in that world. Montana is right in my backyard, about ten miles from our ranch.  They mustn’t like me (laughs).

What are those music goals in particular?

I’m trying to work on my guitar playing because it sucks. I’d like to make another metal record one of these years, and I’m enjoying the acoustic stuff we did on the new record, and I may pursue that for a while. I’d also like to make another old-style honky tonk record. I have a lot of things on my agenda.

Interview by Declan Culliton

Freddy Trujillo Interview

Freddy Trujillo may be best known as the bass player with The Delines and previously with Richmond Fontaine. That aside, his three-decade career includes playing bass in the studio and on tour with some heavy hitters in the rock and grunge scene. He has also recorded four solo albums, the latest being I NEVER THREW A SHADOW. Written and recorded during the pandemic, the album’s subject matter is real-life experiences as a Chicano growing up in California. The title track from this album recalls an incident when Freddy, the subject of an attempted robbery, was subsequently treated as the transgressor based on the colour of his skin. Sonically, the album fuses Freddy’s love of Chicano and country-flavoured rock and roll. Freddy spoke about the album, his previous bands and employers, and his work with Richmond Fontaine and The Delines when we recently hooked up via Zoom

We know you from your work with Richmond Fontaine and The Delines, but you also have a solo career.

 As a bass player, you always put your eggs in someone else’s basket. I have a good career playing bass with other people, but it’s always up to them when they want to play, so I have also stacked up some solo records. I haven’t always gone out and toured them because I had a family to support, and I also worked for CD Baby, a cool company that allowed me to play bass with bands on tour. In my early career, I played bass with Pat Smear, who is now in Foo Fighters; he was also in Nirvana. I played with Alejandro Escovedo a few times, played in a band called I Love You, and was in a short-lived band called Federale with Mark Ford from The Black Crows and Luther Russell, who produced all my earlier records. In more recent years, I’ve realised that I really need to start taking my own music out there. One that I released, SKETCH OF A MAN, was just before the pandemic, so I lost a lot of steam with that, and the one I had paid a publicist for the album before that, but he was new at that, and nothing really happened with that one. I had another one before, which was called HAWKS AND HIGHWAYS.

Are those albums available to us in Ireland in CD format?

I’ve brought those albums over to Ireland and England on The Delines tours and get to sell them on the merch table. I have a good ally in Garry Kehoe in Rollercoaster Records in Kilkenny, who has carried my records in that record store.

How did the connection with Willy Vlautin come about?

That was through Luther Russell, who produced LOST SON for Richmond Fontaine in 1999. Richmond Fontaine drummer Sean Oldham, pedal steel player Paul Brainard, and I backed up a Texan called Ian Moore, so I got to know those two guys. When Dave Harding, who played bass with Richmond Fontaine, moved to Denmark, I came on Willy’s radar for The Delines, and I’m glad he asked.

Why did you relocate to Portland from California?

It’s funny; my sister accidentally became a pop star. She was singing for this guy called Elliot Wolff and also used to ghost tracks before autotunes for people who weren’t great singers. She would sing along with them, and Elliot would ghost her vocals and fix the pitch. She sang a song with him that became a hit, and I wrote some songs with her, and I probably made the most money I’ve ever made in the music business. But that all eventually went sour. I didn’t care where I went, but I needed to get out of California. I had some friends in Portland and moved here. I didn’t think I would stay, and now it’s thirty-something years later.

Portland appears to have a healthy music scene. Jeffrey Martin, Anna Tivel, Jenny Don’t and The Spurs are artists living there who we have recently featured in Lonesome Highway interviews or on our radio show.

Yes, I know them; I love Anna Tivel. Her music and lyrics are amazing, and Jenny is a good pal. Kelly Halliburton Jenny’s bass players used to play in Dead Moon, played in punk bands and had good connections in Europe. Portland has a good scene, and there are a lot of clubs. From my perspective, I feel that when I first met Willy (Vlautin), it seemed like there was more of a singular type of community, but we were all much younger then. The Delines don’t actually play in Portland, and I don’t know who I fit with or what age group. I am starting to meet some younger Latinos who seem to like my music, so I am trying to build a music community with some younger folks.  

How would you describe your solo music?

I would describe it as rock and roll under a big umbrella. I often term it Mexicana, sort of Los Lobos style. A lot of the younger Mexican artists are very straight ahead and doing Cumbia, a style of music from Peru, or Chicha, which is psychedelic guitar-based, and just doing that. I’ll have a little bit of both, and I can’t stay in one bucket; that’s probably where I shoot myself in the foot sometimes. When Spotify do my algorithms, they have me closest to Americana. 

I understand that the pandemic gave you the time and space to write and record your recently released album, I NEVER THREW A SHADOW AT IT.

It’s always been difficult for me to keep a band, and I have two great guitar players, Ag Donnaloa and Kenny Coleman. Sometimes, guitar players can be like roosters and don’t get along too well. These two guys get along great, and the three of us are music addicts. During the pandemic, I didn’t want to bring people to my house and practice in the basement, so we went to a store and masked up and played. I wanted to keep them engaged, so I started writing some songs and talked to Cory Gray about recording some. We just started piecing it together from there.

The album title and track recall that disturbing incident where you encountered police racism first-hand.

Yes.  The title song, particularly with the Black Lives Matter thing going on, reminded me of how traumatising that incident was for me as a young man, and I felt like purging it that way was a more beautiful way than maybe smashing windows downtown.  

Do you feel that racism in the police force has in any way reduced since that incident? 

It’s hard to tell as I get older; I was probably more of a target when I was younger, as you always are. I had to train my kid to be like Jedi in Star Wars, avoid the police, and not provoke them. That incident I had was just a month before the Rodney King trial when there was a lot of tension there. I was recently listening to a John Doe interview, and his stories were just as bad being a punk rocker back then as being a person of colour.

Your previous album, AMEXICO, also had political overtones but less pronounced than the new album.

A lot of my songs are not entirely political, but music has always been therapy for me, especially when talking about incidents in song.  I got a scholarship and went to college, and I took a lot of Chicano lessons and studies, which empowered me, giving me knowledge that I hadn’t known. I didn’t even know what the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was in 1849, where somehow America acquired Texas, California, Nevada, Mexico, and Utah, that whole territory we call Aztlan, which is the opening track on AMEXICO. In the Chicano movement, that is known as the forgotten land. In America, you see a lot of extremes; the African American movement was really outspoken and simultaneously, we had the Brown Berets and AIM, the American Indian movement. Mexicans tend to be overlooked, keep their heads down and keep working. I’m also a big fan of black civil rights music, Stevie Wonder, Sly and The Family Stone and having soundbites and dialogue in songs; we tried to do that with AMEXICO with spoken dialogue in some of the songs.

Getting back to the new album. The opening track, Corpus Christi, was initially written by Willy Vlautin for The Delines.

Willy always has way more songs than he needs, and it didn’t seem like that one was going to make it onto a Delines album. The reason I liked the phrasing of it was that it reminded me of Doug Sahm. Willy’s demo was a lot slower, and I decided to process it more like a Krautrock mix; that beat is straight up from that band Neu; there’s a big German influence in Texas, and Mexicans play accordion because of that. We recorded it, and I loved it, so it made the cut on the album.

I particularly like the track Remember Me. I get a sense of Carlos Santana in it.

I was trying to capture a Mavericks groove with that one. I love Raul Malo, and I wanted to have some countryish guitar on it, too. 

Have you plans to tour the album?

Yes. I’m actually leaving today to do a California run.  I’m opening for The Delines on the U.K. tour and will get to play some of the album then.

How do you compare playing in The Delines to your previous stint in Richmond Fontaine?

There’s a big difference. For one, I feel I’ve been a part of The Delines from the beginning. With Richmond Fontaine, I was a fan for so long before getting to play with them. It was fun because Dave (Harding) played bass a lot differently from me; he’s way more on top of the beat, and I’m more of a traditional bass player playing in the pocket. With one, I’m a ‘fanboy’; with the other, I’m part of the family. The two tours I did with Richmond Fontaine were really memorable. When we were playing in London at The Electric Ballroom to a thousand people, there was a moment there when I just got choked up. We were playing the song The Janitor and to see an audience hang on every lyric as they do in your country and the U.K. – that won’t happen in America, people talk over the music. It’s a really sad song that Willy was singing, and watching everyone just hanging on to every lyric felt like justice for a really good friend of mine. I just got caught up in Willy’s performance and choked up and had to look at my amp for a few seconds.

Is there a new Delines album on the horizon?

Yes. We have a whole record pretty much done, but because Willy is juggling two careers and promoting his new book, The Horse, he’s always writing new songs, so we might also do an extended version of the record, maybe a deluxe version. The regular version should come out in early 2025.

Interview by Declan Culliton

Nora Brown Interview

Still only eighteen years old, Nora Brown is something of a sensation in the American traditional music world, where she is steeped in the folk music of the Southern Appalachians. She has released three full length albums, CINNAMON TREE (2019), SIDETRACK MY ENGINE (2021) and LONG TIME TO BE GONE (2022), as well as her recent EP (with old time fiddle player Stephanie Coleman), LADY OF THE LAKE. Currently touring England with Stephanie Coleman, you still have a chance to catch one of those gigs, or at Cambridge Folk Festival in July. We caught up with the New Yorker before her sold out gig in the Duncairn, Belfast and gained some insight into what makes her tick.

Nora Brown was taken by her parents to ukulele lessons with veteran teacher Shlomo Pestcoe in Brooklyn, where they live, when she was just six years old. She quickly progressed to other stringed instruments, so that by the time she was ten, she had fixed on the open back banjo, played clawhammer or frailing style, as her instrument of choice.

So how did it work out that she became immersed in the music of Eastern Kentucky and Tennessee just a few short years later?

Nora Brown: I started going to festivals there and competitions like at Clifftop Festival and I was introduced to people like Lee Sexton and George Gibson. They are really welcoming people in that tight music community.

She also got to know the late John Cohen (musician, musicologist and collector of folk music) and the legendary folk singer Alice Gerrard (now 89), who produced Nora’s first album when she was just 13 years old.

NB: Alice is a super cool lady who is still really energetic, like certain people in that world who never lose their excitement about the music, learning about it and documenting it. It was nice to have her guidance at that point, when I wasn’t sure about my own opinions.

Nora also credits the Jalopy Theatre & School of Music in Brooklyn as being an influence and being important in promoting old time music in NYC. They have also issued all of her albums on their Jalopy Records label.

Nora’s voice is striking in its depth and her ability to convey emotion. Is her vocal technique purely down to luck or has she had singing lessons?

NB: I attended a NY public high school which specialises in music and I majored in vocals, so I had regular singing lessons there.

How do you make these songs your own and make them sound like you have lived them?

NB: It’s about being a ‘story teller’, I guess, taking something you learned and singing it to someone else. They hear it and they know it’s not about you, but it’s about people, and you get to help those people’s stories live on by talking about them.

I wondered how does she choose which songs to cover, what draws her to particular songs?

NB: Usually melodies are what draw me in, less often the words. There are definitely songs that I wouldn’t do, I suppose, if I feel that they are too specific to a certain identity, like songs from the perspective of an enslaved person, or a miner, for example.

Dirk Powell recently declared (in a song) that he won’t sing the likes of Pretty Polly and other femicidal murder ballads any more. What does Nora feel about this stance and what is her own position on these traditional but misogynous folk songs, which seem to glory in the killing of girls and women?

Stephanie Coleman: (who sat in for the interview) I don’t feel the need to stop playing those sort of tunes, although there are certain fiddle tunes that I just don’t play anymore if they have really unacceptable titles. I have more problems with the current culture of the music, with the lack of women playing festivals, some of them have 95% men on the bill.

NB: I agree with you on that and we don’t want to make anyone feel uncomfortable, but I guess it feels more potent or relevant to invest our energy in creating more female participation.

SC: It’s also more problematic for (someone like) Dirk to sing Pretty Polly than for two women to perform it - we are reclaiming the story and thinking about her memory.

This is your first tour of Ireland. Do you have any Irish connections?

NB: Yes, my maternal great-grandparents came from Donegal! They were from Glencolmcille - mainly Boyles and McGills. My family have joined me on this tour and we plan to visit our relatives there this week. 

And have you listened to any Irish music?

NB: Stephanie has introduced me to the music of Andy Irvine & Paul Brady and I listen to lots of Irish music now. We actually spotted Andy Irvine at Baltimore Fiddle Fair (which the duo played the previous week).

Any plans to study music more formally? What are you studying in Yale, where you have already completed your first year?

NB: I’ve been doing a bunch of introductory courses - I haven’t decided yet what I’m going to focus on, but I’m not really interested in going down the Berklee route of formal study of music theory etc, right now anyway.

You have already collaborated with Jerron ‘Blindboy’ Paxton (USA), Kris Drever (Scotland) and Eli West (USA). Are there any plans for future collaborations? 

NB: I play out with two NY based Irish musicians regularly - Eamonn O’Leary (The Murphy Beds) and Jackson Lynch - when I’m at home. Otherwise, Stephanie and I plan to record a duo album next, although we’re just in the early stages of planning that. 

We’ll certainly be keeping a close eye on what this talented young woman does next. 

Interview and photo by Eilís Boland