Nashville-based musician Mary Bragg describes herself as “annoyingly optimistic.” Now, everyone’s entitled to his or her own opinion, of course, but truthfully, there’s nothing annoying about the intimate truths and experiences she shares in her music. And, not all of those truths and experiences are optimistic, either. Indeed, each of the songs on Bragg’s 2019 release Violets as Camouflage had some element of masking: either fooling someone or being fooled yourself. Bragg says she wanted to call attention to that theme – the theme that something important needs to be revealed – in each track on the album. It’s the first record she has produced entirely by herself and while the process was time-consuming, demanding, and soul-searching, she says Violets as Camouflage is the album she’s most proud of to date.

Mary Bragg joined Folk Alley for a conversation and performance in our pop-up beach house studio at the 2019 30A Songwriters Festival in Florida.