Neil Morton
FEATURED SONG OF THE WEEK
Transistor Radio: Heather Little
East Texas-born Heather Little has been described as a songwriter’s songwriter. Having heard her new album By Now, we don’t think anyone could have interpreted her work better. Our Song Of The Week at herecomesthesong.com is her ode to the bittersweet long ago, Transistor Radio.
Little, whose last album apart from a live set two years ago was her debut offering in 2013, Wings Like These, has written for Miranda Lambert, Sunny Sweeney, Kacey Musgraves and Travis Meadows. But this country folk collection suggests affairs of the heart and weighty, life-changing moments hold more power and poignancy when her impassioned, vulnerable voice is articulating them.
Transistor Radio, hitched to a memorable melody, dreamy pedal steel on the ‘Oohoo’ chorus lines and inventive brushed drumming, juxtaposes painful episodes of the past with her mistrust of our reliance on social media. There is a hankering for simpler times, the protagonist having learned of the death of her estranged father from a message on her phone. Here is a storyteller in the mould of Gretchen Peters, Lori McKenna and Kim Richey…
Seventeen ain’t what it was when my grandad was a boy
And he lied about his age so they’d let him fight the war
Then my brother took his turn
Lord, did our family foot the bill
They just thanked him for his service
And pumped him full of pills
I’m an analogue trespasser through these digital ages
I like needles on my gauges
As Little says, this album was 46 years in the making: a life so thoroughly lived in has produced an outstanding set of sharply observed, authentic songs. ‘I’m looking forward to beginning the next record already,’ she told Americana Highways. ‘I’ve written a few songs for that.’
On first listening, I was reminded of Patty Griffin before enjoying the double delight of both women combining on Hands Like Mine and This Life Without You. The first ballad talks of marrying too soon and too innocent. The lyric is stunning: ‘I make diamonds turn to coal/ There’s not one dream I haven’t crushed/ I break everything I touch/ It’s not your fault/ I’m always the wrecking ball… It should have been a sign/ They don’t make rings for hands like mine.’ The second is equally moving, meditating on mental illness and a different kind of loss: ‘They come over, they call/ They send flowers, then they stop/ And it’s just me and too much room in our bed.’
Many of the tracks feature a guest harmoniser: Rusty Vansickle, Leslie Satcher, Ronnie Bowman, Crystal Bowersox, Van Plating. Vansickle obliges on opener Five Deer County which doesn’t hold back about a selfish, deer-hunting partner: ‘I ain’t no ball and chain/ I could bring him back/ But I’d rather give him back his name/ And let him have all he’s ever dreamed.’
Better By Now, with Bowman as singing sidekick (there’s a newer version featuring The Whileaways), tells of someone desperately seeking to escape a toxic relationship: ‘I don’t want your hands/ I don’t want your tools/ Your knife is dirty and your plans are cruel… I burned up the clutch in the Cavalier/ Drove all the way home in second gear/ Liked to have killed myself tryin’ to disappear/ Trying not to be stuck with you out here… I’ve wasted a lot of love being wrong/ I learn too late and I stay too long/ You carved a hole in the soul of me/ And I filled it up with gasoline.’ She may be on her third marriage but one hopes these are fictional stories.
I ought to be better by now
But I got mixed up with you somehow
I ought to be better by now
There’s nine roads in and one way out
My Father’s Roof is darker still, a tale of domestic abuse: ‘The only sound inside’s the jingling of the belt… My father’s roof/ Leaked like a sieve/ You could drown if you didn’t know your place… ’Cause there’s a sniper in the rafters/ And it’s only kill or capture/ And all the bullets are a hundred and forty proof.’ The beautiful, piano-led Landfall, in memory of her grandmother, is perhaps the ballad to trump the heartache elsewhere. ‘It’s brought me rainbows and misery/ Watered the ground underneath my feet/ And it’s about to take my safe place to hide/ I know by the chaos in my chest/ And the peace in the eye/ Our storm is making landfall tonight.’ A song that would surely suit Bonnie Raitt.
The album, produced by Brian Brinkerhoff and multi-instrumentalist Frank Swart and recorded in Capitola, California, closes with a song written with and released by Miranda Lambert in 2008. Here Gunpowder & Lead has a new stanza. Little says: ‘I had parts of the verse to start with, and she came over and came up with the first line of the chorus, and we basically went line for line for the rest of the chorus and the verse.’ A second verse Little scribbled on the back of a Walmart receipt came too late for her co-writer’s hit record. With Little on acoustic guitar and Plating on violin, the reworking seems darker and deeper emotionally.
She says of Brinkerhoff’s contribution: ‘He’s great at being able to visualise what something can become and make the best choices. He knows how to complement what the song is about and not take away meaning from it. He put beautiful things in the spaces he asked me to make. It’s amazing what can happen when you find someone who has real vision.’
The impressive support cast, the cream of California sidemen, comprises Swart on electric guitars, bass, mandolin and piano; Audley Freed, Duke Levine, Kevin Barry, Jared Tyler and John Jackson on electric and acoustic guitars; Russ Pahl on pedal steel; Paul Griffith and Scott Amendola on percussion; John Deaderick on piano and organ; Stefano Intelisano on accordion; Niamh Varian-Barry on viola; Eamon McLoughlin on fiddle and mandolin; Sebastian Steinberg on upright bass; Joe Newberry on banjo; Plating on violin; Mai Bloomfield on cello; Bow Thayer on bojotar; and Kami Lyle on trumpet.
It should not be a decade until studio album No3. Little has the performer’s bit between her teeth; she has just embarked on a short UK tour. Sadly, country radio in the US – with its emphasis on the predictable, the over-familiar and the male-dominated – will probably give her songs a miss. Transistor Radio deserves greater airplay. We should have heard a lot more of Little by now.
Dream Pictures: Andrew Combs
Dallas-born, Nashville-based Andrew Combs has a gift for dreamy melodies and he excels himself on his latest album, Dream Pictures. Our Song Of The Week at herecomesthesong.com is the title track, his tender tenor gliding effortlessly into falsetto on another hypnotic chorus.
Combs says he wrote the songs for his sixth solo studio album during a period of contentment, ‘being at ease with who I am and where I am with my life and career’. No pandemic angst here or perhaps a quiet celebration that the worst is over. When he wasn’t painting he was laying down tracks in his garage at the end of the day with the children safely tucked in bed. It might have been dusk but the music has an after-hours stools-on-tables vibe.
‘That’s the best time for me to do anything creative,’ says the 37-year-old Texan. ‘Six nights a week, I’ll come out to the garage to write or paint, and it’s a time for me to escape into my little world for a while. A chance to take a big breath, in and out.
‘It’s me sitting back at the end of each day and finding something that is inspiring, and embellishing it. I don’t think many of these songs could have come if I was in turmoil. I think that dovetails with the album title, because being at ease with who I am lets my imagination run wild and gives me the ability to dream.’
She walks as if on rain
Dancing in the morning after
She talks as if it’s going to be OK
Inconspicuous thing in such conspicuous ways
Dream pictures
I take anything I can receive
I believe she’s a mountain
And I’m just a pebble in the sea, that’s me
Uncomfortable skin I’m in
’Til we meet again Dream pictures
The mood is intimate and reflective. Delicacy is its strength. Eventide, an ode to his wife, captures the solitude of his creative process: ‘You are my back against the wall/ My hands when I’m falling/ Outside my mind, my heart/ Eventide.’ But the beautiful stripped-back ballads don’t end there: Heavy The Heart, Genuine And Pure and his own favourite Your Eyes And Me are as gently persuasive until we reach the more upbeat and sonically ambitious To Love.
Co-produced with drummer Dom Billett, the album is enriched by pedal steel maestro Spencer Cullum who seems almost to duet with Combs on the higher-register lines. Combs and Billett, great friends and collaborators since touring together in 2017, handle all the other instrumentation: guitars, keyboards, analogue synths and bass. Combs wrote the songs, then Billett ‘would sprinkle all the lovely fairy dust on top’.
‘Dom bought a tape machine and wanted to learn how to use it, so he asked if I had any new songs,’ Combs recalls. ‘That’s how everything began. I’d go over to Dom’s house, where he has a room filled with vintage keyboards and guitar pedals and drums, and we’d add cool weirdness to these songs. I didn’t have a grand thesis behind the album I was writing; I was just happy to be making something I was proud of, with one of my best friends.’
The pair decided on the rawness of a live studio feel, eschewing multi takes on the vocals. They discovered ‘beauty in the blemishes’ of the reel-to-reel recordings. ‘I love art that has just enough naivety to it, because it feels real. We were figuring things out as we went along. We were creating our own world.’ A world diversely influenced by The Beatles, Joni Mitchell, Radiohead and Townes Van Zandt.
A decade after his first appearance at the Newport Folk Festival and 12 years since his debut album, Combs is refining his art, criss-crossing the genres of alt-country, soulful folk and subtle, sophisticated pop. The storyteller who brought us Dirty Rain, Better Way, Anna Please, Dry Eyes, Like A Feather, Heart Of Wonder and Golden is currently on tour in the UK.
He hopes the new album and its inner peace can help us navigate ‘this wicked and wild world; like the golden hour on a late summer day or the calm after a thunderstorm’. Combs continues to paint his dream pictures.
Lifetimes Apart: Ben Glover
Antrim-born Nashville resident Ben Glover has always felt at home collaborating.
Sharing ideas with Gretchen Peters, Kim Richey, Mary Gauthier and Neilson Hubbard has produced some of his finest work. His latest album, And The Sun Breaks Through The Sky, his first since 2018’s celebrated Shoreline, broadens the Americana client list and his collection of formidable tracks.
Our Song Of The Week at herecomesthesong.com is Lifetimes Apart, co-written by fellow Nashville songsmith Kent Agee. The backdrop is East Oklahoma ‘painted in Arkansas grey’ but Glover, the Springsteen aficionado, ventures into Nebraska territory with a tale about small-town dislocation and wavering long-distance love: ‘Shawnee’s no place for a dreamer/ But hitching’s not safe anymore/ She stands by her bedroom window/ And hears time pounding on the front door’).
Many of the tracks were written during the pandemic and that feeling of isolation and desperation is captured by Glover’s weathered, smoky vocal above his strummed acoustic:
Hear the wind blow
Feel the world spin
See the past leaving
Coming right back again
Dance in the light
Hold on through the dark
We’re all in the same place
Lifetimes apart
The introduction of flugelhorn, courtesy of Danny Mitchell, above Juan Solorzan’s keyboard swirl surprises and delights as the brooding, ghostly track clings to hope for the estranged lovers in the finale:
There’s a bend on the Sallisaw river
Where the cornflowers paint the world blue
Like a hole leading to somewhere better
Some day they’ll hold hands and jump through
Glover gives us an insight into the album’s homing instinct: ‘It seems that life is largely about discovering one’s way back home. Home isn’t necessarily a physical location; it’s much greater than that. It embodies our true nature, who we are at our core. This discovery is made through relationships – with ourselves, with others, with the world itself and with that which is beautifully mysterious beyond our understanding. So, if there were a thread connecting these songs, it would be that they are explorations of these connections.
‘The album embodies a fresh creative approach for me within the studio. The recording process began in 2019, and I allowed it to progress naturally over four years until it felt like a family of songs had come together. Moreover, I found that by taking a more patient path, the recording sessions nurtured a deeper dialogue with the songs themselves.’
The anthemic opener, Make My Way Home, is the lone Glover-only composition and acts as a mission statement, the Northern Irish troubadour remaining loyal to the muse of his homeland and the creative inspiration of his adopted city:
I have searched for the meaning
I have searched for the song
I have searched for the place
In which I belong
Till I found it was always right here along
Staring me straight in the soul
The bonus is hearing Glover’s own version of the bewitching song about ageing and mortality he wrote with Gretchen Peters and Matraca Berg, Arguing With Ghosts. Peters recorded it first, on her magnificent 2018 album, Dancing With The Beast. There are so many exquisite lines here: ‘The years go by like days/ Sometimes the days go by like years/ And I don’t know which one I hate the most.’ It all began with Berg’s input: ‘I get lost in my home town.’ Peters and Glover combined on three other memorable tracks on her album: Wichita, the title song and Truckstop Angel.
Kim Richey provides gorgeous harmonies for Glover; it is almost a duet. Richey was co-author of two tracks: One Fine Day and Break For You. Mary Gauthier was his writing partner for The Meadow and the poignant Till I See You Again which features a delicious cameo from pianist Barry Walsh, Peters’ husband. Glover teamed up with Eliot Bronson of The Brilliant Inventions for There’s A River.
The bluesy title track is the only overtly political offering as he addresses his compatriots back home: ‘Good luck to you whatever/ It is you’re fighting for/ On that angry Antrim shore… Let me tell you a story/ ’Bout waving flags of glory/ ’Bout the dangers of telling stories… Have you seen forgiveness/ Like two brothers bleeding/ Then in the middle meeting?/ Do you believe in a history?/ Do your eyes see what they see?’ Written with his Orphan Brigade cohort Neilson Hubbard, who plays drums, the powerful message is given heft by Johnny Duke’s slide guitar.
The album, co-produced by Dylan Alldredge, benefits from the quality of the musicianship: the guitar work of Duke and Will Kimbrough, Colm McLean on pedal steel, Sam Howard and Alldredge himself on bass, drummer Evan Hutchings and Jaimee Harris, Natalie Schlabs and Alldredge’s wife Maddie on backing vocals.
This is a milestone in the singer-songwriter’s career as he prioritises creating music on his own terms rather than satisfying the commercial pressures of a traditional album cycle. ‘To be able to create without an external agenda is very liberating.’ As the man almost says, his songs are staring us straight in the soul.
I’m In Love: Danny & The Champions Of The World
The title suggests a simple love song but the new single from Danny & The Champions Of The World is a gorgeous slice of nostalgia with a sprinkling of mystery. I’m In Love, our Song Of The Week at herecomesthesong.com, will appear on the London-based band’s seventh studio album, You Are Not A Stranger Here, scheduled for release on October 18.
Danny George Wilson, who you may recall from those distant Grand Drive days, seems to be revisiting a familiar room, sifting through memorabilia. There are random references to shared experiences, old heroes, pictures, records and reading matter. The rhyme in the opening couplet is typically whimsical:
A Japanese book about Barbra Streisand
Porcelain look through cat’s eyes and
Liberty Blake, warrior on the wall of mine
Tommy’s Waits, lights on the line
I’m in love
I’m in love
Wilson’s attractive, weather-beaten vocal, backed by accomplished stalwarts Paul Lush on guitar and Henry Senior on pedal steel, Thomas Collison (keyboards), drummer Steve Brookes and bassist Daniel Hawkins, combine wonderfully. There’s a Steely Dan vibe to the track, especially on the jazzy bridge…
Hidden amongst these things
Is a photograph of us
Standing in the backyard
Of my mother’s house
I’m in love
I’m in love
Wilson had been influenced by his reading of Iain Sinclair’s works. ‘He has a book called Living With Buildings, about how they influence the lives and stories of the people within them and vice versa. Not ghosts, but the spirit of things. I’m In Love is an acknowledgement that the little trinkets and souvenirs collected throughout our lives gather importance… the little big things.’
His Bandcamp site talks of ‘a new creative peak, founded on the most reflective and deep-seated lyrics to date’ by the collective’s frontman. The album, produced by Collison, is the follow-up to 2017’s Brilliant Light. ‘You Are Not A Stranger Here is an intricate and beguiling tapestry of highly-crafted sounds by a band at the top of their game and a songwriter on an honest and unpretentious quest for some truth,’ says the blurb. Seven years has been a long wait but Wilson is no slouch as evidenced by two Bennett Wilson Poole albums, a live Danny & The Champs record and an acclaimed solo offering in 2021, Another Place.
The new album has a ‘day in the life’ concept. ‘The way the record is laid out is across a day,’ he says. ‘You hear the weather report in the morning and then you’re immediately into this question of: I know what I’m doing, but I don’t know why I’m doing it anymore. As it goes through the day, you get the commute, the hold message from a call centre and finally end the day back home with Sooner Or Later.’
His gift for engaging melodies is unimpaired but Wilson acknowledges a subtle shift in his creative approach. ‘I think it’s one of those records where you suddenly think, you’re not old but you’re not a kid anymore, and you wake up and go: What’s this all about? The songs don’t profess to know anything. In fact, they’re a lot less self-assured than all of the previous 30 years of songs. I’m looking in the mirror a bit here.’
So his distinctive brand of soul-steeped Americana is becoming more personal. ‘This is new terrain lyrically and musically… It’s a weird mix of looking at yourself and looking at the world. There’s nostalgia in there, and there’s regret. I’d been reading and talking about lots of things that maybe you don’t do so much when you’re young. Not the big questions, but you find yourself going: Sorry, can we just stop and think. What’s the point here? And I guess the title of the album is reflective of that.’
Wilson deals with that new direction in Talking A Good Game, the opening track: ‘It talks about me and songwriting and says: Who am I kidding? I’m just the same as you. It’s asking why are you trying to be universal, why are you looking for something big to say? These aren’t huge epiphanies. They’re little things that you’ve suddenly realised about yourself, about life and the weirdest thing is that by singing about not trying to be universal, these are possibly the most universal things I’ve ever written.’
Every song invites you to play a game of spot the influence: Springsteen, CSN&Y, The Byrds, Willie Nelson, Townes Van Zandt, Dylan, The Band, Grateful Dead, Bowie, The Allman Brothers, Talk Talk, Peter Gabriel, Robert Fripp. Those of us who have swayed to the joys of Waiting For The Right Time, These Days, Red Tree Song, Henry The Van, (Never Stop Building) That Old Space Rocket and This Is Not A Love Song, not to mention his contributions to the Bennett Wilson Poole project, are ready to be transported. I’m In Love is a lovely beginning.
The Spell Of The Lilac Bloom: Ruth Moody (featuring Joey Landreth)
Devotees of Canadian trio The Wailin’ Jennys who have been craving a new album will be more than happy with a solo offering from one of their founders, Ruth Moody. Our Song Of The Week at herecomesthesong.com is The Spell Of The Lilac Bloom, a duet with Joey Landreth, from her first full release for 11 years, Wanderer.
All 10 original compositions have been in gestation for the best part of a decade since the acclaimed These Wilder Things. Other things got in the way: motherhood and the pandemic, for starters. The Australian-born Moody was raised in Winnipeg from an early age and has spent her 20-plus playing years flitting between her Canadian home on Vancouver Island, near her parents, and Nashville.
The Spell Of The Lilac Bloom, written several years ago during pregnancy, is a claw hammer banjo-led love song to her partner Sam Howard who plays stand-up bass on the album, along with a stellar cast. They include guitarist Anthony da Costa, Kai Welch and Will Honaker on keys and synths, co-producer Dan Knobler on acoustic guitar, brother Richard Moody on violin, viola and mandolin, Russ Pahl on pedal steel, Alex Spiegelman on clarinet, Nat Smith on cello, Adrian Dolan (strings), drummer Jason Burger, backing vocalist Nicki Bluhm and, on this track, Landreth with his gorgeous lower-register harmonies and resonator guitar.
It is Moody’s ethereal soprano which stirs the senses more than any other sonic element. There may be pain a-plenty on the album, mostly lockdown-induced, but here is a celebration of a perfect match. It is a blissful sound…
Something happens when it feels so right
You’re wide awake dreaming in the middle of the night
Well it could have been the whiskey or the pale grass moon
It could have been the spell of the lilac bloom
’Cause I could love you for good
I could love you for always
I could love you the rest of my nights and the rest of my days
I could sing it like the morning dove
I could watch you like the stars above
I could hold you with all that I’m made of
Moody’s last album featured Mark Knopfler on Pockets and a brave but beautiful acoustic version of Bruce Springsteen’s Dancing In The Dark. Knopfler invited her to contribute to two of his songs and recruited her for his touring band, introducing that beguiling voice to fans largely unfamiliar with The Wailin’ Jennys.
From the Joni-esque opener Already Free (‘Am I drowning or holding too tight to the mast… I’m heavy and I’m haunted/ Scared I’m not who I wanted to be’) to Comin’ Round The Bend via the lovely Twilight and Michigan and the traditional-sounding Celtic connection that is North Calling, Wanderer – recorded at the Sound Emporium in Nashville – is a memorable meditation on relationships, life changes and a nomadic spirit.
Moody told the Bluegrass Situation: ‘The songs come from different stages and sides of love, right into motherhood. Some songs deal with heartbreak too and some are more reflective about the past. During the pandemic, I was reflecting a lot about how we internalise the messages we receive from society, how as a woman I took on the expectations of others and how that has affected my life. I was looking back, looking for clues, curious about where fear comes from, where strength and resilience come from. How we learn how to be our authentic selves when there are so many outside pressures and confusing messages.’
The longing for a place to call home is one of the album’s abiding themes. ‘I’ve been a wanderer all of my life/ It’s all the life that I know,’ she sings on the engaging title track, another dedicated to her partner. ‘He helped me have that feeling of home for the first time in my adult life,’ she said. The balance between motherhood and work has been a challenge – ‘I am still figuring out how to juggle everything. The learning curve is quite steep’.
We are told there’s a Wailin’ Jennys album in the pipeline. The wait should prove to be doubly rewarding.
Empty Trainload Of Sky: Gillian Welch & David Rawlings
Bliss is back in the shape of a new track from Nashville couple Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, Empty Trainload Of Sky, that sounds as majestic as its evocative title, our Song Of The Week at herecomesthesong.com. Boxcar blues from folk roots royalty.
Welch and Rawlings have spent the last four years rebuilding their Woodland Sound Studios wrecked by a tornado that ripped through east Nashville and threatened their treasured archive of music. They were lucky: 22 people lost their lives. The studio roof peeled off like a tin can and four hours of rain brought the ceiling down. Their archive comprised the duo’s projects and Welch’s solo collection. Welch later released recordings rescued from the debris, Boots No2: The Lost Songs.
Empty Trainload Of Sky will be the opening track of their new album, aptly titled Woodland, due for release on their own Acony label on August 23 (Acony Bell is an Appalachian wildflower as well as the title of one of their old songs). It will be their first joint offering of original material for seven years, since Poor David’s Almanack and the wonderful Cumberland Gap, although we did enjoy 2020’s All the Good Times (Are Past & Gone), a collection of lockdown covers and classic folk songs that earned them the 2021 Grammy for Best Folk Album.
‘Woodland is at the heart of everything we do, and has been for the last 20 some years,’ they say. ‘The past four years were spent almost entirely within its walls, bringing it back to life after the 2020 tornado and making this record. The music is (songs are) a swirl of contradictions, emptiness, fullness, joy, grief, destruction, permanence. Now.’
You know it’s Welch and Rawlings as soon as the opening notes chime: his exquisite blues- and jazz-flecked acoustic meanderings preceding her mournful but bewitching vocal. This could be a nod to the Woody Guthrie Songbook; one can imagine a hobo, a hitcher or perhaps a wannabe songwriter lying down in that boxcar looking up at the sky with a trainload of dreams.
Saw a freight train yesterday
It was chugging, plugging away
’Cross a river trestle so high
Just a boxcar blue
Showing daylight clear through
Just an empty trainload of sky
Well, it hit me and it hurt me
Made my good humour desert me
For a moment I was tempted to fly
To the Devil or the Lord
As it hung there like a sword
Just an empty trainload of sky
Rawlings, such an inventive guitarist, has an uncanny gift for capturing the ache, regret and longing in his partner’s voice: ‘Was it spirit? Was it solid?/ Did I ditch that class in college?/ Pulled the curtain from my eye.’ She then surprises us with a borrowed Neil Young line ‘I said hey hey, my my’ from the songs that bookended his Rough Never Sleeps album.
The 10-song collection is a blend of full band tracks and sparse duet performances, all featuring their distinctive sound and lyricism. The couple previously collaborated on nine critically acclaimed albums, five released under her name – notably Time (The Revelator) and The Harrow & The Harvest – three under his, and one under both of their names. Woodland will make that two in August.
New York City-born Welch was adopted by a couple of entertainers; her biological mother was a college freshman and father a visiting musician. She hooked up with the Rhode Island native Rawlings when they were fellow students at Berklee College of Music in Boston, successfully auditioning for Berklee’s only country band. She headed to Nashville in 1992: ‘I looked at my record collection and saw that all the music I loved had been made in Nashville – Bill Monroe, Dylan, the Stanley Brothers, Neil Young – so I moved there. Not ever thinking I was thirty years too late.’ Rawlings soon followed.
The rest is symmetry, their singing and playing intricate yet effortlessly interwoven. The songs on her debut album, Revival, produced by T-Bone Burnett, were described by one critic as ‘breathtakingly austere evocations of rural culture’. Their themes are invariably dark, often bleak, tracing the struggles of the marginalised. If you’re looking for a happy song, you face a long trawl. Music and emotions in the raw.
Her authenticity as a city girl has been challenged but she convincingly explained her relationship with old-time music: ‘I’ve never tried to be traditional. It’s been a springboard for me and I love it and revere it and would not be doing what I do without the music of the Monroe Brothers, the Stanley Brothers and the Carter Family. However, it was clear I was never going to be able to do exactly that; I’m a songwriter.’
Welch and producer Rawlings share lead vocal duties on the new album, probably hinting at the principal songwriter for each track. Long may they continue to create defining songs – by the trainload.
When Our Friends Come Over: Donovan Woods (featuring Madi Diaz)
When two of your favourite songwriters combine to create a new song, the outcome can be magical. Donovan Woods’ gorgeous duet with Madi Diaz, When Our Friends Come Over, is our Song Of The Week at herecomesthesong.com. Welcome to intimacy.
The love song appears on Canadian Woods’ seventh studio album, Things Were Never Good If They Aren’t Good Now. We hear of a couple recharging their affection for one another as they view themselves through other people’s eyes.
Their hushed tones and conversational style dovetail beautifully, especially on the single’s alluring chorus...
It’s not the candlelight, it’s not the wine
That reminds me why I’m yours, and what keeps you mine
It’s nice to see ourselves through someone else’s eyes sometimes
You put your hand in my hand ’cause we sit closer
When our friends come ovеr
When our friends come ovеr
The Sarnia, Ontario-born Woods is a big Diaz fan. ‘Madi and I wrote this in Nashville the first time we met. I love the ache in her writing. I had this idea about a song that celebrates how nice it is when you and your romantic partner have friends over. Their presence seems to renew something in your coupledom. You see yourself through their eyes, and you appreciate each other more. I don’t think there are enough songs about friendship. Friendship is so much more important than romance throughout your life.’
He was particularly complimentary about her recent album Weird Faith. ‘I think she is getting to another plateau in her writing, and she is just the best thing going right now. I love how Madi extends notes a millisecond longer than I think she’s going to.’ There’s an ache in her singing too.
Woods describes Things Were Never Good If They Aren’t Good Now as ‘a funeral to the life I was living’. In perhaps his most honest and self-reflective collection of songs, Woods takes a long look inside himself and isn’t necessarily thrilled with what he sees. Across the album’s 11 sparse, personal songs, this forensic chronicler of the human condition explores the ups and downs he has experienced since his breakthrough 2020 album Without People. He reflects on the intricacies of friendships and relationships, studying the little moments in life, and despite being a self-anointed pessimist even taking joy in them.
There are so many outstanding tracks: Rosemary tells of the emotional fall-out from an argument (‘Darling, are we OK yet, I’m always in the way of what you’re wanting’), Living Well, Don’t Talk To Her At Night and I’m Just Trying To Get Home, featuring William Prince. The deeply poignant Back For The Funeral, co-written with Lori McKenna and Matt Nathanson, follows a group of friends who return to their hometown after a friend dies from an overdose and muses on how the eclipsing of one life leads to a fresh start for others, ending with the crushing line: ‘How fucked up is that, that somebody’s gotta die for us to call each other back?’
The title of the latest album, co-produced by James Bunton, came from the positive affirmations Donovan was encouraged to repeat during therapy sessions. He told Line Of Best Fit: ‘All the therapy that I went through is trying to undo the years of the projection that I gave everyone in my life of how I was and who I was and my values; my actual self was much different than that. All the therapy that I’ve done is in service of realigning those two people, of being honest about my faults to people and being unabashedly myself and owning the things that I need and the things that are my weaknesses.’
As he reveals in the earlier album single 116 West Main, Durham, NC, he is trying to forgive himself more. ‘I'm probably a pessimist but a lot of my therapy is about not being a pessimist. I think a lot of what I’m trying to achieve is not being pessimistic and being hopeful that good things can happen or that like, even the bad things happen slow, and that there will still be time for nice things. I don’t really think of myself as an optimist. I feel much more in touch with myself and much less ashamed of myself all the time, the way I was before.’
He told Americana UK from his Toronto home that he would not label his music country; Paul Simon was his holy grail as a songwriter. ‘I do confessional songs with plain language.’ And he loves to collaborate with other artists. ‘I’ve always done that. It just gets you vibrating. You seem to be able to get to a place of clarity that you are not able to alone because you are sort of responsible for getting the other person to understand your point of view, the person you are writing with. So, you can’t hide it behind obtuse language or intense metaphor, you can’t hide and you have to admit what you want to say to the other person that’s in the room writing a song with you.’
The Connecticut-born, Pennsylvania-raised Diaz, daughter of a Peruvian mother and Danish father and a former student at Berklee College of Music, hugely enjoyed the alliance. Her 2021 album History Of A Feeling widened her appeal. She opened for Harry Styles last year, briefly joining his band, and then toured with her friend Kacey Musgraves earlier this year (they collaborated on Don’t Do Me Good).
No wonder Woods is mad about Madi. The popularity of Without People meant the Canadian didn’t need to find alternative employment. ‘I hope everybody likes the new record to keep me out of a job,’ he says. We are happy to oblige.
Remember Me: The Hanseroth Twins
We cannot wait to hear the golden voice of Brandi Carlile at London’s Drury Lane Theatre on Monday. But there is another reason to be there: to soak up the heavenly harmonies of the Hanseroth Twins. Their single Remember Me is our Song Of The Week at herecomesthesong.com, a teaser for their forthcoming album Vera.
Phil and Tim Hanseroth have been described as Carlile’s secret weapon in her playing and recording career. Hardly secret. Carlile, ever the generous collaborator and champion of under-the-radar talent, has never missed an opportunity to extol the songwriting and musical gifts of the siblings who became a key component in her backing band and a part of her extended family.
The identical twins (Phil’s distinguishing feature is his electric bass; Tim’s an acoustic guitar) will be backing Brandi as usual in Drury Lane but will open the show themselves. The sound of two voices in tandem, more than mildly reminiscent of Simon and Garfunkel or The Everly Brothers (two of their favourite covers are Sound Of Silence and Love Hurts), will only be upstaged by the glorious threesome to follow.
Carlile has said she views her band as a triangle with her at the apex but with the twins taking their turn. That turn has truly arrived with this month’s debut album. Many of her most memorable songs have been co-written by the Hanseroths: The Joke, The Story, The Mother, Beginning To Feel The Years, Every Time I Hear That Song, Party Of One, Broken Horses, Right On Time, You And Me On The Rock. All tracks on the last two Carlile studio albums have been credited to the three of them.
Remember Me is a love letter to the twins’ children, an extension of the song they wrote with Carlile on 2021’s In These Silent Says, This Time Tomorrow. The duet is beautifully expressed, particularly in the heartfelt chorus. Channelling their inner Everlys...
Sometimes life will lead you off the road
It will be hard to know which way to go
There may be mountains standing in your way
You’ll have to climb when you rise to meet the day
It doesn’t matter how far you go
It’s how you get there, you’ll know when you know
When you think of love I hope you think of me
True as the sunrise over the sea
Remember me gentle
Remember me strong and free
And wild as a river running
Remember me
‘In our band with Brandi, I’ve never really had any desire to do the front person thing,’ Tim Hanseroth told Chris Willman of Variety magazine. ‘We were in a rock band for many years before we met Brandi [their shared Seattle roots date back to 1999]. We only started singing when we were young because the singer of our rock band quit and we had a hard time finding a replacement. With the Brandi Carlile band, I’ve always been really comfortable singing back-up, because I’ve never really fancied myself a lead singer. But it’s a good place to go back into for us.’
He explained the genesis of the Brandi-less enterprise: ‘We started talking about it during the pandemic. Everybody was kind of lost and we were like, well, at least we can still continue to be creative – maybe this would be a great time to make a record.’ Carlile, busy with myriad writing and production projects with other artists, decided she could delay her next record and gave her blessing to the twins’ debut offering.
The title of their self-produced album, recorded in their home studios in Maple Valley, Washington, is the Latin word for ‘true, real, genuine, actual’. The brothers – best buddies and creative soulmates – explore themes of love, loss and what it means to be alive. ‘Vera was the perfect name, because every note of this record is genuine in terms of how it was written and recorded,’ said Phil. ‘There’s no trickery; it’s just the truth.’ Tim added: ‘Phil and I are so close. I can feel what he’s feeling all of the time, and it’s part of the music. With how busy we get, who knows if we will get to make another record like this. Vera is a special moment in time that we’ll never forget.’
On the other pre-released single, the poignant Broken Homes, the twins process childhood scars from domestic turbulence and frayed family ties. ‘It’s a personal story about our childhood. We grew up very poor, and our parents divorced when we were young. There wasn’t a lot of harmony after the split, so we just had each other. When you go through adversity, it makes you stronger. We’re standing here tall, because we come from a broken home.’
Rich on love and money poor
We only took what we needed and left some behind
In those days of wanting more
Is where I learned to be strong and how to stay kind
No wonder they treasure the warmth of the homestead they share with Carlile; Phil is married to Brandi’s younger sister Tiffany and Tim to the sister of Brandi’s wife Catherine Shepherd. The Hanseroths are honest enough to acknowledge who has the superior voice – and it is neither of them. During the writing process they would park a song if they thought their mentor would be the best lead. ‘Sometimes I can just hear her voice singing the words before I can hear my voice sing it,’ said Tim. And who can match that magical vibrato?
‘We’re not out for world domination. We just want to put something beautiful out there that people can really connect with.’
It doesn’t matter who you love
Or which God you pray to above
Let the goodness in your heart show the way
And have mercy as you wander through the days
Remember Me’s universal message really connects with us.
Dance With A Stranger: Lake Street Dive
You may have been celebrating this weekend: England’s rousing victory at the Euros, Lewis Hamilton’s emotional triumph at the British Grand Prix or even the demise of an unpopular government. Enough perhaps to make you accept Lake Street Dive’s invitation to Dance With A Stranger, our Song Of The Week at herecomesthesong.com.
The Boston band’s joyful foot-tapper, written by bass player Bridget Kearney and delivered soulfully by the wonderful Rachael Price, is that rare commodity on this blog – a happy track. The Brooklyn-based quintet, who began as a four-piece two decades ago when they were fellow jazz students at the New England Conservatory of Music, are Good Together, as the title of their eighth album suggests.
Dance With A Stranger was ‘inspired by a square dance, where folks from different communities come together and get a chance to move together. It’s always a good antidote for working out the kinks, personally and interpersonally. Get everybody in a room together and let them dance’. Kearney stumbled on the event during a writing retreat. The lyric oozes emphathy, respect for human differences and comfort for those in need…
Look around the room
Find someone’s eyes that are new to you
Might be a child’s or a grandfather’s
Anyone will do
Go say ‘Hello, how do you do?’
Listen to their answer, commiserate
Say ‘I feel that way sometimes too’
And ‘Would you like to dance?’
And if they say No, that’s OK
But if they say Yes, take their hand
Lead them out on the dance floor
Listen to the music play
Open up your whole heart
And dance, dance with a stranger
’Til they’re not a stranger, not a stranger any more
The album, like 2021’s lauded Obviously produced by Mike Elizondo, is an infectious blend of Motown-soaked soul, pop, jazz and funk with a soft spot for powerful ballads such as the piano-led heart-tugger Twenty-Five where Price’s seductive and skilful phrasing never fails to impress. Kearney writes about ‘a love that wasn’t built to last but was magical and meaningful and true, if only for a short time’. The sentiment, she adds, ties into the theme of the album and the question: ‘How can we as a species continue to love one another, in spite of all the challenges we face?’
But all of the joy we had and love we gave away back then
Well, it never went to waste
’Cause I’ll be an old woman with somebody else by my side
But I will always be in love with how you loved me
When we were twenty-five
This is largely life-affirming, feelgood music, the title track lifting our spirits from the off with Price and keyboard player Akie Bermiss playing the part of hopeless romantics as they trade optimistic verses. Michael Calabrese’s drumming and Kearney’s electric bass maintain a pleasing throb. We look forward to seeing a solo set by the Iowa-born Kearney in support of Bonny Light Horseman in London later this year ahead of a Lake Street Dive concert in early 2025. She is such a sharp songwriter deserving of wider attention; check out her solo album Comeback Kid.
The whistle-happy Far Gone is another funky track introduced by new guitarist James Cornelison who replaced Mike ‘McDuck’ Olson after Obviously. ‘There’s a lot to be angry about in the world right now, a lot of pain and rage and divisiveness, but it isn’t sustainable to constantly live in that anger – you need something else to keep you going,’ says Calabrese whose Seats At The Bar celebrates life’s simple pleasures. ‘Joy is a great way to sustain yourself, and we wanted to encourage everyone to stay aware of that. In a way this album is our way of saying: Take your joy very seriously.’
Party On The Roof, a love letter to New York City and its sky-high parties and adorned by the horns of the Huntertones, is as exuberant as the title sounds. Lake Street Dive describe their music as ‘joyful rebellion’, and it is best enjoyed in the flesh. A band to banish the doldrums. Dust off those dancing shoes.
Thank God I Have The Songs: Fritillaries
Attractive name, alluring music. Our Song Of The Week at herecomesthesong.com is Thank God I Have The Songs, title track of the new EP by Fritillaries, the performing alias of Bristol-based alt-folk songwriter Hannah Pawson.
Fritillaries, named after the snake’s head flower rather the butterfly, symbolising rebirth and hope, devotes a trilogy of tracks to her beloved late grandmother, led by the moving Thank God I Have The Songs. The whole project is meant to act as balm for the singer and anyone else coping with loss.
Exmouth-born Pawson explores the theme of grief and the transience of life on the six-song EP, her first music since 2022’s eponymous debut album from which we picked out Unearthing, Together In Flight and Lost My Mind to drool over.
She was then part of a duo with Gabriel Wynne; now she is flying solo with musical help from producer Rowan Elliott, whose use of strings lends subtlety and pathos, and Beth Roberts on double bass. Elliott contributes bass and percussion too.
Pawson’s sensitive songwriting found the perfect collaborator in Elliott: ‘It was very special to begin making the EP with some strands of the songs still fresh and unfinished. I recorded my last album in London on very tight deadlines so it was nice to take a more relaxed approach in the neighbourhood I live in, creating the tracks as they happened and allowing them to be vulnerable. That’s what I needed.’
The eerie quiet of Covid was the backdrop for her debut album. The last days of her grandmother’s life inspired her latest project. Pawson explains on her Bandcamp site that she found herself ‘surrounded by melodies’ that merged with scenes from that time, such as the evocative opening of the title track: ‘I went for a walk at sunset and swallows were dancing across the beach, around my feet, dipping in and out of the water in a way I've never seen before. I filmed a video and took it to nan. I wanted to bring her those moments of poignancy and connection. Still, neither of us had really accepted that she was going to die.’
When sadness comes
Thank God I have the songs
When sadness comes
Thank God I have the songs
The other two tracks in the suite are Hyacinths and For Jan where mundane details offer frequent flashbacks: ‘I’m in reverie, I’m in reverie… how can everything remind me of you?’
‘It’s so important to have expressions of grief that can be beautiful and ordinary, and not just a big scary thing,’ she says. ‘You hold it, and you let the people you love hold it, and just sit in the darkness or the unknown and accept it.’
Harvest Moon begins the homage to her nan who was ‘always cycling, always advocating for the climate and human rights, even at the end of evening when we’re all dropping off to sleep’. Pawson wears nan’s waistcoat in the track’s home-made video while the lady herself features in the EP artwork.
The bluesy As The Rain Falls is an inventive ode to life ‘as wild can be’ and ‘finding the light in the midst of difficult events’. But it’s the tender tracks such as Thank God I Have The Songs and the banjo-led Little Sparrow that make fragility and Fritillaries such fitting companions. Nan would be proud.
Old Dutch: Bonny Light Horseman
Oh to have been in that pub in County Cork when Bonny Light Horseman recorded half the songs for their new double album, Keep Me On Your Mind/See You There. One of those tracks, Old Dutch, is our Song Of The Week at herecomesthesong.com. A shimmering duet by Anaïs Mitchell and Eric D Johnson that swells into a gospel anthem with a little help from can’t-believe-their-luck patrons.
The sound is largely acoustic but the atmosphere in Levis Corner House in Ballydebob is electric as Mitchell, Fruit Bats frontman Johnson and multi-instrumentalist Josh Kaufman gently step into a ballad that takes beauty on a joyful ride. The music enjoys space the hostelry they’re playing in does not have. On all the tracks recorded there you can hear the odd cleared throat, scraped chair, clinked glass or rumbling car outside. But the enchanting, ageless melodies are unimpaired.
After a stark opening of wandering piano and percussive tinkering, Mitchell, who composed the hit Broadway musical Hadestown, sings of chasing a wild heart while pulling the petals off a wild flower: ‘Do you love me? Do you love me? Or love me not?’ Johnson takes the mic seamlessly for the second verse and both voices meld marvellously as the song builds to its communal conclusion.
I wanted to see you
But I couldn’t even look you in the eye
And I got a feeling
That I couldn’t shake if I tried
You know that you move me
You know that you threw a spark
You lit a flame and let a wildfire start
Wild horse on the prairie
Can’t tell if you’re scared or what
Are you running to or are you
Running from my love?
The genesis of the song was a phone voice memo backstage when the trio were performing at the Old Dutch Church in Kingston, New York; hence the title. ‘It came together fast with the three of us just finger-painting until there it was. It took a few fits and starts before we realised that it should be a duet and – importantly – a conversation. We recorded it live at Levis and when the whole crowd started singing Yeah, I got a feeling, we all experienced a moment of collective lift-off.
‘Josh looked over at pub owner Joe O’Leary’s partner Caroline behind the bar, eyes wide open, arms outstretched, singing along and deeply feeling it. We’d never had that kind of moment tracking a song for a record before, seeing and feeling the connection, beyond the musicians in the room, in real time as it’s all going to tape.’
Despite the atmospheric noises off, this is not a live album: Bonny Light Horseman worked alone inside the pub for two days before allowing in a select group of regulars toward the end of the third. It was Mitchell’s idea following a conversation with O’Leary. Entering the century-old pub’s aged confines, the trio felt an immediate connection to its sense of community and family.
The album was written over five months last year, the three Americans gathering at Levis alongside long-time collaborators JT Bates (drums), Cameron Ralston (bass) and recording engineer Bella Blasko. The project was completed at their Dreamland Recording Studios in upstate New York. There were additional contributions from Mike Lewis on bass and tenor sax and Annie Nero on upright bass and harmonies.
A painting that hung on a wall of the pub, which kept an eye on proceedings, became the album cover. ‘I was making eye contact with that person for most of the recording,’ Johnson said of the artwork. Curiously, before the band had even planned to record there, the owner’s partner had named the woman in the picture Bonnie. Attention to detail and nuance of sound was such that olive oil was applied to lubricate the pub’s creaking upright piano. The range of Kaufman’s musicianship is remarkable, from guitars and mandolin to piano, Wurlitzer, harmonium and synths, and he even finds room for segments of moody harmonica.
Though the album is just over an hour long – 18 tracks plus two fragments of conversation – the band make the time fly with their mellifluous reflections on longing, ageing and the bucolic life they brought their music to. ‘There was this new level of letting it all hang out,’ Mitchell said of the album’s making. The trio, who have separate solo careers, have been described as a folk supergroup. Such hyperbole is uninvited but they do have a superlative sound, rooted in the tradition albeit with a distinctive indie vibe.
The stunning When I Was Younger, the album’s first single, is notable for an ambitious approach, its majestic intro delivered by Mitchell before she and Johnson trade vocals as only they can; they may share the same register but their harmonies are hypnotic. The song is an old death lament transformed into a modern meditation on motherhood. The electric guitar solo surprises for its crackling intensity and the audience are almost a match for Johnson’s wonderful shrieks. ‘We wanted to write it as a duet, to tell two sides of a story. We recorded it live, so you can hear the whole audience did that wordless wail with us in the middle. It felt like a primal collective shake-off. Next morning we were collecting our things from the pub and owner Joe was out front in flip-flops sweeping up the cigs from the street singing: When I was younger, I used to dress fancy…’
On the gloriously sung Singing To The Mandolin (playfully rhymed with kitchen) evocative images are inspired by an old photograph; the moving Don’t Know Why You Move Me is an ode to the magic of enduring love; I Know You Know tells of the highs and lows of a doomed relationship (‘I’m a fool if I love you and a fool if I let you go’); and the Mitchell-led I Wanna Be Where You Are is a classic of domestic yearning (‘I wanna be where you are/ Hear the babies out in the yard/ And the leaves all changing bright/ And you’re holding me tonight’).
We have tickets for their show at London’s Roundhouse in November. If their performance comes close to capturing the craic in that Irish village last year, we are in for a special night. Bonny Light Horseman’s name, melodies and sound are steeped in history. The rest is chemistry.
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