Chelle Rose: An East TENnessean indeed, in whom there is no guile

Chelle Rose: An East TENnessean indeed, in whom there is no guile

By Kevin Broughton

One gets the impression Chelle Rose has never met a stranger. Which is odd when you look at her involuntary frown-bordering-on-scowl in publicity photos – a trend that’s been constant since childhood. Whenever a camera’s trained on her, her countenance turns super-serious, surly even. “Momma always said my mouth was gonna get stuck like that,” she says. Lyrics on her brand new album Blue Ridge Blood commemorate the admonition, so much has it always been a part of her (visual, at least) persona.

And that’s the odd thing: Nothing in her photographs or the lyrics on this deep, dark, brooding record matches her actual personality.

She’s happy. Joyful, even. She’s blessed with an infectious, often high-pitched laugh that stands in stark contrast to her smoky contralto voice. And she’s not hesitant to laugh at herself when reminded, for instance, that she’s veered a good bit off course in a conversation. Self-deprecating and totally comfortable in her own skin, Rose is nothing if not the genuine article. There’s nothing contrived about this woman who doesn’t possess, if an hour-long interview is a fair sample, a single ounce of guile in her entire being.

There are a lot of givens when it comes to lifelong Southerners. Here are a couple: 1. We’re used to having our accents be a source of mockery. 2. We can spot fake Southern accents in a movie or TV show in a matter of nanoseconds, and it’s probably going to insult us and piss us off.  Hence the “genuine article” assessment.

Her home state of “Tennessee” is pronounced with a pound of emphasis on the first syllable, not the conventional last one. In the studio, she knows what she “lahks.” Nonsense or unfounded criticism is “just devil doin’s.” While these might foolishly be sources of mockery outside Dixie, there’s an adorable sexiness to them that will buckle the knees of any real Southern man.

She knows and accepts her own limitations. “I’m not a singer singer, I’m an emotional singer,” might sound counterintuitive, until you’ve spent about 30 seconds in conversation.  There’s a difference – and it doesn’t bother her (much) – between “singing pretty” and doing what Rose does.

And singing pretty would have sucked the all the life and authenticity out of Blue Ridge Blood. The Appalachian sense of place – and people – permeate the album. It’s what she is, and what the record is.

“Painstville Table” opens the album with the harsh reality of a hardscrabble coal miner’s life. It sets the tone, with what are maybe the best few lines of authenticity on the record:  “But his lady’s got a baby in her belly, so he’ll trade his dream to a black lung thief. To put food on the Paintsville table.” You can’t manufacture that. It’s too organic, too real. Chapter after chapter in this sonic book they come. “Blue Ridge Blood” isn’t simply the title of an album and a song; it’s a way of life. And Rose’s very state of being.

Life, love, lies, cheating, despair and death. They all get her uniquely Appalachian imprint. “Mean Grandpappy” is particularly poignant, though the listener is left to his or her own interpretation of this painful tune. (And it uses one of the greatest Southern common nouns of all time, “sumbitch.”) It’s the title cut, though, that is thematic for the whole record. And uber-guitarist Buddy Miller leaves his mark on it, though of all things, as a backing vocalist. But again, with the overall dark tone of the album, one is struck by the way Rose can compartmentalize things, and it’s hard at times to reconcile her attitude to this record. 

We caught up while she and her daughter were in the middle of a move from Nashville to her native East TENnessee. She is bubbly and game, not indicating for a moment all the awful stuff she’s been through in the last several years: a long-undiagnosed chronic illness that prevented a tour to support a fantastic album in 2012; divorce from a vindictive spouse; loss of her momma and meeting her biological daddy within a year; and an (accepted) marriage proposal.

And mere hours before our chat, she found out her beloved and brilliant producer, George Reiff, was just diagnosed with stage four cancer. (Hit this link and throw in a few bucks for his medical expenses.) I was surprised she could function, much less do an interview. But she’s a champ. One who’s made a great record.

An awful lot has happened in your life since the release of 2012’s Ghost of Browder Holler, and we’ll get into that in a minute. Ray Wylie Hubbard produced that record, and it has his sonic fingerprints all over it. Blue Ridge Blood is a lot more brooding and deliberate, but a lot of the themes and characters are similar. Was it the songs themselves that pushed this album in a stylistically different direction, or did you start out with the idea of doing a markedly different record?

You know, it’s funny. You can sit and think about what kind of record you wanna make. I know what I don’t wanna make.  Every time I’ve tried to record anything and stick my pinky toe in the water with people around [Nashville] – I won’t mention names – I’m happy in the studio because it’s a creative environment. And then I come home and I’m like, “Oh my God, I hate it!”

I was originally supposed to record “Ghost” at Levon [Helm’s] studio in Woodstock.  This was in 2010, just before he got sick again. He passed in 2012, so that plan was scrapped.  So, I just started going through my record collection saying, “whose songs do I love?” Well, George Reiff produced a lot of them. You said it has Ray Wylie’s fingerprints on it, and it does. But George was a big reason it sounds the way it does. And Ray knew that. George is totally badass, and the coolest dang cat on the planet. He was the engineer and bass player on Ghost. This time he was the producer and bass player, and we just hired a couple of engineers.

But Ray was dipping his toe into producing, and a couple of friends of mine mentioned me to him, and he went online and saw a couple of my (probably horrid) YouTubes. Then I heard him mention my name – as somebody he’d like to produce – on a radio show! Till then I wasn’t really sure if he was real, or like Santa Claus (laughs). Three weeks later I was on a plane to Austin.

This album is more organic, in that the arrangements are real close to how I wrote them. On Ghost, they got changed up a good bit, sometimes in a big way. Like Ray would take chords out of songs, which kinda tripped my head up. But in the end when I looked back at it, he was so brilliant.

Both albums are firmly grounded in Appalachia – both the geographical region and the people in it. Why was that sense of place so important to the point that you titled the new one the way you did?

Well, I was sittin’ in the bathtub thinking of names for a band, and I thought, “Maybe I’ll name my band Blue Ridge Blood.” And I texted a friend and said, “Is this a band, or is this a song, or what?” And he said I needed to write it. So it had been cookin’ for a while.  But to answer your question about how it always trickles in, it’s like the song says, “I don’t think I can even help it; couldn’t get away from it even if I tried.” It just hangs over me. Even if I’m writing about something else, it just comes through. I don’t set out to write about it, but it’s what I have and it’s all I have.

I’ve learned, it’s taken me years to kinda like my voice…

To do what?

Sometimes I like my voice. (Laughs) It’s taken me years to figure out this is what I have. I can try to sing pretty, but it’s still gonna be rough; I only can do what I do. I get bored with myself sometimes and I wish I could do something different, but it’s what I’ve got to work with. But the stories and the characters and places I grew up around…I could write a book. It’ll never go away, and it’s a deep, deep well.  The folks I grew up were storytellers, and I like to tell stories and embellish, too. It’s fun.

Well, tell me the story about how you got Buddy Miller to sing backup on the title track. He’s the best guitar player in…like, the world, and I think his voice is way underrated…

I know…

So, was he just walking down the streets of Austin and y’all shanghaied him into the studio and said “C’mere, we need you to sing harmony on this song?”

(Laughing) No, I have to confess he’s a dear friend. When I came to Nashville 20 years ago, he was one of the first people I went to see. I was a fan back then, and now he’s just the king.

Metaphorically, you can listen to emotional baggage being systematically unpacked over the course of Blue Ridge Blood. In the last four years, you got an overdue diagnosis of thyroid disease, made first contact with your biological father, and met the man you’re about to marry. Is it fair to say the overall dark mood of the record reflects what was happening in your life?

Yeah, and if I were to tell you what happened in the past three weeks, and what’s going on right now…but I will save you that. It’s insane. A lot of life-changing events. [Here a tangent on the recent engagement ensues, to the point of hoping to plan the wedding in a way that won’t burden “the elderly folks” too much.]

Doll Face, that’s awesome, but I wasn’t really asking about your wedding plans.

(Laughing vigorously) Oh, yeah, sorry. What do you want to know, again?

The dark tone of the album, and how it might be a reflection of all the shit that’s gone on in your life the last few years?

I don’t really know. I don’t really think about it when I’m writing. I just write and then I’m done. I don’t really stay in that place, but man, it’s just a really hot topic in every interview now. I don’t think I realized how dark I am, even in my music, till people bring it up. And I’m not dark in my personality, in my everyday life. And that seems to catch people off guard, because I’m a pretty happy person. I can be moody…

But when I sit down to write it just sorta comes out that way. A lot of those events happened after I had written most of this album. Maybe with the exception of “Southern 4501.” I’m looking at the list here, let’s see…I didn’t meet my biological father until late last year, so that’s still kinda new – and lovely – in my life right now.

All of them were when I was sick, though, because I’ve had thyroid disease for a while now.

Well let’s talk about that, because “thyroid disease” sounds scary and mysterious. For those who don’t know – like me – how does the condition manifest itself, and how are you treating/dealing with it now?

That’s really a complicated question, because until I got diagnosed, I didn’t even know where my thyroid was in my body. I had never been sick, never missed a day of work or school. I was that girl. So I didn’t handle being sick with much grace, because I had always been healthy.

It really knocked me on my butt, and I was finally forced to go get blood work. I thought I had cancer. When you’re a momma, you don’t want to know that, and I kept thinking I was just tired. I had just put the record out [Ghost, in 2012] and had been through a rough divorce, and I knew stress could do that kind of stuff to you. I was thinking, “If I could just rest.” There was at least a whole year when I would take my daughter to school and just come home and get in the bed. Then I’d pick her up and make myself fix dinner and help get her ready for her next day, and couldn’t wait to get back in the bed.

Somehow I didn’t go too blue with depression, because that happens with hypothyroidism. So they tried to get me on antidepressants and I said no.  Then, I discovered a book called Medical Medium, by Anthony William, and it’s just saving lives every day. It’s amazing. He’s like the Edgar Cayce of our times. Some people don’t like Edgar Cayce, but that’s just devil doin’s.

Did you just say “devil doin’s?”

(Laughs) Yeah, devil doin’s. But I had to scratch out everything I had learned about my body, and get myself on a brand new protocol. And as soon as I started treating my body like the book said to, I started to get a little bit better every day.

You’ve mentioned that your touring in support of Ghost of Browder Holler nearly put you down, and that you were turning down gigs – and at least one record deal -- before you found out how sick you were. What sort of plan do you have for promoting this album on the road? I mean, you’re a single mom…

Yeah, I have a son who’ll be a freshman at UT this fall, and an 11-year-old daughter. Music and family have always been intertwined with me, but bein’ a momma is always gonna come first, because if I mess that up, nothin’ else matters.  So if it’s summer and I’m gonna do a three- or four-night run, and she doesn’t wanna come with me, for the first time I’ll have family close by that she can stay with. So this will be a new thing for me in that I can go and do more dates, because I have family support now.

Along those lines, I’m curious about audience reaction to this material in a live setting. These aren’t exactly “get up and shake your ass” tunes; do you think you’ll need a certain type of audience and setting for their to be a deep connection?

Absolutely. That’s one of the things I learned during a month-long residency I did at at Family Wash, which used to be a pub in East Nashville. Now they’ve moved into a fancy place, if you will, and it’s a little more sophisticated; it’s a dinner crowd. There’ve been nights when I’ve had a roomful of fans, and other nights where I’m pretty sure no one knew who I was. And that’s great, because that’s how I can gauge…if people put their forks down and get quiet, I know they either love it, or they’re saying “what the heck?” (Laughs)

And I’ll look out and people are either lovin’ it, or “what is that?” Because I think people either love what I do or they don’t like it at all. Like some of the comments on YouTube are, “Well, that’s just nails on a chalk board.”

(Laughing) Well, why would you even read ‘em? Why in the world put yourself through that?

Well, sometimes just by accident. (Laughs) But I really do get why some people don’t like what I do. It is not for everybody. I wish that I could sing differently sometimes, but I open my mouth and that’s just what comes out.

Eh. There’s plenty of girls who can “Sing Pretty.”

Yeah, I guess.  But just the making of this album made me so happy and was so awesome, the rest is just icing on the cake.

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Blue Ridge Blood is available on Amazon, iTunes, Chelle's website, and streaming services.

All photos courtesy of Conqueroo

Robbie Fulks Channels Agee from Down South to the Upland

Fulks Channels Agee from Down South to the Upland

By Kevin Broughton

Eighty years ago, Knoxville-born and Harvard-educated journalist James Agee headed South on assignment for Fortune magazine. His time spent with three white, West Alabama sharecropping families evolved from a long form magazine story to Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, an early touchstone of a forthcoming wave of “new” or “literary” journalism, which would feature names like Capote and Plimpton and Talese.   

Agee – a film critic by trade, mostly – brought to light the balefully stark conditions under which the lowly whites toiled. You hear – and can see, really -- their plaintive, hardscrabble lives in Robbie Fulks’ Upland Stories, released on Bloodshot Records on April 1.

If you’re familiar with Fulks’ body of work, you appreciate the release date’s ironic wink. If not, well, there’s really not enough space to get you fully up to speed. It’s complicated. Comparisons to other artists are the mediocre music writer’s crutch and I ain’t scared to lean on them. Hell, I’ve got a closet full and not a single one works here.

Pennsylvania born, Carolina-and-Virginia raised, now affixed to Chicago. A bracing tenor who’ll make your hair stand on end, but knows less is often more. Guitar virtuosity that’s under-heralded and would enjoy Buddy Miller status if the latter confined himself to a mic’d up acoustic 80 percent of the time. Then there’s the songwriting.

What if Frank Zappa had been born un-swarthy and in the Blue Ridge? Hmmm. We’re getting somewhere, comparison-wise.  Fulks has a deep reverence for traditional country, bluegrass and roots music; appropriate, since he has few peers as a practitioner of the craft. And yet on the same album, you could hear a song that’s so country it’s busting on country. It’s a pity so few people get the joke, because much of Fulks’ appeal is in his wit. It’s mainly how he made his bones early on, and never too far from the surface. 

On Upland Stories, though, you step deeply into the melancholy – a word that cropped up a time or three – and it’s not wit, but passion and empathy that hold you. Do yourself a favor and listen to the opening cut, “Alabama at Night,” right here, before reading any further. It’ll set the mood. You’re with Agee.

We caught up with Mr. Fulks and talked American literature, Year Zero on Austin City Limits, Feuding with Mojo Nixon, and getting Called By Saul.

Your last album, Gone Away Backward took on some topical issues like economic hardship and alienation. In Upland Stories, you take it one step further, with James Agee as your jumping off point. Did you do these two records with thematic continuity in mind?

Yeah, I wanted to do a record that came out of the previous one, because I liked the way Gone Away Backward sounded, and was pleased with the reception of it. And I enjoyed traveling around and supporting it with the players on it. This one came out sounding a little less like the last one than I wanted it to, and ended up with electric guitar and organ and various other things on it. But I think the nature of it does somehow connect it to the last album, and that’s because of the thematic material.

The Agee angle came out of a show I was working on – it’s now on hold -- with a playwright, and we were looking at subjects, and he suggested I think of something that really lifted my skirts. So we were talking about home, and the South, and places you can’t return to anymore and lost, old things. I just thought of James Agee, and took a dive into Let Us Now Praise Famous Men.

Other than the obvious, why Agee?  He was a little sheepish about his own status when he wrote, and wrote about, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. How do you think, if at all, being a Southern white child of relative privilege enhanced or encumbered his ability to write that book?

I don’t think of him as privileged, other than the fact that he was a Harvard guy. But I think he had this melancholy – if not depressed – streak, and I may presume to say that once he was up north, he was an outsider. Where he came from really came to occupy a haunted little sector of his brain. And there’s just a melancholy, aggrieved air in his writing, whether he’s writing about film or poor people…a lot of it’s infused with sentiment and depth of feeling.

Did you write all of these songs with this topical/thematic album in mind, or were there some outliers that you dropped in as well?  I ask because  “Needed” is obviously personal, and autobiographical stuff isn’t typical of your catalog, unless I’m missing a lot.

(Chuckles) You’re actually remarkably close to my frame of mind when I put that song [into the album] because I had a group of ten or 12 songs at a certain point, and I tried to look at them and envision what was missing. And it seemed like a personal ballad was missing for some reason, like the album was a little too immured in social issues, and in narratives in points of view other than my own. So it seemed like it needed a hard shot of something strongly personal, and I deliberately wrote that one to fill that slot. I tried to distance it from myself a little, in that I had the singer talking to his daughter; I have three sons. Other than that, it’s pretty close to stuff that’s happened to me and a trillion other people.

Are there other characters on the album based on people you know or knew?

Well, “Sarah Jane” is kinda – I don’t want to embarrass her – but there was a girl I went to high school with…well, in fact I named her on the record, her name was Judson. Anyway she and I had a memorable encounter, it was after high school, and we realized we could’ve dated.  That song is about all the things you’ve missed out on, and many roads not taken, and sort of drifting through melancholy and middle age and letting all that stuff get to you.

You spent some time in the early and mid 90s as the “hired help,” writing songs for the likes of Tim McGraw & Ty Herndon. Were tunes like “The Scrapple Song” and “Papa Was a Steel-headed Man” your way of saying “I’m free” after that stint?

When I was working for that company, I wrote a quite lot of songs that were out of my personality, and which were songs for them to pitch. Some of them were songs that made my skin crawl to be singing them. So I would sometimes write songs just to blow off steam, which how I came to write “Fuck This Town” and “God Isn’t Real,” as a way of sort of countering the other type of dross that I was coming up with.

And then some of them were in the middle, like “Tears Only Run One Way,” was written from the heart but then I thought “Well, this could conceivably be pitched to somebody or another.” So some were in between, but they ended up becoming my first album, Country Love Songs.

“Tears Only Run One Way” could be a Buck Owens song. And there’s a Buck Owens-themed song on that album.

Buck’s steel player was on that record.

Do you come across many people whose first exposure to you was your Austin City Limits appearance around ’97 or ’98?

Oh, yes. Is that what it was for you? How old are you?

Old. About three years younger than you.

I’ve definitely heard that. For the people that came along in Year Zero for me, so to speak, around 1996-97, it’s hard to displace that from what they like about me. And yes, it makes me yearn for more prime time TV. It makes me wish I could go back and do that again, with the better things I’m doing now.

You’ve written songs about bludgeoning pigs with hammers and reducing them to a gelatinous pie; starlets who kill themselves with pills; crushing on Susanna Hoffs; a truly disturbing “children’s song” about a creepy magician; and a Michael Jackson tribute album. Ever ask yourself where all this comes from?

Some of it comes from assignments. The kids’ record [Bloodshot] asked me to contribute to; the Michael Jackson thing, believe it or not, came from an assignment. It was his birthday and the Cultural Center in Chicago was putting on a tribute and I re-worked some of his songs. I found that I enjoyed doing it, so it emerged from that.  Some of it’s fortuitous, if that’s the right word.

Some of the hard right turns I’ve taken on the discography, I might have second thoughts if I could do it again, but I think the great benefit to being “unpopular” and being kind of a cult figure is that I don’t have people looking over my shoulder saying “don’t do this, don’t do that.” So there’s absolute freedom to do what I do, and I really need to exploit it.

You mentioned working with a playwright on a musical. Have you ever tried your hand at prose? A short story or screenplay, maybe? I think you’ve got a movie in you.

Well, that’s nice of you. I don’t think I could do that, so I’ll disagree with you there. I have written a story that I’m not really proud of that came out in a collection of country artists…I think it was called “A Guitar and a Pen,” basically people who have no business writing prose. I wrote something in “An Atheist’s Guide to Christmas.” A few things for the Journal of Country music.

I see from Twitter that I missed you & Mojo Nixon on Sirius XM from Austin a couple weeks back, and I’m pissed. Care to give a summation?

It was surprisingly serious. Mojo gave his version of something he thought I meant when I said something rude about him, in an interview somewhere along the line that I’ve long forgotten. So we sort of interpreted what I meant by my supposed insult to his craft. I would have rather screamed obscenities at one another, because that would have made for better radio.

I certainly bear him no ill will. Whatever I said about him was just trying to explain that I do more than novelty songs. And I used his name as an example.

“At least I’m not Mojo Nixon?”

Well, I don’t think there was an “at least” in it, but yeah.

Now I’m gonna have to go back an look at some of the videos he did when I was in college.

Well, he can take it. The main thing about him -- and I love his show. In fact I don’t love the music on his show, but I love his part of it. So sometimes I’ll have it on in the car and turn it up when he’s talking, then turn it back down again.

You know, they play you on that station every now and again.

Well, I’ll turn it up for that. Then back down for Ryan Adams or whatever.

Back to Upland Stories. “America is a Hard Religion” sounds like Appalachia, but I think you’re making a point that’s more universal. What can you tell me about point of view and/or characters in that song?

 I’d like to tell you something really specific and revealing about it, but it’s a little bit of a nebulous tune. It’s one that I wrote for the musical about James Agee, so I didn’t have a hard grasp of the point of view. It’s meant to be an old-timey song that’s shockingly realistic about what poor people in America endure, like sending kids off to war. And doing backbreaking work, and being part of this great historical social contract, while living among unimaginably wealthy people who live like kings. So it’s a point of view from a demographic group, rather than a single person.

“Never Come Home” is kind of a downer. What’s going on there, besides a guy going home to spend his last few days or weeks?

That’s exactly what it’s about. He goes to his family, who doesn’t understand or appreciate him, and in fact looks upon him with rank suspicion because he’s been living in New York. His family is religious and he’s not, or hasn’t been. It’s one of those confrontations between superstition and secular rationality you see in a Flannery O’Connor story, or a sort of T.S. Eliott allusion that we do things because we’ve been instructed with certain beliefs. That clash of values is great, it’s fruitful, just as it was when Miss O’Connor did it.

Your references to Flannery O’Connor and T.S. Elliot – in one response – make me wonder what you studied at Columbia before dropping out.

Nominally, Kevin, it was English, but in fact it was sitting in coffee houses and getting drunk at night. Not a lot of studying involved in my college career, unfortunately.

What's the Bob Odenkirk connection? Are you guys Chicago pals? Also, I'm in a minority that thinks he was better as Bill Oswalt on season 1 of Fargo than Saul Bello. Is this heresy?

We have a mutual friend, Dino Stamatopoulos, and I guess Bob liked my stuff also, but I hadn’t met him till that day at his house. That’s him in Fargo? I thought it was Frances McDormand!

Over the course of your career, you've done songs that embrace and celebrate everything traditional and pure about country music; and often on the same album you might have a couple that are essentially self-parodies or caricatures of the genre. Discuss this continuum. (That sounds like a high school essay question, doesn't it?)

Too much Mad Magazine as a youngster. If I love something I put it under the light.

"Parallel Bars" is a favorite of mine, mainly because it's a duet with the dreamy Kelly Willis. You've also worked with Lucinda Williams and Nora O'Connor. With whom else would you like to duet? Or, is there already a waiting list of chicks wanting to sing with you?

You’re leaving out Joy Lynn White, Ora Jones, Donna Fulks, Jenny Scheinman, Kelly Hogan, Gail Davies, and Brennen Leigh. Other womenfolk I’d love to sing with include Jeannie Seely, Rhonda Vincent, Delia Bell, Susanna Hoffs, Annette Peacock, Jennifer Nettles, Nicole Atkins, Cecile McLorin Salvant, and the late Martha Carson. The man-woman combination is my favorite harmony situation. Who knows why, I guess the high/low contrast and the varying sets of reproductive organs must be part of the charm!

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There’s a pretty decent Robbie Fulks set list here, SoundCloud.  He’s touring all over the place this spring, so check out where you can see him on his website.   

Upland Stories is available Friday, April 1 at all the usual spots, including Bloodshot Records (where you can pre-order now).

All photos courtesy Bloodshot Records. 

The Yawpers: Praise the Lord, They’re an American Band

By Kevin Broughton

“I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.”

--Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

Drop the needle on “Doing it Right,” the first cut of the Yawpers’ American Man – released today on Bloodshot Records – and you can be forgiven if you mistake it for a long-lost Aerosmith outtake from its heyday in the mid-70s. The frenetic, stop-and-go rhythms, squalling vocals and blistering lead guitar make it easy to get that impression.

What it does is get you by the throat and not let go. Funny thing, though: It’s two guys with acoustic guitars, plus a drummer. Wrap your brain around that, and you’ll realize this is a band that’s breaking new ground.

Walt Whitman got his last shout-out from popular culture in Dead Poets Society, wherein the late Robin Williams’ character had a classroom full of elite prep school boys standing on their chairs, shouting “Oh Captain, my captain.” Whitman was, in his mid-19^th Century day, a radical. An abolitionist before it was cool to be one, he volunteered to care for wounded Union soldiers, and even flirted with taboo sexual themes in his controversial poetry. He wasn’t scared. Nor is his spiritual protégé, Yawpers front man Nate Cook.

Politically, he’s an unapologetic progressive. In and of itself, that’s nothing noteworthy. Cook names Springsteen, Steve Earle and Woody Guthrie as some of his songwriting influences, checking all the right boxes. But it’s not superficial and because he thinks he’s supposed to, like way too many of today’s reflexively liberal musicians.

“I’m proudly and solidly from the Left, politically,” says Cook, 29. “But political correctness is fucking bullshit and dangerous. People should be able to say whatever they want without being afraid of some kind of retribution.”

Do go on, Mr. Cook.

Genre is always a tricky thing for a lot of bands; is “Americana…”

“I avoid ‘Americana’ [as a classification] like the plague. It really fucking pisses me off, because I don’t want to be dumped in with some douchebag bullshit like the Lumineers.”

He ain’t scared.

But Cook is concerned about and burdened by what he sees as the plight of the disenfranchised. “What I care most about is the individual,” he says. “These characters, these American citizens in the songs…what I’m most passionate about is their being allowed to flourish.”

It burns through every cut on the album, and nowhere more evidently than the title track:

Raise the flag, cover your heart with your hand,

Hear the call and heed the command.

Livin’ my life with my head in the sand,

Praise the Lord, I’m an American man.

Themes of desperation and resignation pepper this record. But this ain’t your grandaddy’s Woody Guthrie. This is the Black Crowes with a social conscience. (And oh yeah, it’s three guys.) About the production…

“We recorded almost everything live,” Cook says. “[Lead guitarist] Jesse [Parmet] split his signal out three ways, with lots of gain, but you’re hearing the real deal.” Drummer Noah Shomberg’s battering-ram style ties it together to make this raw, unconventional power trio’s sound complete.

Produced by Cracker guitarist and co-founder Johnny Hickman, American Man is proof positive that the Bloodshot label is leading the pack at signing and promoting the best bands and artists that defy genre and convention.

There are a couple months to go yet, but the Yawpers are clubhouse leaders for best rock album of 2015.

They celebrate themselves, and sing themselves.

Buckle the fuck up. 

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American Man is available today on iTunes, Amazon, and the Bloodshot website.

Not Here: The Pollies, Jay Burgess Defy Convention, Raise Bar

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The Pollies. Jay Burgess, second from left, in ugly hat.

By Kevin Broughton

During its print heyday, No Depression magazine made playful fun of the genre of music it had helped define. Each issue would contain a mini-mission statement, the first half of which varied. It might be “shining the light on alt-country,” or “examining alt-country,” but it always concluded the same way: “whatever that is.”

Alt-country, roots rock, Americana…all have been used to attempt to classify or categorize a sub-genre of music that continually evades the pigeon-holing.  Hard to define, but not unlike a Supreme Court Justice’s self-definition of “pornography,” most of us know it when we hear it. But what happens when the edgy becomes mainstream?

“It seems like here lately, Americana is being taken over by folks popping up trying to sound too Americana,” says Pollies front man Jay Burgess. “Maybe it’s subconscious.  And don’t get me wrong, we don’t have a problem being classified as ‘Americana.’ It’s just…” he trails off.

Fitting, as the Pollies’ second album, Not Here eludes any neat classification. Steady, poignant songwriting, tight arrangements and artful production are the constants that make it a compelling record, regardless of classification.

The album, a joint distribution between Single Lock Records and Thirty Tigers (Jason Isbell, Avett Brothers, Jonathan Tyler) opens in a big way. “’Jackson’ is a song we’d been working on and playing for about a year,” Burgess says. “When we got to the studio, we wanted to go back and make it bigger and symphonic. I knew we wanted some strings and a Mellotron in it.” And symphonic it is, along with much of the album, owing to the production’s vision.

Pollies keyboardist Ben Tanner – who splits time with Alabama Shakes – is, like Burgess, a recording engineer. “Ben and I have been friends a long time. I couldn’t make a record without him,” Burgess says.  It’s hard to imagine Not Here without him, especially hearing “Paperback Books,” a longing, ethereal tune that manages to evoke a big, sweeping Pink Floyd sound with just enough pedal-steel lonesome twang.

It’s obvious Burgess and Tanner had definite ideas of the sound they wanted to capture when they went in the studio. There’s a purposeful, deliberate feel to the whole record, reminiscent of what Chris Bell and Alex Chilton accomplished on the tragically under-heard Number One Record from Big Star.

The varied arrangements give Burgess ample opportunity to showcase a wide vocal range. Other critics’ comparisons to Gram Parsons aren’t overstated, particularly on the coincidentally named “She.” His voice can be edgy or melodic, but it’s always poignant.

Burgess, like mentor and friend Isbell, hails from tiny Greenhill, Alabama and is part of the latest generation of Muscle Shoals-area musicians eager to make their marks. (Note: Birmingham music journalist Blake Ells has written a fine book, The Muscle Shoals Legacy of Fame, that chronicles the continual, multi-generational torch-passing of musical legacies; find it.) The common link between Burgess and Isbell was Mr. McCombs, the school music teacher. He left the two with a musical bond that lasted.

“Jason’s always inspired me,” Burgess told Ells. “To me, he’s always been that popular. When he blew up, it was almost like it wasn’t anything new to me. He was a big deal already.” On Isbell’s first couple of solo tours, he made room for the Pollies (or Burgess’s former outfit, the Sons of Roswell) to open shows when possible. It was instructive. “I saw that someone like Jason could have a bad night. I was lucky to see first-hand that not everybody sells out every show.”

The Pollies will have their chance to sell out their own shows on the forthcoming tour. The album’s been finished almost a year, recorded, ironically, outside the friendly confines of Muscle Shoals. “Dial Back Sound in Water Valley, Mississippi offered us a little bit of a deal,” Burgess says. “We wanted to make sure everybody playing on the record was in the same room. We slept at the studio.” It made for an old-school recording experience.

“It’s crazy, but we didn’t have a computer in the studio,” he says. “It makes you use your ears. You can look at the knob all you want to, but you’ve got to turn it yourself.”

The finished product is worthy of the studio that’s cranked out some great work by Junior Kimbrough, R.L. Burnside, Blue Mountain and Jimbo Mathus, and has taken on the moniker “Muscle Shoals West.”

But regardless of the place, another page has been turned in the rich history of the Muscle Shoals Sound. The Pollies have skin in the game, and a record that leaves no doubt they’ve arrived. 

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Not Here is available on Amazon, iTunes, and from the Single Lock site.

A Seasoned Jonathan Tyler Scores Big With Holy Smokes

Jonathan Tyler in a recent pic from his Instagram

By Kevin Broughton 

“We were playing a show in New Braunfels, at Gruene Hall.”

It’s a Friday afternoon, and Jonathan Tyler, 30, is explaining how he came to co-write a song with the legendary Ray Wylie Hubbard, in casual, oh-by-the-way fashion.

“He initiated it.”

Happens all the time. Songwriting institutions like Hubbard regularly reach out to collaborate with young bucks less than half their age...

Make no mistake, it’s a big deal to Tyler. It just doesn’t come out that
way. A music career’s worth of highs and lows crammed into five years have given him a level of perspective that’s rare -- if not unheard of -- in an artist his age.

Atlantic records signed him and his band (formerly The Northern Lights) in 2010, and the ensuing album, Pardon Me, enjoyed modest commercial success. Enough, sadly, to raise the antennae of the Nashville suits. As Tyler toured (alongside acts like the Black Crowes, ZZ Top, JJ Grey and Kid Rock) to build an audience, he was writing prolifically and sending demos to the label three or four at a time. Then, Nashville did what Nashville does.

“Politically, I guess, there was a lot of pressure when Atlantic got involved,” Tyler says. Even after the success of Pardon Me, “there still wasn’t a record that really showed who I am. I didn’t want the edges sawed off my songs.” The inevitable separation followed, and five years removed from signing with a major label, Thirty Tigers releases Holy Smokes today.

Tyler produced it himself – with engineering help from Matt Pence, formally of Centromatic – and his break from The Man appears to be a clean one. “Hallelujah [I’ve been Saved]” opens the album and plants the flag of artistic freedom and integrity on a record filled with spiritual themes.

“Like a lot of people from the South, I grew up in the church,” says the Centerpoint, Alabama native. “My grandmother played organ in a Pentecostal congregation. Music is spiritual to me because I feel connected to a higher power when I play, or even listen to certain things.”

There are several impressive aspects to the album, not least of which is the overall production value, all the more impressive since Tyler did it himself. (He self-produced his independent debut, Hot Trottin’, in 2007; “I had no idea what I was doing.”) The arrangements are tight and versatile.

But Tyler’s vocal versatility stands out the most. He wails like Chris Robinson on the opening cut. “Disappear” is reminiscent of Faces-era Rod Stewart. He can be melodic like Gram Parsons or Ryan Adams on one song, or as rough-edged as Ryan Bingham or Ben Nichols on the next.

“Think about the Stones’ Let it Bleed,” Tyler says. “They open with ‘Gimme Shelter’ then slide into ‘Love in Vain.’ Then ‘Country Honk.’ You’ve got all kinds of different songs in one album.” His wide-ranging vocal arrangements were deliberate – on a purposeful album.

“Making this record was really organic,” he says. “As a band, we figured out what we liked. The next time, whoever produces us will have a real baseline to work from.” As Tyler and his band mates gear up for a regional tour (Texas and the South, to start out), he’s eager to see the response from the loyal base of fans he’s cultivated, but also encouraged by industry current events.

The conversation takes place the very week Jason Isbell defies gravity and scores the #1 Billboard Country album. “Oh, yeah,” Tyler says, “I know all about it, I promise. I tried to tell the folks at Atlantic, ‘Times are changing. In the next few years, the good stuff is gonna be really good.’” Oddly enough, his advice fell on deaf ears at Atlantic …you know, the guys who wanted him to go see Jason Aldean’s producer.

Buoyed as he is by the success of a kindred spirit like Isbell, Tyler tries to temper expectations. His even-keeled demeanor is all the more impressive when you tick off some things he accomplished before turning 30. Played on Jimmy Kimmel Live? Check. Have a song featured on NBC’s Friday Night Lights? Been there, done that. What about HBO?

Yes, a Jonathan Tyler song found its way into an episode of Boardwalk Empire. Here, the artist briefly allows some self-indulgence – in his own laconic way. “It did feel good having Martin Scorsese pick it up. I like that guy.” Ho-hum.

Which brings us back to that run-of-the-mill encounter with Ray Wylie FREAKING Hubbard in New Braunfels. “So,” Tyler says, “I went over to his house after a show. I had a riff I’d been working on, and we kinda worked out the first verse.”

Only when Hubbard followed up did things start to sink in with the prodigy. “About a week later, he sent me four more verses,” he says. “I said, ‘Fuck, I can’t change these!’” The finished product is “My Time Ain’t Long,” a psychedelic/gospel number that’s one of two true gems on an album without a mediocre cut.

Lane with Tyler

The other, coincidentally, is also a collaboration. “To Love is To Fly,” a duet with Nikki Lane, is a delicious, dangerous ode to toxic love and dysfunctional relationships. “I had these ideas and some lyrics, and I was thinking, ‘who could sing this?’ Nikki is friends with my bassist’s wife, so we reached out,” he says. “She has the perfect personality for it.” Indeed, who but the “Queen of Outlaw Country” could harmonize, “I’ll wreck your car, throw your keys in the river. I’ll break your heart, but I’ll love you forever?” It burns, like Tyler’s understated passion for what he does.

“I’m a huge music fan. It needs to mean something. I want it to mean something,” he says. “And even with all our success, the band is still working day jobs. It costs a lot to do this, but we’re gonna do it. We hope we can build an audience in the process.”




Touring will be different without a big label behind him, to be sure. “I’m not worried,” he says. “My mind may tell me to worry, but I’ve learned to ignore it.”

Sound self-analysis, from a thoughtful, serious, passionate young man who just made one of the best albums of the year.

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Holy Smokes is available on Tyler's website, iTunes, Amazon, and all other usual venues, including Spotify.