Country Pocket

With You is not the first album I’ve ever listened to gushing about the magic of becoming a parent.“Tracing my finger on the soft of your ear/your breath relaxing into mine/you arrived, now I sing, a broken harmony/how slow, how fast do these days go by?” Courtney Hartman sings about her daughter Temple on “Honey, Honey.” The deep imprint such a simple action left on her is clear and well put.

I’m not trying to downplay the impact of such themes; just because many women (and some men) have expressed them to music before doesn’t make them any less heartwarming or worthy. But what makes With You so interesting and relatable is the quality and quantity of the questions Hartman has about the whole process, and the insecurities she’s unafraid to address. She is somehow able to acknowledge that there are things she knows, things she can’t know, and that sometimes they can be the same thing at the same time. “I’ll know you then like I know you now/it’s all a mystery still to me/we’re growing,” she sings on “Growing,” a song set when Temple was still in her womb. In harbouring and then nurturing a child, there’s an innate familiarity. Yet as time goes on, both mother and child change, child especially. She will grow, learn to walk, talk, make friends, start absorbing ideas from the outside world. The change and mystery will be constant, just as the knowing will.  

Hartman’s focus on the unknown proves compelling throughout. “To Carry You,” toward the end of the album, is a breathtaking expression of insecurity on the same subject. Hartman repeatedly asks if she’ll ever know what it truly means to be a mother.

“It’s not really a question you can ask, so you wonder. That song more than any other has made me cry while singing it, just because that question can sometimes feel challenging and th love feels really deep,” said Hartman. “More often than not, I don’t really feel adequate. That’s a thin place in me.”

It was a sentence that I simultaneously completely understood and yet made me want to jump in and defend Hartman, even though she’s the one who said it.

Hartman is an intelligent person with the strength and tenderness to put her heart on display for anyone who listens and the tenacity to tour multiple continents playing music. Of course she can raise a child. And yet, parenthood seems so daunting. A child is a piece of your heart that’s walking around outside you, my parents explained to me growing up, and that can be stressful. You can’t possibly be there to protect them from everything. It’s also a tremendous expenditure of energy both before and after pregnancy. First your body transforms, then your life.

“We’re often told we can take it all on, but the reality is that we’re humans which means that we’re limited,” said Hartman. “But what I’ve sensed is a clarity of what is important and what I can shed.” 

A career of touring is one of those things being shed, at least for the foreseeable future. Hartman, a guitar player regularly named as one of the most accomplished in bluegrass when she came on the scene, is now focused on local functions. She’s raising her daughter and has another child on the way. Still, she certainly has things she’d like to achieve.

“I feel really good when I’m doing things and checking lists off. So there are a lot of things about me personally that grates up against the presence and pace of a small child,” said Hartman. “Even now watching my daughter, who is almost three, try to put her shoes on, my instinct is to rush it along. But the practice of continuing to do that work of staying present and slow down, it’s a struggle for me. But it’s an important thing for me to struggle with, I think.”

Not being on the road is a challenge for a musician, but she’s still managing to write and create.

“I think the music industry wants us to think that the only way we can continue creating is if we’re on the road all the time. So I’ve had some reckoning to do with my own desires,” said Hartman. “It’s actually impossible with the way that social media works in our minds to not compare our lives to other people. Learning contentment is a superpower, not one I’ve fully tapped into.”

Hartman repeatedly put her insecurities and perceived weaknesses out there. When discussing performing on piano and fiddle in her community, she said she was nervous. 

“The tiniest new thing and all of a sudden I have my own little freak outs,” said Hartman. “But it’s good. Then you do it and you feel good and it’s important.”

Hartman noted and appreciated her growth throughout our discussion, so I asked if she had come any closer to knowing what it means to be a mother. 

“Slightly,” she said. “But the question grows. It balloons and changing. Because we’re always changing.”

Elsewhere on the album, Hartman notably takes the time to thank the women in her life who assisted her in the months described.

Didn’t you give the soothing of a mother?/How did you know just what to say?, Hartman sings of her midwife in “Companion.” “No one needs mothering/like a woman in the summer days of mothering,” she sings in “Like A Woman,” referencing her own mother as a special source of advice. It’s an aspect of new parenthood that’s rarely explored on these concept albums, let alone on multiple tracks.

“Motherhood is an experience of womanhood, but it’s only one facet of womanhood. I wanted this song to speak even more broadly to how we as a sisterhood support one another and show up for one another,” said Hartman. “I was almost startled for the desire that I had for mothering as I became a mother. That feeling is familiar. Maybe it happens to both parents, that sense of ‘golly I need guidance.’ But I think there is an innate need for that extra care.”

She expressed gratitude and awe at her own mother.

“My mom’s pretty amazing. I have nine siblings and so she’s experienced birth and all that comes with it ten times, which totally blows my mind,” said Hartman. “There’s a lot that I can talk to my own mom about, which is such a gift. I don’t take that lightly.”

Our discussion was interrupted, quite appropriately given the subject matter, by Temple walking in asking to watch Mr. Rogers. She’s an imaginative child who wanted to pretend to ski. And she’s certainly Hartman’s child, taking interest in the mandolin at a music event.

“Ultimately I want her to love what she is curious about and nurture her in that direction,” said Hartman, who is admittedly helping to foster Temple’s interest in music. “Mostly I’ll sing to her. Some of them are little songs I’ve written or songs my mom used to sing to us. Music is good. I want this to be part of her life.”

It was that desire that helped Hartman grow past an insecurity I never would’ve guessed the Grammy nominee felt. 

“My husband and I didn’t used to play music around each other. There was this little insecurity and ego thing,” said Hartman “I didn’t just sing around the house. When Temple was born, it hit me: Am I going to let my own pride and insecurities keep me from sharing music from her in just an every day way?”

Before our conversation ended, I could hear Temple playing some kind of small piano in the background. It would seem as though the strategy is working.

Above is the full episode as aired on WUSB’s Country Pocket, including both my interview with Courtney Hartman and the songs we discussed, starting with “Like A Woman,” which gives special thanks to the sisterhood supporting new mothers. The interview begins with the second video in the playlist. You can hear the show live alternate Wednesdays at 8am on WUSB 90.1 FM or check the blog to watch it as a YouTube playlist. Visit http://www.WUSB.fm and https://www.courtneyhartman.com for more.

“My attitude towards healing is that it’s never done. There’s no such thing as healed,” said Laura Burhenn, lead singer and songwriter for the Mynabirds in one of the most emotional Country Pocket interviews I’ve recorded over more than a decade on air.

There’s a very crucial distinction between Burhenn saying that healing can’t be finished and that healing isn’t possible. It’s Okay To Go Back If You Keep Moving Forward is a testament to her belief in the possibility of healing, even at the cost of wading back through the darkness and pain. It’s actually so important and so constantly ongoing that she has no choice but to. Given what Burhenn has to say on this masterpiece of grief and evolution, it seems insane to ever ‘go back’ to the sources of her pain. And yet, it’s in the exploration of those terrible feelings that she’s able to land somewhere much closer to happy by the end of this saga. 

Moving forward with deep trauma is like trying to move against a ferocious gravity pulling you back toward the worst moments of your life. In a move straight out of a NASA mission, Burhenn uses this gravity as a slingshot. It’s a high risk manoeuvre that only propels her to where she’s trying to go by circling the rim of a black hole. It’s bleak, but successful. This is not an album for the faint of heart, but it’s absolutely for anyone who’s been shattered. 

“I’m as fragile as fragile can be/I’ve been torn at the seams,” Burhenn sings on Velveteen. She describes her state well on the first two tracks, though the specificity of feeling doesn’t do much in the way of revealing what happened to her. “Ramona, Patron Saint of Silence,” will immediately answer that question for anyone who’s ever been a victim of a predator. “Did you worry about the worlds you’d incinerate with the things that you’d say?” Burhenn sings on that track. Now we’re getting somewhere.

“In survival mode, we have the four Fs: flight, fight, freeze, or fawn. Silence is a sort of freezing that we do and it keeps us safe,” said Burhenn. “In that space, I think I realised I stopped writing because I had encountered a big trauma in my life and I needed to stay frozen for a while to be able to survive. Ultimately, the song is a thank you letter to whatever force protects us while we heal. Also, it’s a letter of gratitude to the power of our voice and the worlds we could destroy when we are ready to speak out.”

Speak out Burhenn does. She doesn’t name the source of her pain, but she paints him as successful in the music industry with a perverse appetite. “Tell me how does she taste?/I know how you like your meat/Fresh as a daisy,” she sings on “Drinking Song,” one of the darkest, most stomach turning tracks I’ve ever empathised with. Burhenn was already taking risks describing assault in such raw terms. But the anger, jealousy, and initial lack of empathy she displays toward what is clearly a fellow victim pushes this track into heart-stopping territory. “Can you do her a solid?/One thing I wish you’d done for me/Please make it bleed,” Burhenn sings, letting all those emotions out at the same time as wishing her own scars would be more visible and easily understood. There’s a reason Burhenn sat on this song for as long as she did. These are hard words to think and impossible to unspeak.

“I wrote it during the Me Too era. I like many people became very aware of abuse and trauma that I had suffered and witnessed. There was a real reconning,” said Burhenn. “I wrote that song and I didn’t know what to do with it. I was so disgusted by that song, I was so disgusted by the feelings that were coming up inside of me. It was something I was witnessing across the music industry. A younger and younger person keeps getting ushered in and I know what that exchange looks like. I know personally that it wasn’t great. Often times, it wasn’t consensual. I sang that song out of so much anger that I didn’t know what to do with it.”

That’s the ‘going back’ part of the album title. Dancing on the edge of that black hole, teardrops being sucked in, barely believing there’s a way out. That’s the years of silence being broken with the most blood curdling scream. 

“There’s just this energy in this world of people taking and extracting whatever they want,” said Burhenn “I can’t abide this anymore.” 

It’s okay if you barely made it this far. Burhenn created powerful medicine with this release, but not all medicine cures all wounds. The good news is that the rest is moving forward. Crucially, “Drinking Song” puts that on display before it ends. The last refrain tries desperately to take those words back. 

“Maybe if this happens to someone else, I’ll feel less alone and we can commiserate over it,” Burhenn started, describing it as a horrible thought. 

“I don’t want anyone to experience this hell,” she finished.

“Allowing both that original thought and that more evolved, more healed thought to exist together in that song was important. It’s not neat, it’s not tidy what people experience when they’re dealing with abuse, when they’re healing,” said Burhenn. “I think part of the healing process is allowing the darkest thoughts to bubble up and get free. I think if I can say it out loud, hopefully anyone who hears it will feel less alone.” 

Once the darkest thoughts came free, lighter ones followed. Burhenn is a Buddhist and early on in our conversation mentioned the core belief of “be the change you want to see.”

“I think that we are all operating from some place of trauma, and the more we can look that in the eye and work to heal that within ourselves, I think we heal the whole world,” said Burhenn. She described wanting to write this album from a collective voice. She cited Maya Angelou, another victim of abuse who chose to remain silent for years before putting extraordinary words to the page.

“I think there’s this lineage of voice throughout human history and I feel like that’s part of what I’m singing about,” said Burhenn. “What does it sound like when people who have been oppressed and repressed finally recognise their own worth and speak up for themselves?” 

Two strains have emerged in Burhenn’s thinking. The first is best described in “Ramona, Patron Saint of Silence,” when she embodies a volcano: “there’s wisdom in the fire/and some things need to burn.”

“I struggle with what it means to be a force of peace and love in the world and the truth of the matter is that some things need to be destroyed,” said Burhenn. “Destroying the old world to make way for the new one is also an act of love.”

Burhenn sees this happening even today, in the partial release of the Epstein files and the slow movement toward justice for at least some of the abusers. She also sees a lot more systems that need to burn. Yet Burhenn doesn’t want to see people destroyed, even the bad ones. Being the change she wants to see means loving. Loving means showing kindness to people who may not deserve it at the time – or possibly ever. 

“I also wish for all the abusers to heal,” said Burhenn. “The best thing you can do when faced with an abuser is stop their abuse. Not only are they hurting other people, they’re hurting themselves too. If you come from a place from deep love and forgiveness, that’s what you want.” 

That extends to participants some systems creating a lot of trauma at the very moment. Burhenn describes her philosophy as being focused on comforting those who are hurting, as opposed to just finding a way to get through pain.

“When your outrage is rooted in love, you cannot fail,” said Burhenn. “Be they an ICE agent or a racist asshole, I fully believe that their position comes from fear and ignorance. When I come face to face with that energy, I have to be courageous and full of love.”

“We won’t surrender a thing/by disarming,” Burhenn sings on “Disarm,” a track toward the end of the album.

“It’s not that we don’t choose to fight, it’s that we choose to do it differently,” said Burhenn. “I’m here for peace, I’m not going to roll over. I’m going to take the gun out of the person’s hand so they can’t hurt anybody else.”

It’s Okay To Go Back If You Keep Moving Forward ends on a very hopeful note. “LA Rain” describes a loving embrace, a person who has become a safe place to hide. Burhenn seems to genuinely have found peace in her personal life and is convinced we might yet find it on a larger scale as well.

“Hope has clawed through some heavy shit to get to the other side,” said Burhenn, quoting something she saw online. “I think that same thing about love. Love protects the people we care about and the vulnerable.”

Systemic abuse truly animates Burhenn. She’s active on social media, posting her thoughts about healing and her opposition to what the current administration, led by an individual who has been found liable in a court of law for the type of abuse described in “Drinking Song.” Having already faced it up close, Burhenn doesn’t seem daunted by the moment.

“We’re in the thick of it,” she admitted. “But we are going to get those assholes out of power. This moment is terrible and temporary.” 

Above is the full episode as aired on WUSB’s Country Pocket, including both my interview with Laura Burhenn of The Mynabirds and the songs we discussed, starting with Ramona, Patron Saint of Silence, which covers Burhenn’s absence from the songwriting world. The interview, easily the most tearful I’ve ever conducted, begins with the second video in the playlist. You can hear the show live alternate Wednesdays at 8am on WUSB 90.1 FM or check the blog to watch it as a YouTube playlist. Visit http://www.WUSB.fm and https://www.themynabirds.org for more.

During our conversation, Sarah Morris referred to herself as a “feelings-helper-haver.” It’s a job description far too informally worded to align with therapist, but it’s not an entirely separate field. Morris is a songwriter, one who hones in on specifics and thoroughly explores emotions and patterns of thinking in great detail even if she doesn’t focus as much on the events behind them. As perhaps the world’s first self appointed feelings-helper-haver, Morris believes in capturing her precise experiences in order to reach others.

“If it’s coming up for me as a person, chances are it’s coming up for someone else and I’ll be able to more accurately serve them as a songwriter,” said Morris of her bursts of catharsis. “I want to be able to point that out to others who I love and sometimes I need that pointed out to me.”

Say Yes is an odyssey that encourages embracing love. It digs into anxieties and bitter breakups while simultaneously chasing the high of something special and defending the idea that it’s all worth it. Morris achieves that feat with exceptional lyrics and an album that feels dreamy, drifting on her high register and steadfast tendency to return to optimism. This isn’t the album to listen to in order to close a difficult chapter, but it would have to be among my top picks to have on while beginning to write a new one. 

The journey more or less begins with Morris seeing someone “Glow.” “There’s something about you lately/everybody’s saying there’s an easy peaceful way you move now/just like sun on water,” she sings, in awe of someone who is in the right place for themself. It’s heartening to hear a song that celebrates someone else’s happiness. In the context of the album, “Glow” starts Morris on a journey of healing, wanting what her friend has but without a hint of bitterness. 

“That song has a bit of envy in it but it’s also celebration. I wrote it around my birthday and I was not feeling particularly glowy myself, but it sure makes me happy to look over and see someone else killing it,” said Morris.“When someone’s really rooted in their awesomeness, they’re not even showing it off because they don’t have to. They can’t help but glow. If you surround yourself with people who are in that state it’s kind of contagious. So go by some glowy folk and celebrate them.”

As a spark for change, “Glow” is a warm but small one. Morris admits more probably needs to happen to shake someone out of a rut. 

“It really takes us a lot to finally make that move out of a situation,” she said. “As humans we are pretty willing to stay in things that don’t serve us well because it’s a lot of work to leave.”

Say Yes does not shy away from the fact that love can turn into something that doesn’t serve us. “The next thing I did was let out a howl/a full on scream leaving my mouth/you could say, you could say/a lot about a woman in her coming apart,” Morris sings on “Hard on a Heart.” The moment comes after a divorce. There’s neither celebration nor defeat here, just release.

“I thought about how it would feel to have a full catharthis of a moment, but in the back of your mind know this isn’t necessarily going to last,” said Morris. “There will be more complex follow up, but the fun of singing “Hard on a Heart” and tapping into that character is that for just a minute, she’s going with the purity of getting out of it. We’re supposed to feel our feelings.”

When it comes time to regain her glow, Morris arrives back at love. It doesn’t seem to be for lack of trying to find a safer place to rest her head. “I’ve scanned the wisdom of the ages/I have searched the stars above/and mostly found some variation of yes/the good stuff, the good stuff, love,” she sings on “Love.” 

“The One I Choose” is the standout of a very strong album for both its unusual concept and perfect plot twist. Morris essentially starts this song looking for the most ethical way to leave someone. She wants to slip out the back door, perhaps say it face to face, but anything to make a selfish act as painless as possible. “That’s the one I choose,” she sings of this hypothetical mercy. Perhaps it’s already obvious at this point, but there’s an awful lot of care in this relationship. So when Morris ultimately decides choosing to stay, it’s both hard won and fully rationalised. The fantasy fades into an even more satisfying reality. 

“I’m a mom. I had young kids at the time,” Morris explained. “Even if I would never ever, ever, ever leave, it’s still pretty normal to have those daydreams to mentally escape. But the truth is you’re never going to.”

Her thought experiment might end with stasis, but it’s still transformative. A listener will hear what it’s like to almost accidentally take stock of everything and come to appreciate it more. They’ll get a fuller sense of Morris’ anxieties and values. And perhaps they’ll start thinking a little bit about their own reasons for not escaping, even if there is a part of them that wants to.

“Two things could be true, and ultimately I think this person lands on the truest,” said Morris.

Oddly enough, I feel inclined to explain Morris’ most powerful idea with a quote from Winston Churchill: “Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” Being single and explorations of freedom may have provided that moment of catharsis throughout the album, but none of it beats that simple and elegant concept people keep making their way toward. 

“The stars are back/and I for one refuse to take them for granted” Morris sings later on in the album. Love is “light cutting through the deep black,” even if it seems to be the very thing capable of stranding someone out there in the first place. 

Though the album contains 10 tracks, I would have stopped at 8. “Some Of That Is True” feels like the natural conclusion for this story. “The details they don’t matter now/so I paint them however I choose,” Morris sings. This time, she’s driving off into the sunset with a loved one. That fantasy escape is “somewhere only we know” rather than a life alone. The dreamer we heard earlier on exploring a way out is using that same imagination to make a good situation better. She’s softened but hasn’t lost what defines her. I can certainly feel her settling into an easy glow. 

Above is the full episode as aired on WUSB’s Country Pocket, including both my interview with Sarah Morris and the songs we discussed, starting with Hard on a Heart, which opens in the middle of a breakdown. The interview begins with the second video in the playlist. You can hear the show live alternate Wednesdays at 8am on WUSB 90.1 FM or check the blog to watch it as a YouTube playlist. Visit http://www.WUSB.fm and https://sarahmorrismusic.com for more.

It is not easy to come to terms with deep wounds. On “Tango,” Jo Fuller describes a difficult relationship where she felt doubted. 

“This person just made me feel lesser than,” said Fuller. “It was complex in that they tried to disguise that view of me, or maybe they didn’t want to have that view of me but they did. But I could just feel it.”

Not surprisingly, Fuller was never able to get an apology. That often isn’t something that easily springs forth from people who have disappointed us in the first place. But if that result isn’t particularly remarkable, Fuller’s success in achieving closure is. She realized that instead of confronting someone else, she needed to look inward and confront her emotions and her role in the situation. If that sounds like someone beating themself up, it’s not. “Own your hand and I’ll own mine,” she sings, stating “it takes two to tango.”

It’s the nuance in Fuller’s exploration of emotion that makes Wood of the Grain such an impressive and mature debut. 

“I needed to see how I was participating in letting them have such a big impact on my emotional world” said Fuller. “That’s enough for me. Realizing my role because it takes two to tango. That was all the closure I wound up needing.”

Fuller approaches herself and her emotions in many ways on the album. Sometimes, like on “Paper Tiger,” a direct confrontation of a thought pattern is needed. It’s the anthem of a woman who is beyond being weighed down by negative

“Can I stalk the streets of my mind? Can I begin to make conversation with the parts of myself that I’m scared of?” asked Fuller, referring to her lyrics. “Maybe these are parts of myself or recurring thoughts and feelings that I can come to know.” 

It’s that idea that proved to be the most powerful on her album. Fuller said she struggles with anxiety but I had enough experience with the subject that I didn’t need much of an explanation on how that feels. Admitting that our world is a bit on fire right now, Fuller didn’t set out to eradicate the feeling. Instead she practiced setting boundaries within herself.

“You can give yourself permission that it’s right and it’s rational and you can feel it,” said Fuller. “And you can also give yourself permission that if it feels debilitating, that there are also steps to take that might alleviate the amount to which you’re feeling that.” 

“Welcome to the Guest House, It’s the Best House” is a fresh application of a centuries old idea, one featured in a Rumi poem. “Come sit with me dear,” Fuller sings, inviting her emotions in for something between a heartfelt conversation and a negotiation. She describes the process as having made her emotions seem whole and tangible for the first time. “I’m sorry darling/I didn’t know it was okay to feel this way,” she sings. 

“There’s a lot of sadness for the way I have historically related to these feelings so I apologize,” said Fuller, meaning she apologized to her feelings. “I don’t want to feel anxiety. I don’t want to feel fear. I don’t want to feel loneliness. Contrary to that initial impulse to push away, it’s an invitation.” 

Wood of the Grain is an album about “development in context,” Fuller says, a recognition of pain and a path forward outlined by “the wisdom of bygone thinkers.” 

“The things that we consider broken and non ideal about ourselves. They’re not just random flaws, they are things that developed in response to something in our context. They’re actually worthing of our understanding or curiosity. They’re adaptations,” said Fuller. “How pervasive that ‘I’m broken, I’m fundamentally flawed’ feeling is in our culture is a product of how quickly we pathologize something instead of getting curious about something, honoring it. It doesn’t mean we have to believe it. It doesn’t have to rule our lives. It sure as hell is not brokenness.” 

The album ends on a satisfying and beautiful note, a love letter to those who supported her through the struggle.

“It’s provided me with the soil, the fertile ground of being able to get through some really hard things,” Fuller said of the feeling of community around her. “A lot of this album is aspirational but it’s becoming reality for me. I struggle with anxiety but I’m doing it. It’s pretty exciting what it’s making space for in my life, including exploring my relationship to God and a higher power.” 

Pixar has proven that with bright colors and a smart script, personifying emotions can be extremely effective. I’m not optimistic we get anything close to this mature and impactful for “Inside Out 3.” For those wishing for a version of the franchise aimed at adults, Wood of the Grain will more than do. 

If you’re seeing this before Friday, only our partial episode with Jo Fuller is available as some of her music remains unreleased. For now, enjoy one song and Jo’s music choice along with her interview. Later we will add two more songs. Check out our guest at https://www.jo-fuller.com/ and my radio station at https://www.wusb.fm/

As Donald Trump transforms America with overwhelming backing from the Evangelical population, a new more tolerant voice in Christianity is gaining strength. Pope Leo is the most visible example, regularly preaching kindness toward immigrants and respect for democratic norms. As churches have been stormed by ICE, clergy are trying to preserve their sanctuaries. Reverends David Black and Jorge Bautista were shot in the face with chemical irritants while protesting ICE but continue to speak out. James Talrico, a minister himself, is running for Senate in Texas on a platform of biblical love. It’s not quite the majority of Christians in America, but their voices are growing louder and the progressive teachings of Jesus are seeing more press coverage than at any time in recent history. 

My latest guest, John Francis O’Mara, is both a musician and Episcopal priest. He’s been spreading that progressive message through rural Virginia to congregations that at times walk out on his homilies. His album features an image of a brown Mary on the cover. The “Forbidden Hymns” he writes are spiritual battle cries with a political edge.

“The zeitgeist and the horror and the xenophobia and the brutality and the cruelty largely is coming from a MAGA Christian white nationalist agenda,” said O’Mara. “What it’s doing for me is putting in stark terms as never before that my role as a Christian and a priest is to embody and do the things that demonstrate that there’s another kind of expression of Christian faith and justice. There’s another world full of people who are deeply troubled by what’s going on and moved to action. I’m one of those kind.”

“Walking in Babylon” captures the surreal feeling of being a Christian in a nation that justifies killing and persecution in the name of the Lord. Meanwhile, he’s focusing on building community and supporting the marginalized. “In the shadow where the empire spreads/Me and my brothers are breaking bread/It’s blue and white, but I’m seeing red/Democracy’, is that what you said?” O’Mara sings. 

“It’s making my job as a person who believes in justice and empathy and the dignity of every human person, the thing that Jesus and spiritual people have been proponents of, it makes my job easier in that I’m called to not cower,” said O’Mara. 

Is O’Mara a bit radical for a priest? Perhaps. Jesus was very much a radical in his time. O’Mara’s alarm at the situation in America and his desire to fight it is building. “There’s a holy fire inside of me/Hotter than the barrel of your gun,” sings O’Mara on “Mighty Power.” He sounds like a man ready to flip some tables.

“I’m called to be bold,” said O’Mara. “This is a time when people like myself who have a claim of believing the red letters, this novel idea that maybe he meant what he said, this is a time for us to be courageous.”

He’s not at all surprised that the administration is taking aim at protesters and creatives. 

“They have always feared the artists, especially the artists who have convictions and are willing to die for them,” said O’Mara. “More and more, I’m not pulling any punches. I believe that a better world is possible.” 

The album is much more than a collection of protest songs. O’Mara prays and converses with holy figures including the Blessed Mary. He laments the state of things and tries to draw strength from their spiritual relationship.

“I was born on the feast day of St. Juan Diego. He’s the Aztec peasant farmer who received the vision of Our Lady of Guadalupe, so I have a deep affinity for her,” said O’Mara. “Mary is an archetype of the divine feminine. Protector, nurturer, life giver, the womb of creativity. That feminine presence in our spirituality, our narratives, in our hierarchy, it’s still so unbalanced.”

O’Mara is trying hard to rebalance. He doesn’t have a set parish and often visits other churches that don’t have full time priests. He offers his congregants stern words and stands up for his principles. When a church invited him to lead a service that featured military fight songs, he told them to change the program or find someone else to preach it. 

“Celebrating the machines and mechanism of war is different than honoring soldiers, especially wounded soldiers or families of soldiers who died,” said O’Mara “I want to live in a world someday, and I believe it’s possible, that we won’t need those fight songs and we won’t have to go to funerals of dead soldiers because war will be no more. I firmly believe that’s possible. I have to. That’s the promise of the gospel: to let it be on Earth as it is in heaven.” 

O’Mara finds himself in a difficult position trying to share a different interpretation of the gospel than most American protestants are familiar with. At a time when many evangelical faith leaders openly support and even lay hands on Trump, O’Mara is trying to draw attention back to basics like ‘do unto others.’ 

“The heart of the gospel is love. It’s a universal and unconditional love,” said O’Mara. “And that includes the people in the pews. It requires of everyone to extend that same unconditional love, especially to those that are other than them.”

There are calls to action on forbidden hymns, at times quite explicit.

“Do you have the courage to share what you’ve been given?” sings O’Mara on “No One Gets Out Of Here Alive.”

“It’s an invitation to people listening to my record to take this shit personally,” said O’Mara. “It’s the beginning of the end of any society when the pain of others doesn’t register with the whole.”

Perhaps my presence in Europe inspired O’Mara to speak on the topic of emigrating, but he brought it up unprompted.

“I thought about leaving. My family got here two generations ago from Ireland. Sometimes when I have that imaginary or not so imaginary conversation with my ancestors, I imagine them assuring me that it’s okay to come home,” said O’Mara. “But at the same time, the disenfranchised and disinherited people of America, those are my allies, those are my kin. My intention is to make choices about who I spend my time with and my money for.” 

An idealist, O’Mara believes in bringing messages of anti-racism into even parishes that might be hostile to it. He’s perfectly content to preach through walkouts or groans and questions whether some congregants understand that coming to church is about more than spiritual affirmation and checking an attendance box. 

“I’m glad you’re in the building, but that’s not why you’re here,” said O’Mara, recounting the scenario. “We’re here to make a better world a reality.”

Still, O’Mara is at his most powerful when he’s earnestly praying for a better tomorrow on “Let It Be So.” It’s not as pointed a song, but it gets to the heart of his beliefs: “Yes, another world will come/another world, I swear/Where the wars we’ve been wagin’ for ages and ages/Will finally refrain to an end,” he sings. 

It’s this kind of faith, whether in God or the constitution, that is required to stand up in times when the price for speaking out is so heavy. O’Mara seems like he’ll be particularly difficult to silence. Beyond being determined to be bold, O’Mara seems ready for the new role of progressive spiritual warrior.

“I want to have eloquent anger,” said O’Mara. “I want to have decisive outrage and an impatience with injustice.” 

Above is the full episode as aired on WUSB’s Country Pocket, including both my interview with John Francis O’Mara and the songs we discussed, starting with “Walking In Babylon,” which finds our society in a state of biblical disrepair. The interview begins with the second video in the playlist. You can hear the show live alternate Wednesdays at 8am on WUSB 90.1 FM or check the blog to watch it as a YouTube playlist. Visit http://www.WUSB.fm and https://johnfrancisomara.com for more.

“Where Do You Come From” is the simple question posed by the title of Glen Peters’ latest album. As it’s posed in the song itself, the question is loaded. It’s an act of exclusion from British society. Peters delivers a far more complex answer to the query, arguing that he comes from India, his birthplace; Britain, his adopted home; the human race; and most poignantly, the sum of his experiences. “Home is my echo/my last refrain,” he sings on an earnest track.

“Most people regard home as something physical. At any point in time, it probably is,” said Peters. “But for me, home is a journey and it’s the trail that we’ve left, the memories. In a way, those things are more important to me. A lot of wonderful things come to mind.”

Peters has been embracing the UK folk music tradition for half a century now and sees in it a bit of the harmonies of the Northern Indian Roma people. In a world that increasingly wants to categorize and exclude people based on skin color or birthplace, Peters presents a powerful argument that identity is a multifaceted thing based on ancestry, experience, and the others around him. Both India and Britain are important to him.

“One is a physical place and the other is a spiritual place. I think the two move in and out of each other,” said Peters. “I was born in India, I went to school in India, and a lot of my early vivid memories are in India. People, family, music, and my early childhood.” 

Of course growing up doesn’t stop there. On “When You’re Sixteen,” Peters recalls the experience of becoming more independent and exploring a new homeland for the first time. London “set me free,” he sings on the autobiographical track.

“Going from one environment to another, also within myself going from a teenager to an adult, was a very exciting time to be,” said Peters. “The conflation of those two made quite an exciting time for me.” 

Peters does more than sing about his complex identity on the album. He also plays with it, switching from singing in a fairly standard British accent to emphasizing his Indian roots on songs more deeply rooted in the traditions of his homeland. In “Oh To Be An Aries,” he explores concept of astrology, extremely popular in India, through the lens of what would have happened if moving to a different time zone would have changed his sign. 

Peters’ discussion about having to conform like a Pisces rather than be outgoing like an Aries mirrors the idea of moving countries quite neatly. A big fish (or tiger, so to speak) in newly independent India may seem less impressive in a big pond like London. Peters admitted he had to take actions to conform in his new home.

“There’s a certain level of excitement in which I would have been brought up to speak. I felt I had to moderate some of that,” said Peters. “So yes, I did change the way I interacted with people.”

As a recent transplant to Britain myself, I couldn’t help but knowingly laugh at some of his confusion back in the 70s.

“In Britain it was quite common for someone to ask you to do something. ‘Would you like to move box A to room B?’” said Peters. “The ‘like’ wasn’t an expression in terms of giving you an option, it was asking you to do that. Initially I found that quite confusing. ‘No, I wouldn’t like to do that.’”

Today Peters is very much a roaring Aries in Wales. He owns a solar plant build in an estate that also hosts artistic events, including the debut of this album.

“Music, very broadly speaking, is an important part of my life in terms of entertainment, having fun, making friends, reaching out to people,” said Peters. “But it’s also very therapeutic. It wasn’t the main focus of my life. It wasn’t something I dreamt about all day long. But it was woven into the texture of being me.” 

Musician and businessman. Immigrant and successful Briton. Peters comes from there, but also here.

“I will use [the] two parts of me when I feel I need to,” said Peters. “You can only make good use of these things instead of trying to be one person.”

Also woven into the album are episodes of British history that somehow involve people from the crown jewel of the old empire. In “Sepoy’s Lament,” he reflects on decisions to defend the imposed social order in India. Far more inspirational is “Kahn Of The Wire,” which tells the story of Noor Inayat Kahn, a brave young British woman who shared a skin tone with Peters. He marveled at Kahn’s ability to confront the teachings of her faith when presented with a threat as serious as the Nazis.

“Sufi is a Muslim sect that’s very mystical and strongly pacifist in their beliefs. The war started, she became aware of some of the nastier sides of war, and decided to put aside her pacifist tendencies and became a radio operator,” said Kahn. “She was a spy. She was airlifted into France and was the first woman to be a spy in Nazi occupied Paris and she passed vital troop movements in the days before the D-Day landing.”

She was captured, escaped, captured again, tortured, and killed without giving up any information. Peters learned about Kahn when Prince Charles dedicated a statue to her and has since pondered about her deeply, even wondering how that pacifist faith might have helped her during her darkest hours. 

“Every time I sing it I’m quite moved,” he said of the song he wrote for her.

Peters believes that current Britons don’t necessarily learn about the role subjects of the empire played in shaping the strong nation the UK is today.

“I think there is a lack of understanding,” said Peters. “Even I wasn’t aware that there were 1.5 million people from the Commonwealth who played a huge contribution in both WWI and WWII. But that’s changing right now.”

Identity is a complicated thing, especially in a country that once laid claim to one quarter of humanity. Candidates standing for election in Britain today have gone so far as to say that even some people who were born in Britain may not actually be British. Others in territories still controlled by the UK can argue their families became British simply because a ship landed on the shore and the men inside declared themselves in charge.

Peters’ concept of identity on this album feels more fair as it takes into consideration the experiences and opinions of an individual as they identify themselves. He sings on this album about being the “wrong shade of brown” in an accent you might not associate with someone his shade of brown. It stands out as a wonderful example of how judging someone by their birthplace and appearance may not give you anywhere close to enough information to understand their story, values, and experiences.

Above is the full episode as aired on WUSB’s Country Pocket, including both my interview with Glen Peters and the songs we discussed, starting with “Home Is,” which goes on for a few minutes because the answer is not so simple. The interview begins with the second video in the playlist. You can hear the show live every other Wednesday at 8am on WUSB 90.1 FM or check this site to watch it as a YouTube playlist. Visit http://www.WUSB.fm and https://rhosygilwen.co.uk for more. Peters doesn’t have much of an online presence as a musician, so I included his arts centre instead.

Heather Aubrey Lloyd has learned to write her own hymns. Panic Room With A View is very much an artifact of the pandemic, but the focus on hope, resilience, and faith is just as relevant in 2026 as political issues loom large instead of a virus. Lloyd’s cries for hope are sometimes gritty and bleak. Sometimes they come out like a whisper. They are among the most believable tracks of their kind as a result. The inspirations are strange and specific, but the messages apply to just about anyone listening. 

Looking at a music festival’s FAQ page, Lloyd stumbled across the fairly literal question ‘are you lost?’ Sitting in the very found location of her home, Lloyd was still floored by the question. Yes. In a way, she did feel lost.

“Every song I’ve ever written that sounded resilient or optimistic was the prayer I only half believed. I was writing my own hymns long before I expected anyone else to buy it,” said Lloyd. She has mixed feelings about the fact her pandemic song hits hard today. “I long to be made irrelevant, but I guess I’m on some level I’m grateful the lessons and maybe the hope transfers.” 

Lloyd has tried her hand at journalism and teaching. A chat with her about songwriting and the deep thought she puts into the ethics and deeper truths of each song makes me realize she’s in the right business now. Lloyd sees other benefits.

“I get down,” said Lloyd. “Thankfully I’m a folk singer so no one expects me to be happy.”

Both teaching and having step children did lead to a serious change for Lloyd. Her personal doubts had to take a back seat to the needs of the young people around her. “I found the way and I made it through/to pass it down to you/And you will too,” she sings. Eventually, that changed Lloyd’s outlook. 

“Whether you have opt to your own or not, time spent in the education or uplifting of children in your community not only forces you to care or have investment in the future, it will also heal up things in you,” said Lloyd. “I made vows to my step kids. First, I would never lie to them. Second, I would never ask them to do anything I wasn’t first willing to do myself.”

Her time as a journalist in Baltimore also deeply shaped how she treated songs for a time. The experience also reminded her that people are more alike and resilient than she imagined.

“I was going into parts of the city where people said you should be afraid,” said Lloyd. “People are people and for the most part they’re just trying to not die in some stupid way. I went into a neighborhood where they had given up hope that they were going to control the drug dealers in the area, so they had gone to public works just to ask for speed bumps so they’d at least slow down and stop hitting their kids.”

She soon was approaching songs with the fact checking attitude of a newswoman. Sometimes, like when she learned details about the settings of one of her songs, the instincts served her well. Other times, she had to remember that songs are meant to reflect a slightly more complex version of the truth. 

“Where journalism and folk songs have an interesting intersection is that when I first started writing song, I was very uncomfortable not writing the absolute truth,” said Lloyd. “Songwriting says if you can find all these truths and bind them and unify them, that’s the greater truth born of the stitching of stories.”

Her new outlook allowed her to tell the story of graffiti in Aleppo, Syria without researching the people behind it. The graffiti read: “To the girl who shared the siege with me, I love you.”

“The journalist in me had to look certain stuff up because I don’t live there. Your brain says that’s a desert people, they haven’t seen the snow, and thank God I did look up the weather because they do get snow. That’s a thing journalism and folk singing both demand: I need to alter my assumption,” said Lloyd of the song. As for its deeper truth?  “When we are facing oblivion, and there may be nothing else we can do, what else is there but turning to the person next to you?”

Lloyd eventually discovered that her song had a happy ending: the author of that graffiti survived, and he’s still with that girl. The raw emotions of fear and human connection remain in Lloyd’s song. It doesn’t have a clear happy ending because its greater truth was to remind listeners that it’s human to root for love and safety. “Though we would have never been so bold/between the bombs she slipped her hand in mine,” she sings. 

“The songs are the way I tell myself I’m engaging in those conversations in a sneaky way. The Girl Who Shared The Siege With Me is the definition of show don’t tell,” said Lloyd. “The fear of siege for no reason other than other people’s conflicts is a universal thing. Folk songs look to tap into the universal thing to jar people who think that their problem or feeling or hatred or bias is somehow unique.”

Being an activist and a musician is a tricky line to toe. Lloyd doesn’t want to overestimate or underestimate her power. 

“I don’t want to walk around like a song can change the world, but every once in a while, a song has changed me,” said Lloyd. “People are stubborn. You can talk and talk and talk, but deeply held beliefs are not easily dispelled even by logic. Music attacks the feeling. If you can get into somebody via a pathway that seems neutral enough, [they] might have to address other things within [themselves].”

The most fascinating song on her album, The Stove, is based on a dark fairy tale. In it, a girl with a secret she cannot tell is encouraged to unburden herself in a stove. A benevolent king listens through the pipes and starts working on a way to help her. For Lloyd, this bizarre setup was akin to religion or therapy.

“Years after I stopped going, I held the room in my mind this invented place I could access. I pretended sometimes that he wasn’t even real and he was always a figment of my imagination,” Lloyd said. “The unburdening of yourself is desperately important, especially in these times. I find rage eats me now. I never knew I had so much rage. I had sadness, I had anxiety, the rage is new. The stove is meant to be this place of peace, this place of lack of judgement. A place where you’re allowed to be selfish and express all of these things.” 

In asking if the stove is like God, or if God even exists, Lloyd decided to explore some profound questions about the nature of religion and its utility even if it’s not true. Rather than answer questions about what she believes is out there, she focuses on how faith in something is an important salve. “I know mercy is uncertain here/but how the world it burns us,” she sings. 

“If more people were vulnerable with their God, we would probably do a lot less evil in this world,” said Lloyd.

The second half of her album is more optimistic, focused on love, and is more ordinary than her skilled spelunking into the darkness of the first half. Still, one great message comes across. In her song “Hum,” Lloyd argues that sometimes it’s wise to do a little less in order to stay strong in the long run. It certainly fits nicely with some of the tougher ideas on her album. Some days we can think about the lovers under siege and scream into the stove. Others, humming along is what we can handle so we can care for ourselves and loved ones. Just as with her songs about profound pain, the relatively sweet “Hum” is an important part of healing.

Above is the full episode as aired on WUSB’s Country Pocket, including both my interview with Heather Aubrey Lloyd and the songs we discussed, starting with “Are You Lost?,” which comes from a hilariously literal inspiration. The interview begins with the second video in the playlist. You can hear the show live every Monday at 4pm on WUSB 90.1 FM or check the blog to watch it as a YouTube playlist. Visit http://www.WUSB.fm and https://www.heatheraubreylloyd.com for more.

Paul Armfield is a folk musician who has been an independent bookseller for more than 30 years. Both of those creative passions meet on Between the Covers, an album full of original and recycled songs about books. 

Yet this isn’t simply a love letter to the written word. Armfield’s originals show a deep knowledge of how creatives and readers think. “Bookmarks” is about the stories that shape us, “the ones where we find ourselves,” as Armfield sang. 

“They exist deep in our psyche, these books open doors for us when we are younger,” said Armfield, describing seeing picture books at an exhibition that he remembered from his childhood. “The books that as a young teen opened my heart were the books that I shouldn’t be reading.”

Later in life, Armfield feels as though we are more likely to be drawn to art that affirms our beliefs.

“There are poems that appeal to you at certain points in your life that either come as a salve to a wound or an inspiration,” said Armfield. “Something that makes you feel that your experience is shared and you’re not alone.” 

These days, Armfield is not bothered by seeing one of his albums for resale. Earlier on, it stung. “Paperback” takes the point of view of the creatives who put out their work only to see it receive minimum interest.

“There are other books we still enjoy that we are keen to get rid of. These are the books that if you go to a second hand shop that you’ll see in abundance. These are the books we devour but don’t treasure culturally,” said Armfield.“How it must feel to go into a charity shop and just see your life story thrown away for pennies.” 

Armfield doesn’t have the sort of views you’d expect from a songwriter and physical seller of books. For one, he loves audio books and discounts the notion of physical ownership.

“I’ve read more books this year as an audio book than I’ve read in many, many years. It’s fantastic. I love it. It’s a revelation I’m not precious about books or music,” said Armfield. “This is the worst thing to say as a musician who also sells books, but I wrestle with the idea that we need the physical format. In a society that is concerned with waste, they are two items that we don’t need to have physical copies of.” 

One of his more interesting takes is that creatives shouldn’t expect to make much money on their art and should have a day job. Money, he says, should not be at the center of it.

“I just wonder if that’s the best motivation to make the best art. People who are creative would be doing that whether they were being paid or not,” said Armfield. “The artist who is created the product is quite often at the bottom of the food chain. The publisher is getting paid first. For the majority of the people creating, they’re not making as much money as the industry that sells the product.” 

“The Books Beside My Bed,” at first, seems like only the confessions of a book hoarder. Deeper down, it’s a tale of time management and unrealized goals. “Each book a good intention,” he sings.

“The books and the records on our shelves, I’m not sure they reveal much about us as people other than the people we want to be. If you want to know what a person’s really like, you look at their browsing history. 

The song ends with Armfield fantasizing about have infinite time to read, even after death. It’s something he said he resonated with his audiences who can relate and tease each other over it. 

There’s something comforting in hearing that a career bibliophile falls behind in his readings and even falls asleep trying to enjoy art. It makes it just a little easier to admit that I’ll often pass out listening to an album while searching for a song to play on air. 

Armfield didn’t view his songs in terms beyond books, but they certainly have more applications. All of us have those to do lists, those moments that have shaped us, and those times we’ve put ourselves out there. One thing he agrees the songs show is how precious time is. 

“I love the idea of waking up and reading for an hour in the morning, but I wake up in the morning and think of all the things I have to do that day and I go out and do them,” said Armfield. “I think of reading as a luxury. If I have one day a year to just sit and read I consider myself lucky.” 

Above is the full episode as aired on WUSB’s Country Pocket, including both my interview with Paul Armfield and the songs we discussed, starting with Bookmarks, which for Paul involves both the gingerbread man and King’s horror. The interview begins with the second video in the playlist. You can hear the show live every Monday at 4pm on WUSB 90.1 FM or check the blog to watch it as a YouTube playlist. Visit http://www.WUSB.fm and https://paularmfield.com for more.

Josh Fortenbery wrote “Heaven’s Above” as a “eulogy for nihilism.” He’d spent most of his life seeing a broken system he couldn’t fix and living for himself. Now, seeing a new generation spring forth from his friends and family, he’s decided he has to at least try to improve his community despite knowing full well he doesn’t have any of the answers.

“At some point it becomes impossible to stand on the sidelines and watch things fall apart without recognizing that you’re somehow complicit,” said Fortenbery. “I’m not sitting here on a cloud above it all, I’m in the middle of it.” 

Fortenbery’s album Tidy Memorial, with songs titles such as “Is It Me?,” grapples with current and pandemic era politics primarily through self examination and calls for understanding. There are a few songs on the album, “Steven,” for example, that show Fortenbery is not neutral in any discussions over justice. But he tends to focus more on structural problems and individual solutions. “I could argue with a statue and still think I won,” he sings in “Groundhog.” 

“I think we all intuitively understand that it’s becoming more difficult to talk about meaningful things without devolving into name calling,” said Fortenbery. “Worldwide, we’re all dealing with the same information bubbles and same social media algorithms that push us into these media diets that are tailored to our own suspicions and biases.”

“Nobody cares like I do/But I’m pretty sure you think/that nobody cares like you,” sings Fortenbery in “Heaven’s Above.” It doesn’t seem like he’s calling for a change in viewpoints on behalf of either party, rather a little bit of empathy and recognition of similarities. He’s smart enough to realize nothing will change until those bubbles and silos start breaking.

“Is there a world in which enough people realize they’re being lied to? Maybe that makes folks start to ask more questions,” said Fortenbery. “Maybe this is all very optimistic, but I’ve found it more difficult to lean into complete hopelessness because it’s harder to get out of bed that way.”

If “Tidy Memorial” calls for greater dialogue between opposing sides,“Poppy’s Waltz” is a recognition of both how easy and difficult that can be. On the one hand, Fortenbery had a good relationship with his grandfather and found many admirable traits in the man, as the lyrics suggest. Still, they disagreed on the topic of Israel and had to avoid the topic. “Love can’t bridge all gaps,” Fortenbery admits.

“Most American Jews his age came to view the foundation of the state of Israel as destiny and a safe haven. I’ve grown up with a different set of life experiences. I’ve always viewed it through the lens of apartheid, separation, oppressive state control, treating people the way you don’t want to be treated,” Fortenbery said. “It was less of a disagreement and more of a taboo in that household because there was no way to see eye to eye. As some of the lyrics give away, I’m prone to think I’m correct; I still think I’m right about this one. That doesn’t mean that he was a bad person. I still think you can live your life in a way that shows you’re compassionate, kind, caring, while holding some beliefs that I might find difficult to accept.” 

Years into a tragic situation that saw more than a thousand Israelis kidnapped and murdered and tens of thousands of Palestinians killed and Gaza flattened, the topic remains extraordinarily difficult to address. The Trump administration has essentially taken partial control of universities on the basis that they didn’t do enough to protect Jewish students from those protesting Israel. Support for Palestine, or at least opposition to the Israeli government, is now a mainstream view in the Democratic Party. Trump takes credit for having secured a ceasefire in the region, but American bombs are still landing in Gaza. It’s difficult enough for me to talk about situation this fraught and complex, but I’m not being asked to weigh in. Fortenbery is.

“It feels to me like a tricky conversation to enter in the regular world as a Jewish person. There certainly has been an increase in antisemitism, though I don’t equate anti-Israel sentiments with antisemitism,” said Fortenbery. “It’s not like I have any particular set of skills that would fix anything, but it seems like there’s an expectation of you just because of your born identity.”

Fortenbery passes some judgement on local police on “Steven,” which describes a tragic confrontation between them and a homeless Alaskan. But he’s mostly asking questions, sharp as they may be: “Is that life?/Is that it?/Something you can take away and say he deserved it?” 

“He was a pretty quiet, gentle guy, but like many people who are homeless had mental struggles. He had this big beautiful malamute dog who always wanted a pet,” said Fortenbery. “The police wanted to question him in conjunction with some alleged assault that happened downtown. He was having an episode and always carried a knife with him. They claim he took a step toward him and he was shot and killed. This is not a unique story to Juneau. This happens everywhere. I don’t know what the right answer is but certainly we’re not doing enough.” 

With tough questions like this, with political conditions worsening throughout the world, with Alaska quite literally entering perpetual darkness, Fortenbery admits he may be spoon-feeding himself positive thoughts. But he’s forming them through positive actions and involvement in his local and music communities. Even the negatives he focuses on in his music aren’t representative of all his thoughts.

“We can make people feel. We can make beautiful art. We have a nice afternoon together. We can go out and provide food to people who need it. It’s not hard to go out and volunteer at a shelter for the afternoon. There’s a bunch of little human interactions that are available to everyone. If I just read the news, then I’d be sucked into that pit of despair that if you just listen to my songs, you’d think I’m in all the time,” said Fortenbery. “But music is my way to process the things that upset me so that hopefully when I venture out into the world, I’m not a miserable bastard all the time. Hopefully, I’ll find a little bit of beauty and joy because this is the only chance we’re going to get at living.”

Above is the full episode as aired on WUSB’s Country Pocket, including both my interview with Josh Fortenbery and the songs we discussed, starting with “Heaven’s Above,” which seeks self improvement in an increasingly absurd political environment. The interview begins with the second video in the playlist. You can hear the show live every Monday at 4pm on WUSB 90.1 FM or check the blog to watch it as a YouTube playlist. Visit http://www.WUSB.fm and https://www.joshfortenbery.com for more.