Today, we’re putting The Tonearm’s needle on singer and songwriter Ora Cogan.

Ora Cogan’s music pulls from folk, country, psychedelia, and gothic rock. She holds all of it without flinching, as heard on the fantastic album Hard Hearted Woman, her latest release on Sacred Bones.

Ora has worked as a photojournalist and human rights advocate, and those experiences feed directly into how she thinks about art, resistance, and what the music is actually for. We get into all of that, including her creative process, the long arc of folk music as a living tradition, and why staying soft in hard times is a form of defiance in itself.

(The musical excerpts heard in the interview are from Ora Cogan’s Hard Hearted Woman)

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Dig Deeper

Artist and Album:

• Visit Ora Cogan at her official site and follow on Bluesky, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube
• Purchase Ora Cogan’s album Hard Hearted Woman from Sacred Bones, Bandcamp, or Qobuz, and listen on your streaming platform of choice

Label:

• Sacred Bones Records

Collaborators and Band:

• Lankum — Irish doom-folk group; Cormac MacDiarmada contributed to Hard Hearted Woman
• Backxwash — Zambian-Canadian rapper and producer; collaborator
• Y La Bamba — Portland-based indie folk group; collaborator
• Emma Ruth Rundle — artist Ora has toured with
• Lori Goldston — legendary cellist (Nirvana's MTV Unplugged); appears on the Bury Me EP

Musical References:

• Fire Draw Near — Ian Lynch's podcast on Irish traditional music
• One Leg One Eye — Ian Lynch's experimental solo project

Activism and Organizations:

• Trans Lifeline — Grassroots hotline and microgrants organization run by and for trans people; US: (877) 565–8860, Canada: (877) 330–6366
• Advocates for Trans Equality — Legal and political advocacy for transgender rights in the US
• Heiltsuk Nation — The First Nations community on British Columbia's Central Coast whose members accompanied Ora on the canoe journey she describes as a turning point in her life
• Indigenous Climate Hub — Resource hub for Indigenous-led climate action in Canada
• GLAAD Transgender Resources — Directory of support resources for trans people and allies

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• Dig into this episode's complete show notes at podcast.thetonearm.com

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