Basic Folk

Editor’s note: Basic Folk is pleased to introduce our listeners to one of our favorite podcasts by sharing an episode in our feed! One of my favorite and most insightful interviews on Basic Folk has to have been from Ben Arthur. Ben let the walls come down and allowed us to both dig into his psyche. It was a rare privilege to be able to strip feelings and actions down to their studs and really examine what's going on. I'd recommend checking out Ben's previous appearance on Basic Folk... that is, after you take a listen to his wonderful podcast, SongWriter. The concept is amazing: some of the best writers present their stories followed by an answer song written specifically for the tale by some of our favorite songwriters. Enjoy!

SongWriter is a podcast of stories and “answer songs,” featuring performances by Amanda Shires, Roxane Gay, Mary Gauthier, Joyce Carol Oates, Tift Merritt, and David Gilmour of Pink Floyd. Each episode includes a story from an author or storyteller, and a song written in response, as well as conversations about inspiration, art, and music. Host by songwriter and previous Basic Folk guest, Ben Arthur. 

In this episode of SongWriter, bestselling author Cheryl Strayed reads a letter about her mother from her celebrated advice column "Dear Sugar," and songwriter Maia Sharp talks about a recent break-up and performs her song "It's Always Good to See You.”

Cheryl’s memoir Wild was made into a movie starring Reese Witherspoon, and Maia has written songs for Bonnie Raitt, Cher, and Trisha Yearwood.

Martin Sexton's career was built by his work as a street musician on the Boston scene in the 80's and early 90's. His audience knows him for being connector by making them a part of the magic he, the performer, creates onstage. On the street, he would use tricks like strategically placing himself in an area that would bottleneck a crowd and keep people around with delightful audience participation and soaring, imaginative vocal aerobics: imitating a flute or saxophone or singing into a vocal processor like his hero Peter Frampton. All the while, Sexton, who goes by "Marty," was writing incredible music. The tricks made them listen, but the songs made them stay.

Marty's from a big family: 12 kids in Syracuse, NY, featuring different orientations, occupations, political views and just plain differing opinions. From that structure, he's learned how to get along, how to love and how to talk to people he disagrees with. His message of unity has been going strong since his street musician days and it's ever-present on his new ep, 2020 Vision. The EP was born out of Marty's pandemic silver lining of being forced off the road and in his Saranac Lake, NY home with his family: it all started with a treehouse he and his son had been meaning to build for four years. That sparked a song and then more songs followed: with a song about calling on unity in America, a song about the opioid epidemic, particularly prevalent during the pandemic. He's been following his bliss his whole career, which includes a stop at a major record label. In fact, his time at Atlantic Records in the late 90's and early 2000's might be the most unusual and drama-free experiences among his singer/songwriting peers who were living major label nightmares at a strange time in music history. Enjoy Marty!

Editor's note: Lizzie No interviews Alisa Amador on Basic Folk! We're so pumped for you to hear this conversation with Lizzie and Alisa. Be sure to got back and listen to Lizzie's previous guest host spots on the pod and subscribe, so you never miss Lizzie! Alisa Amador's EP Narratives is out on 9/17/2021

It was such a treat to talk with Alisa Amador. I love the way that she talks about life and connecting with people. One thing about Alisa that stood out to me right away was that she has been doing the work of performing since long before she thought of herself as a musician. She got her start as a backup singer for her parents’ band when she was four years old. Her own artistry has developed as she has discovered her own taste, her love for the guitar, and her voice as a songwriter.

Alisa has also developed a unique point of view as a bilingual songwriter, which goes way beyond simply singing in two languages. Alisa draws on a variety of Latin-American cultures in her music which makes for a huge imaginative universe. Not only is she using the vocabulary of English and Spanish, but she incorporates a variety of ways of looking at the world.

I talked with Alisa about performing, connecting with people, and about her new EP ‘Narratives,’ which I think our listeners will love. It’s folksy, jazzy, intimate, personal, and timeless. Everyone should look out for Alisa as a star on the rise because she has one of the coolest voices I’ve ever heard. Like a magical elf calling out beyond the scope of time.

Help produce Basic Folk by contributing at basicfolk.com/donate

Chris Thile (Nickel Creek, The Punch Brothers) has been making music nonstop since he was 5 years old. His musical parents found him a mandolin, he started taking lessons and jamming at nearby Southern California pizza shops. He met Sara and Sean Watkins when he was 12 and started the band Nickel Creek. In the meantime Chris' parents moved the family from California to Murray, Kentucky and really started getting serious about evangelical Christianity. This would have a huge impact on Chris; his new record, Laysongs, is asking a lot of questions surrounding his experience with religion as a young kid. He talks about the transition from being a family with no religion in their routine, to being amassed so intensely in one.

Another important aspect that comes along on the new album is Chris' intense love for classical music. His grandparents gave him some pieces by Bach and set him up for a lifetime of studying and playing classical. He gets into what it was like to grow up alongside Sara and Sean as bandmates, friends and fellow Christians. One of the themes of the new album is about community: engaging in a community that you love. Chris recognized that he dissented from Christian community in his young adult life where everyone was thinking the same way- Chris felt excluded, so he left… Now in music, he's found in a new community where everyone is thinking the same, so certain people are excluded. He talks about how the Pandemic has helped further shape those feelings about exclusionary community. We also get into a riveting conversation about Chris' thoughts on writing simple pop music and one of his deepest passions: wine.

Paula Fuga is a magic person. The Hawaiian singer/songwriter has lived through some of life's horrors. When she was young, her living situation was extremely unstable for several years. She lived with her mom, who suffered from addiction, on the beach around a pretty shady crowd of people. She accounts her survival to her dream of being a performer. That dream would manifest itself into visions Paula would experience. As a young person, she had no idea what the inside of a recording studio looked like, but would have these tiny peaks into her future where she would see herself recording a song or see herself on stage performing. She was actually able to place her very first vision of a live performance at a specific venue: Red Rocks. Paula still has not played Red Rocks, but she plans to get there and she plans to headline.

One fateful day Paula and her band were performing at a kickball tournament. One of the players happened to be the extremely famous and influential singer/songwriter, Jack Johnson. From that day on, Jack has been one of her biggest supporters and dearest collaborators. She talks about what it was like to meet and then become close friends with Jack, who actually appears on her newest album, Rain on Sunday. She and Jack perform his song "If Ever," which he wrote about the death of his father. Sadly, Paula's father had recently passed away and she shares how she processes that kind of grief through making music and how the song helped. There are one million quotes in this interview that I want printed on t-shirts! Get to know and enjoy Paula! Aloha!

Editor’s note: Basic Folk is pleased to introduce our listeners to one of our favorite podcasts by sharing an episode in our feed! I truly appreciate an interview where the hosts are basically scholars on their subject – aka they come so prepared it’s wild. Scott and Paul are industry professionals who are super knowledgeable about the songwriting craft, so they come at these interviews with a unique perspective. Also at the top of every episode, they do a current events and catch-up section that lets their sweet buddy chemistry shine. Be prepared to learn and have fun with Scott & Paul from Songcraft! Listen > Subscribe > Support!

Songcraft: Spotlight on Songwriters is a bi-monthly podcast featuring in-depth career-spanning interviews with songwriters of all genres and eras, including Smokey Robinson, Steve Earle, Bill Withers, Shawn Colvin, Lori McKenna, Lucinda Williams, and more than 160 others. Hosted by Nashville-born and long-time Los Angeles residents Scott B. Bomar and Paul Duncan, Songcraft is a forum for everyone from casual music fans to fellow creative types to hear songwriters in conversation about their influences, the stories behind their songs, and how they’ve honed their craft. Check them out at songcraftshow.com, or wherever you get your podcasts.

In this episode of Songcraft, Nine-time Grammy nominee Ani DiFranco joins Scott and Paul to talk about her career as a fiercely independent singer-songwriter and activist, and share some insights into the social, political, and personal challenges that inspired her honest but hope-filled new studio album, Revolutionary Love.

Becca Mancari does things her own way. Raised in New York and Virginia, Mancari found herself living a nomadic lifestyle in her teens and twenties. As she grew as a songwriter and performer she also found her footing as an outspoken queer woman. She re-negotiated her relationship to spirituality and gender and this transformation found its way into her music in powerful ways. Her 2020 album ‘the greatest part’ is a coming out album that invited listeners into a deeply personal journey. Musically the album is a departure from her earlier indie-folk releases. Becca worked with Zac Farro of Paramore to create a pop-influenced indie rock sound scape that always stays true to Becca’s intimate feeling. I think that feeling is a big part of why so many fans keep coming back to Becca Mancari shows with a kind of spiritual reverence. She has a transcendent connection with her audience.

We also talked about Becca’s 2021 EP ‘Juniata,’ an orchestral daydream of an EP. We also dug into the nitty gritty icky details of funding an independent album, Becca’s quarantine ditch digging, and her friendships with musicians like Julien Baker and Brittany Howard.

*** I want to share a word of caution that my conversation with Becca touches on some difficult topics such as religious trauma and homophobia. I know those stories can be upsetting, so I want our listeners to have a heads up about that.

Help produce Basic Folk by contributing at basicfolk.com/donate

Two years into starting his band Mandolin Orange, Andrew Marlin and his partner Emily Franz were having second thoughts about their band name. Nine years later, they announced their new name: Watchhouse. It's easy to understand why it took so long: they were putting out records, gaining momentum and quickly establishing themselves with this funny meaningless band name: Andrew had an orange mandolin and he named the band as such. What's harder to grasp is that Andrew Marlin is an individual whose every action, output and intention is incredibly thoughtful and filled to the brim with meaning. On the pod, he talks about the new band name's origin: it's named after a place he would visit as teen in the Chesapeake Bay. It was a quiet place where he would spend a lot of time in silence and communion, and he talks about why he wanted to bring that essence to the sound of Watchhouse.

Andrew was born and raised in a small North Carolina town surrounded by the musical women in his family: his grandmother, mom and sisters played piano in church growing up and he was surrounded by a lot of hymns and old songs. He bought a guitar 14 after saving up his own earnings from the nearby farm store (it took three long weeks to save!) and began to write songs. He moved to Chapel Hill in 2008 to dig into the music community, meeting Emily at an impromptu jam one year later. There, he met his match, started a band and has subsequently made a life and family with her. He gets into how the two were able to connect, how she truly sees him and his obsession with the mandolin and how listening to Bill Monroe instrumentals and old fiddle tunes really sharpened his playing. Andrew is a very smart and articulate person who makes important music. I'm excited to hear more from Watchhouse and where they grow. Enjoy Andrew! And yes, an Emily interview is in our future.

Help produce Basic Folk by contributing at basicfolk.com/donate

Ok, so yes I cried when I interviewed Rachel Baiman. Her writing is stirring and brutal and then when you read about the inspiration behind the songs on her new album Cycles, it's like automatic water works for me. From frank observations of her grandparent's loss of agency to women reckoning the heaviness and grief of motherhood, I am INTO the emotion of these songs. Rachel came to songwriting after she had spent her youth mastering the fiddle. She actually kept her school life separate from her fiddle life, where she would pal around with other kids at the fiddle contests and also play in jams with people four times her age. She attended Vanderbilt in Nashville for an anthropology degree where she centered a lot of her research papers on the fiddle. She left Nashville to study in Edinboro and took full advantage of of the music community she found. That would also set her up to seek out a music community in Nashville upon her return.

Rachel is known for her solo career and for her “Nerdy Fiddle Duo“ 10 String Symphony with fiddle player Christian Sedelmyer. The band deconstructs traditional forms and incorporates a lot of original elements. She's three albums deep into her solo work, the latest being produced by Liv Hally of the Australian indie band, Oh Pep! For Cycles, she went to Melbourne to record with Liv to get into her scene. Rachel says “I kind of have this theory that if you want a specific sound, go to the place, use the studio, use the person, use the gear, get in the vibe of the place.” The album, while it's rooted in her folk sound, has a grittier and poppier edge that I find irresistable. It's on the top of my list for 2021 (so far!). Also, she gives us the details on her super cute house and what it means to her to have a place like that to call home. Lots of leaking eyes (AKA crying) for Rachel Baiman.

Help produce Basic Folk by contributing at basicfolk.com/donate

John Hiatt's latest is a collab with bluegrass great Jerry Douglas, with Jerry as producer and his band as backup for Hiatt. John's digging into some serious past memories for these songs, which include a song about his older brother Michael. Michael died by suicide when John was only 9 and it's only until now where he's chosen to write about the experience in his music in the song “Light of the Burning Sun.” Jerry knew that the material was very serious and approached it very lovingly with John and the band. On the pod, John expands on his grief and giving himself the time and space to mourn. We also talk about the importance of radio in John's young life: he would listen to WLAC Radio from Nashville as a kid around 11 years old. There was a show on Sunday night they'd have a gospel show and they'd go to a different Black church every week and just broadcast the service. John has said “Those gospel shows used to scare the shit out of me." That opened his world to a completely different way to relate to music in terms of faith.

John picked up the guitar at 11 years old to cope with the trauma involved in being an overweight child. This was especially hard because he was a bigger kid at a time when it was rare for a child to be heavier. He discusses how music and surprisingly how drugs and alcohol helped him overcome his weight issue. Which then of course, the drugs and alcohol led him to new problems in his adult years requiring him to overcome that addiction and live a sober life. John talks about his kids, which includes the musician Lilly Hiatt. Lilly said in an interview once: “I was crying over the fact that my career seemed stalled and I wasn’t the flavor of the month, and dad said, “Lilly, we will never be hip. We’re just not those people.”” John's been a steadfast songwriter since the 70's who's written many well loved songs like "Have a Little Faith in Me," "Cry Love" and, of course, "Thing Called Love." The writing on his latest album spans several decades and confronts some of his most vulnerable feelings. To be able to talk to John Hiatt about this project was a sincere privilege and I hope you enjoy!