Country Pocket

“He holds the rich in the palm of his hand,” sings Hal Odell on the magnificent “Four Dollar Wheat.” Odell is singing from the perspective of a former farmer. Like most of Odell’s characters, he’s grieving a loss. And like most of Odell’s songs, “Four Dollar Wheat” is a piercing arrow to the heart as a result of his deep understanding of human nature and the economic systems affecting rural America. What makes “Four Dollar Wheat” a rare example of a perfect song is the simmering rage behind that line. Rather than damning the rich for his new retail job, the character takes aim at God himself. We’ve seen the changes in rural life affect the social fabric of America. Here Odell presents that raw pain without an agenda, just a feeling of being lost.

“It’s not just the economic loss, it’s the loss of community. It’s the loss of a nuclear family and the relationships. I would argue that we all live on some level in a small community, the circle in which we move,” said Odell. “In “Four Dollar Wheat” this guy was connected to the ground and the people in his community and the comings and goings of the seasons. His loss is that he’s now divorced from that world in which he lived. It’s money, it’s people, it’s the structure of your life that can be lost, good or bad.”

Another artist had recorded and ultimately not released the track, allowing Odell to try his version. Besides the deep-voiced mixed gender harmonising on the refrain making the words sound like the anguish of the masses, Odell also made another crucial change that made his version so successful.

“His version is sad, and my version is angry,” said Odell. “To some extent politically today, you see idealising the past, that we’re going to get back to the way things were, without looking at the way things were in totality. But even if you wanted to go back, the past is gone. To me the anger is not the primary emotion, it’s a response to fear, fear of the unknown, of this loss.”

Odell covers a wide range of emotions in response to loss, including another farmer who responds with frustration but more willingness to move on. “I won’t be losing money farming anymore,” sings Odell on lead track “Kiowa County.” The Oklahoma City based songwriter doesn’t have any personal experience with agriculture, but finds stories from friends to be powerful.

“Out here in the flyover part of the world, we do see a lot of change. Agriculture has been changing for 100 years. Living in a state that gets a lot of sun and a lot of wind and usually enough water to farm, the farmers and ranchers here always seem to feel one bad year away,” said Odell. “If you drive around, you can see the remnants of so many homesteaded farms that have now been incorporated into bigger farms. If they’re not torn down, they’re rotted and falling down. It feels very transitory that these people came out here and built what they thought was a permanent life only to see that culture of small family farms and ranches be replaced by these large commercial endeavours.”

There’s some satisfaction in the way his “Kiowa County” character tells the big company that the land he sold “won’t be yours anymore than it was mine.” 

“The land carries on. That’s his warning to whoever is replacing him,” said Odell. “Stamp all the marks on it you want to, you’ll be gone. And the land will be the land.”

Odell may primarily sing from the perspective of agricultural workers and men unlucky in love, but his appeal is tragically universal at this moment in history.

“We see it now with this onrush of AI driven changes. Jobs that were good jobs five years ago are obsolete. People that are wholly dependent on those things are swallowed up and have to change,” said Odell. “We get sold this idea that it’s gonna be fine. But to me looking, people don’t feel that way. We feel uncertainty. We’re afraid. I love people who are afraid that push ahead anyway. It’s not that I like to write songs about loss and failure, I like to write songs that feel true.”

“Kite Song” and “Funeral Tune” cover ending relationships, both with a sense of shock and sadness. “Kite Song” captures the inexplicable and inevitable way some connections fall apart: “For us the wind just died/ and our kite fell to the table/and we signed it and went our separate ways.” “Funeral Tune” gets more into Odell’s head as it contemplates the uses and even utility of words, certainly something a songwriter would have to consider. “Sometimes words/ain’t enough for what they’ve been through,” Odell sings, conceding that some experiences may not be describable.

“Part of it is not wanting to wrestle with these ideas and not wanting to face the fact that loss has occurred,” said Odell. “The character in “Funeral Tune” is struggling because he hasn’t let go. The woman in the song, who experienced her own loss of the life that he had, has let go of him. But he’s left trying to pick up the pieces.”

Don’t think that “Pieces of the Truth” is just a collection of songs designed to make you hurt. Odell has a tremendous deal of empathy and admiration for his characters, even those who may be difficult to root for. On “Hide the Whiskey,” an alcoholic is begging for help, knowing he needs to put his health and loved ones first. He “can’t tell the bottle no” but knows that “there’s a grave that sits there/and the name on the headstone is mine.”

“There’s a certain amount of hope in this song. But it’s not hope based in the certainty that everything is going to work out the way I want it to work out, as the character,” said Odell. “He’s afraid of the dangers of his own addiction. I haven’t personally struggled with alcohol addiction, but I have lots of it in my family. I’ve seen how destructive it is. It helped me to paint this character as a guy who wants the life that he can have. He doesn’t want to lose his family. He hopes that that’s possible, he wants to try.”

“Midnight Jesus” asks for a saviour who has been through the same hard times as our characters, though Christ certainly dealt with some unmovable elites and money handlers trampling on things that are sacred. In a more secular sense, it seems to be a cry for leaders who comprehend what the majority of us are going through.

“Harlan County Math” introduces a character who does what it takes to get by, even if it means committing crimes and harming others. It’s an acknowledgment that when systems are less fair, people will be more willing to step outside of them.

“That guy adapted not in a novel way. Breaking the rules is not a recent invention. If you look at the spectrum of how people adapt, there are plenty of people who look at the world and see a rigged game. If they can steal and cheat and lie in Washington, I can steal and cheat and lie in Harlan County,” said Odell. “I’m reporting the news, I’m not saying this is a good way to live your life, obviously. Just because that character has found a way, he leaves a bigger trail of destruction in the people around him.” 

To Odell, the biggest problem people are facing today isn’t just that things are changing, but they’re changing so quickly and are still expected to keep up.

“I have parents who had outdoor plumbing in high school. I have grandchildren who won’t know anything but an AI driven world. There’s three generations and we’ve gone so far just in this country. It’s dizzying,” said Odell. “To me the first place would be to acknowledge that living is difficult and giving ourselves a little grace for that. If we like the place our life is in, we’re gonna be resistant to losing that. That’s okay.”

Ultimately, Odell sees his tales of woe as a medicine. It’s an impressively crafted and performed elixir, but still hard to swallow at times. But the most effective medicines usually aren’t the ones that taste good.

“If you go on Facebook and doom scroll, you’ll see that everybody has a perfect life but you. But on some level you know that’s not true,” said Odell. “In some ways, my music is the opposite of doom scrolling. Knowing that other people are rowing in the same boat you are, it’s comforting.” 

Above is the full episode as aired on WUSB’s Country Pocket, including both my interview with Hal Odell and the songs we discussed, starting with Four Dollar Wheat, which works as both a character study and the most damning protest song I’ve heard in years. 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.halinthemountains.com for more.

“We all have our seasons/So why should we grieve?”  asks Amy Hopwood on Gone To Flowers, a serene examination of aging, dying, and continuing to exist. Her album sometimes can feel a little melancholy, but Hopwood indeed declines to mourn. Instead she turns to a little magical thinking, whether that means imagining how the spirit moves on or how a fairy is gifting her new features of an aging body. There’s humour, fables, and more than anything beautiful images of an afterlife where new friends made and new horizons discovered. And by the end there is an acknowledgement that this whole dying thing is all a mystery, but it’s always approached with curiosity and understanding rather than fear. 

“We’re all mortal. We will all die. What it comes down to is how you can have the best life. Can you feel comfortable with the inevitable?” asked Hopwood. “I’m getting older and everyone I know is getting older. You can’t really get away from that. I have elderly parents. I’m always drawn to things that people are trying to avoid. I think a lot of people will try to avoid talking about death, but for me it feels healthier to try to stare it in the face.”

Hopwood uses many devices to get comfortable with the thought, with magic and humour at the forefront. “I’d Rather Be Older Than Dead” captures both beautifully and brings a whole crowd along for the ride. The song is a diary of aging, with each new trait a gift from a fairy. Think stiff joints and more hair in unwanted places. It’s clear Hopwood doesn’t love all these experiences, but she still feels the gifts are genuinely kind: they come along with her ability to experience more years of living. A chorus of pickers from the Weymouth Folk Festival join Hopwood on the refrain. She said it’s proven to be a popular song. She said her examination of aging has even led to gratitude for her ‘deteriorating’ body.

“It will only get worse, that’s the awful thing,” said Hopwood. “When you look at the photos from ten years ago, you think ‘oh, I was beautiful then. I wish I was like that now.’ It’s looking at that attitude and remembering what you have now is good, relatively.”

Fellow festival attendees aren’t the only extra layer of sound on Hopwood’s album. She utilises bird song, rhythmic whispering, rushes of wind and water, and even her elderly cat in creating a very unique soundscape. She’s glad to be able to produce it all herself.

“I enjoy not having to describe it to somebody else who might not understand my work,” said Hopwood of her vision.

If there’s one song on the album that may actually elicit tears, it’s “She Became A Bird.” Yes, the track is completely at ease with the notion of death as describes an elderly woman taking notice of birds as her mind begins to slip. Slowly, they become her escape and she becomes tied up with them in memory.

“My mom has Alzheimers. She’s still with us, but very advanced now. I noticed when I was with her that she had genuinely never been interested in birds and suddenly she was,” said Hopwood. “From there, this magical element comes in where I believe she’s learning how to take flight. That’s fabrication I guess, but it’s a comforting thought.”

Still, the song has a weight to it that others don’t. The observations carry a bit of sadness and the comforting thoughts a little disbelief: “Sometimes it seemed like they called to her/and like she was answering them/but often she seemed very far away/as she talked to her new feathered friends.” It’s evidence that even for someone who is fearless in exploring the ideas associated with death, the loss of a parent is painful. Hopwood doesn’t believe her mother will actually become a bird, but there will somehow be a connection.

“I feel like energy does get absorbed into other things, other creatures. I don’t believe in direct reincarnation. I don’t believe one person becomes one bird. But energy does get absorbed into other things. Different bits of us are in elements of everything. A spirit can become maybe the glint in the eye of a bird,” said Hopwood. “It’s a way of remembering a person, even if you don’t fully believe it. It’s a way of saying their name during a normal day.”

Similarly gorgeous is “The Closest Thing To Holding Hands,” a track in which the living hang onto objects. In picking up something they used to hold, “our hands are moulded to the shape they used to know,” sings Hopwood. 

“Just by thinking about the person, you’re bringing them back in a way,” she said.

While some of Hopwood’s ideas are original or specific to her own situation, others are borrowed from the wisdom of our ancestors. They “laid a trail of breadcrumbs through the fairytales they told,” she sings.

“I like folklore and fairytales because we tend to be arrogant. Everything modern is good, everything old is bad,” said Hopwood. “We tend to feel we’re the only people who experienced whatever we’re experiencing. We’re so unique, we’re so special. Billions of people have been around before us. It would be very unlikely that they haven’t experienced a given experience or emotion. I like folklore and fairytales for that. It’s a very soft way of getting an insight into what people think was important. Like psychology light.”

The most direct use of a fairytale comes from “Igor Potemkin Meets Bayun The Cat,” a song that pairs a Russian man of Hopwood’s creation with an actual myth from the culture. Bayun is said to make a person completely healthy, but also devour them the minute they fall asleep.

“There’s the hubris of Igor Potemkin who decides he wants to be well and is not frightened of the cat,” said Hopwood. “But when you aim for perfect health, you’re putting yourself at risk of other things. You can’t really have everything.” 

She sees plenty of Igor Potemkins these days. 

“There’s a big orange one in America,” she said when asked to name an example. “People having surgery to make themselves look younger. But it doesn’t really work for so long. People have these faces that all look the same.”

Igor did indeed feel “marvellous” that day, but Bayun got his meal.

“All Shall Be Well” has few lyrics, but it’s a standout for the unreal rhythmic chanting. It truly feels ancient. “Never Said” deviates from the main idea of the album briefly to examine childhood trauma and anxiety and does it well.

Through her exploration of death, Hopwood has come to believe in a couple of things. Her idea of the afterlife is best expressed in “In the Whistling of the Wind” and “East of the Sun and West of the Moon.” Spirits drift, communicate with the living in the slightest of ways, and enter an indescribable liminal space. Owl’s hoots and sounds of gusts make it feel a little spookier than some of Hopwood’s more comforting takes on the topic. She indicated that these last two songs come closest to what she believes, though her wishes for after she dies are expressed clearly and beautifully on the first track of the album.

On “A Nice Wooden Bench,” Hopwood shows distaste for crypts, pyramids, and ash-infused fireworks shows when contrasted with the idea of a simple memorial. Even a grave is “a place to sacrifice flowers,” according to the song. She’d prefer a bench be erected in a park near her home as a place for friends and strangers to visit.

“People have a gravestone so people can go there and weep and remember them. But it’s quite a morbid place to be going. I would sit on benches and have no idea who these people are, but they would have an effect on me,” said Hopwood. “I think it’s a very nice thing to do, to leave behind a wooden bench to enjoy life, but remember that it’s finite. Hopefully now that I’ve written it in a song, people will remember that’s what I wanted.”

As for her body: “I’ll return as a million daisies if you scatter me under the trees,” she sings. Instead of being sacrificed, these flowers are growing. It’s all part of her careful balance between exploring an upsetting topic and making something beautiful out of it.

“I’ve always been aware of the fragility of life, that things can change very quickly,” said Hopwood. “I don’t want to be morbid. Knowing that, hopefully you can live a more fulfilled life. Best not to assume.” 

Above is the full episode as aired on WUSB’s Country Pocket, including both my interview with Amy Hopwood and the songs we discussed, starting with “A Nice Wooden Bench,” which reflects Hopwood’s actual wishes for her body and memorial. 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://amyhopwood.co.uk for more.

Sons of Town Hall are a truly, truly unique duo. They perform majestic folk music, mixing themes of loneliness and wanderlust with a strange magical realism and instrumentation worthy of film score. Their vocal performances are genuine, selling the tender emotions and awe at the world they’re encountering. While I generally think musicians think songs about travel are more interesting than their audiences do, “Of Gods And Ghosts” is an exception to that. It’s an adventure with surreal highs and touching lows, not a slog for work. They’re also a historical fiction comedy act, allegedly traveling the world on a raft. They send up the very earnest sorts of songs and performances they deliver so well. Their nonsensical companion podcast, paired with their album, creates a new way of experiencing music. 

“We basically created a mythic backstory for ourselves. We travel the world on a raft we built with our bare hands. We look like we stepped out of the cast of Gangs of New York,” David Berkeley, who plays Josiah Chester Jones, explained. “I wear a top hat and Ben’s in a bowler and we have different names. We deliver these deadpan stories between our songs about the adventures and misadventures that we got into that led to the writing of our songs. The result is that the show is part performance art and part concert.” 

Most folk music fans have been to a concert where an artist takes a moment between songs to tell a story about what their audience is about to hear. There may be a joke, there may be some tugging at heartstrings, but the story is usually true. 

“To twist the genre a little bit, to still have that song, but to present the most outlandish setup story is so funny,” said Berkeley. “We really believe that what we’re saying could’ve happened. I think that’s the key to all good fiction. You’re not thinking about it like you’re making up a story.”

“It could be the time we spent in New Orleans falling in love with a trapeze artist, said Ben Parker,” who plays George Ulysses Brown. “We’re these hapless but hopeless underdog in all the stories. We’re pretty useless at most things, which is why we never stick around long.” 

That these two came together at all is a result of Berkeley, an American, touring under the same management in Parker’s native England. 

“We fell really desperately in love and it’s been romance ever since,” said Parker.

“It was right around the time when I discovered the British Office, and when I met real Brits, I just found them so funny,” said Berkeley. “I credit Ricky Gervais for the band coming into existence.”

The two were separated during Covid, unable to produce music a continent apart. Instead, they worked on a podcast that pushes sketch comedy to its limits. 

“We were keen to dive into the world we were creating on stage, but obviously we couldn’t be in the same room together,” said Parker. “We started fleshing out some of the stories, some of which had just come from the songs, some had come from the ridiculous banter between our songs live.”

There’s clearly a bit of research that goes into the project. The costumes are ridiculous, but the pair worked on developing some period accurate language. When visiting an interesting location, they decided to bring it into their lore.

“We were in North Adams playing and we learned about this rail tunnel, which was at that time the longest rail tunnel in the world. It was called the Devil’s Backbone,” explained Berkeley.” And since we were there we decided we’d write a song about our digging the tunnel because it was of the period. We wrote the song and of course it was really funny to say it was good to be back in North Adams after 120 years.”

There’s a very strange balance between the two aspects of their art. The music is genuinely beautiful and rarely amusing. I discovered their podcast only after having determined that their concept album alone was touching and original enough for a spot on the show. 

“We take the music very seriously. The songs are very beautiful, I hope,” said Berkeley. “We work really hard on the harmonies and the guitar parts are really intricate. If the songs were as bad as we are in our stories, it would be a train wreck.”

The songs are meant to drive home the emotions the characters feel, be it the exhaustion and terror of a difficult job or the awe of discovering Antarctica. They deliver a magnificent set of instructions for building their mythical raft, including items of questionable usefulness like “an old barn door” and elevated purpose like “a coil of rope and faith.” When one of their characters sings “If I had more to lose/that too would be gone,” the delivery is sincere enough to generate empathy. And when their 70s folk harmony style music unleashes a line like “There’s a beast I’ve learned lurks down inside us all/Hold me down too long/gonna push down the walls,” it feels understandable and part of a story arc worthy of the big screen. “Sirens,” one of the best songs about life on the road I’ve ever heard, is a wrestle between the temptation of settling down and the drive to keep pursuing a passion at the expense of comfort. The Odyssey will be in iMax theatres quite soon, but even Sir Christopher Nolan will struggle to deliver that scene as well.

How it pairs with the comedy is tricky. I’d argue with anyone who says “Of Gods And Ghosts” fails to work as magical, metaphorical, and emotionally resonant. I don’t think I’d stop anyone from skipping the podcast if they determine the banter isn’t for them. The music holds up on its own, though some lines make more sense with further explanation.

There are great moments on the podcast to be sure. The comedy can range from a violent naked man emerging from a bale of hay, to bad accents, to lines about the reporter supposedly keeping track of our heroes being a hit with the ladies. It’s all cringe, as intended. The two central characters display an emotional innocence that makes their antics endearing, but real tragedy unfolds around them. Sometimes because of them. 

“People don’t want to be on this flat line of emotion,” said Parker of their unusual mix of genres. “They want to be on this up and down.”

“We can tell stories that might actually be pretty sad, but because they’re framed, there’s always this levity to them,” said Berkeley. “People are kind of laughing and crying at the same time.” 

I imagine that this would work best in the immersive atmosphere of a live show. Still, it’s a truly singular creative output, and a more memorable use of lockdown than baking sourdough.

The band is named after a real raft built by a real man who sailed the Atlantic on it. In the 1990s, that is, not a century earlier like on the album. The nod to history and the idea that Berkeley and Parker went out and did research to ground their insane story in some sort of plausible parallel is actually one of the funniest parts about their act. They can effortlessly justify nonsense in a way that makes it sound almost reasonable. The crisscrossing of oceans the characters do had a bit of resonance for the songwriters, as well. 

“It parallels a lot of our real life as touring musicians too,” said Berkeley, “There is a sense of a band as a little floating island out there.” 

Just to get a sense of what a show might be like, I asked Berkeley and Parker to transform into Jones and Brown and speak to me in character. They are funny. They marvelled at encountering a whale on their voyage and spoke of their reverence for ocean life, but seemed nonplussed by the fact they ate seagulls to survive. 

“They were the only things we didn’t respect,” said Brown. Well, Parker, but you get the picture.

In character, he justified their unique way of life in a line that could have actually come out of the office.

“As you lay on your deathbed, you’re going to think about the people that you met,” said Brown with a straight face. “We’re keen to voraciously ride our way through as many options of human as possible.”

Above is the full episode as aired on WUSB’s Country Pocket, including both my interview with Sons of Town Hall and the songs we discussed, starting with Sirens. The interview begins with the third video in the playlist. The first half I speak to the artists as always, but later on I speak to their fictional counterparts. 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://sonsoftownhall.com for more.

Claire Vine could have gone with any tone when writing and compiling “We Carve Our Path,” a thoughtful and direct collection of original protest songs. Vine’s compositions describe modern issues like climate change and immigration, while traditional inclusions speak more to the plight of women. What makes this work so special is that she didn’t go for catchy hooks or even passion or anger. Vine uses vocal loops and sparse instrumentation to produce an ominous otherworldly soundscape, turning “We Carve Our Path” into an urgent warning. Discordant harmonies can occasionally make for an uncomfortable listen, but Vine is not trying to comfort anyone here. She’s telling a story as honestly as possible, it just doesn’t happen to be leading toward a happy ending.

When Vine speaks on climate issues, she does so with some authority. She’s pursuing a master’s degree in sustainability and behaviour change, or rather the lack thereof. When she says humanity has its “Eyes Wide Open” as we wreck the planet, she understands that even well meaning people can choose harmful actions.

“I know a lot about what I should be doing better, but I’m not by any means a perfect person,” said Vine. “I don’t necessarily do all of the behaviours I think I should be doing, but it’s also quite hard to motivate yourself as an individual. There are other people out there having far more negative impacts than me; it’s quite hard to try to make myself completely perfect. Maybe too much blame falls to the individual person. As long as big conglomerates are having huge negative impacts, it’s quite hard for me to feel like getting the train will make too much of a difference.”

Vine doesn’t try to proscribe solutions to inaction, but does have some explanations. She also knows how to damn those who may actually be able to turn things around: “But do coins really count when there’s no food for sale?/There’s no grain for the harvest, no water in the well”

“We know what we need to be doing. We have a lot of science to back up what we should be doing globally, but the change isn’t really happening,” said Vine, “My feeling is that it’s the broader systems and structures. It’s quite hard to change anything in a capitalistic system, really.”

Migration is another issue that Vine sees as troubling and related. In both her native Britain and my native United States, it’s come to dominate the conversation at the behest of the far right.

I think they’re very linked things. Social and environmental justice are part of the same picture for different reasons,” said Vine. “The effects of climate change are really going to affect people in the global south. It’s initially going to impact people who weren’t really the people who caused the problem in the first place. I think some people struggle to care about that it’s more likely to impact people who are not white.”

What Vine didn’t add was that the climate issues we are ignoring may in fact lead to further migration toward the increasingly intolerant Global North. So when Vine uses vocal loops and sour harmonies to tell the story of migrants, it’s with good reason. Some drown. Some wind up in hotels surviving on very little. Others find themselves in even worse places than where they began. Donald Trump has sent immigrants convicted of no crimes to an El Salvadoran mega prison that operates with no regard to human rights. A formal official with the administration posed for a glamour shot with chained prisoners stacked body on top of body in the background. 

The situation in the UK is not that dire yet, though there have been attacks on detention centres and communities. When an asylum seeker attacked a British citizen with a knife in Belfast, he was rightly arrested and will face a serious penalty. The part that went horribly wrong was that riots against immigrant communities broke out, leading to burning buildings and serious threats to completely innocent people, including women and children. The crime was horrendous, but the anger was not directed toward the perpetrator. It’s also worth noting that in both countries, a crime by a cisgender white person almost never leads to calls for violence or regulation against their community, except perhaps to make a satirical point.

“There’s a rise in the violent attitudes toward migrants. It’s quite scary and I don’t really know how to approach it,” said Vine, whose song “Lost At Sea” name drops individuals from the previous Conservative government and does not address more recent events.

It is, however, characteristically intense and direct: “Empty words pay service to the dead/while on the border more patrols are places instead.” The building vocal loops on the track serve to build tension. In real life, Vine seeks to lessen the drama and encourage understanding.

“I’m wondering about the circumstances that got him to that place and what his mental health was like,” said Vine. “It’s breeding more of that type of violence. If we’re more open and welcoming to people when they get here and in need, maybe they would settle easier. It’s all just blown out of proportion because it seems like they’re attacking families that are not white that have nothing to do with this anyway.”

Vine fears the left lacks skills in messaging, unable to create the same level of disgust in their voters for the sorts of actions like the Belfast riots. 

I feel like we’re struggling on the left with a cohesive narrative. I think that’s something where Nigel Farage is a really good storyteller. He’s got this charismatic energy where he can galvanise people because he’s convincing, even when he’s just chatting nonsense,” said Vine. “I like Zack Polanski from the Green Party. I think we need more people from the left to be working together rather than splitting hairs over exactly how to do things because it seems divided. I feel sad about the Labour Party because it’s just not Labour. I miss the Jeremy Corbyn era because they’re not genuine. It would be nice to have a leader who I actually just believed.”

Vine noted that the odd sound of her album led to some displeased reviews, though I find the discomfort to be the point. If it’s about crafting a narrative around these topics, the nightmarish “Lost at Sea” or extraordinarily tense “Let No Man Steal Your Thyme” do a better job of telling the story than something more pleasant to listen to. Some stories are meant to be comforting and told over and over, like a binge-worthy sitcom or a classic folk song. Though Vine is very much working with a folk medium, she’s not looking to produce a casual listen. This album and her performances feel designed for impact. A listener may only need to hear her album once to develop dread about the direction of the world and humanity. There has always been room for distinctive imagery and harrowing tales in the world of cinema and other prestige forms on entertainment. Folk music should not be seen as an art form too accessible or rigid for a purposeful deviation from formula. Vine says her sound comes quite organically.

“It’s not necessarily a conscious decision. I don’t know what the chords are most of the time,” said Vine. “I think I lean toward the slightly more weird slightly darker stuff. It tends to go more with the subject matter.” 

She performs solo with a vocal looper, so her shows actually sound this way. 

“I tried to make something fairly similar to the way I perform live with a bit extra instrumentation,” said Vine. “I don’t like it when I buy the record and it sounds completely different, so I wanted something that was representative of my live sound.”

Extending Vine’s uneasy sound to folk standards actually feels like a natural fit. 

“It’s often the way with folk music, it’s actually kind of dark, not really a happy song,” said Vine. “But it’s often presented in kind of an upbeat happy way. I wanted to do something more representative of what the narrator was feeling.”

In that way, her work is against the grain but not necessarily revisionist. She made an exception to that rule in telling the story of “Fanny Blair,” an 11 year old girl who accuses a man of rape and winds up executed when her community believes him innocent. Vine added an extra verse that essentially says that Fanny deserved to be listened to.

“It’s very sympathetic to the narrator who’s a man,” Vine said of the standard. “He literally names her as an 11 year old girl. In what world can we believe him over a girl who’s literally 11? These stories from the past still are relevant; they just keep coming around. Why aren’t we learning from them? I just wanted to do a version of it, I added that one verse on the end, I just don’t think he’s the victim.” 

The notion that these classic tragedies still have parallels in our society means it’s all the more important that Vine puts that harsh edge on her interpretations. There’s every reason to still be sounding the alarm about how women are treated at the same time as questioning more modern problems like climate change. Vine at one point believed that these songs may become relics of a different past, but seems to have lost that faith.

“I have felt hope that things are shifting. The younger generation seems really switched on. But the way things have spiralled in the last couple of years, I feel like we’re becoming even more polarised,” said Vine. “In some ways we’re progressing and in some ways we’re going backward. So I don’t really know if these songs will stop being relevant. It would be nice.”

Above is the full episode as aired on WUSB’s Country Pocket, including both my interview with Claire Vine, my first in which both the musician and I were located in Wales for the interview, and the songs we discussed, starting with Eyes Wide Open, which describes human behaviour in the face of climate change. 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://claire-vine.co.uk for more.

It’s not easy to be young. On Foggy Mountain Mental Breakdown, Mairead Guy and Maddy Simpson of Sweet Petunia revisit their younger years. Speaking as someone who had severe struggles with mental health at that time in my life, I can confirm these lyrics are terrifyingly real. The pair can come off as so intense in their music that they can sell a song with a bluegrass foundation at a basement rock show and lighthearted enough in conversation to make it seem comfortable to talk about their darkest moments. The album is a slow descent, a cry for help, and a fascinating case study in how discordant sounds have a home in roots music. 

Guy and Simpson were talented enough and had solid enough foundations in traditional playing to get into the Berklee College of Music, but carved out a different path than Gillian Welch or Sarah Jarosz had before them. They also experienced some tough times. 

“Everyone is pretty emo in college, everyday feels like a breakdown,” said Guy.

Foggy Mountain Mental Breakdown was originally just meant to be a collection of those college thoughts, but they later arranged the songs to tell a story of someone going downhill. The title was a pun but, between that and the order of the tracks, it truly feels like a breakdown. Pleasant enough songs with low stakes lyrics and a more traditional sound start things off, but the mood shifts in “Good Part.” Rock elements creep in and the lyrics turn a bit more bitter. “I Wanna Run” truly marks the first signs of instability. The fast pace, violent imagery, and punk influenced vocals feel more than intense. It’s almost like something is off about the narrator of the song, and I mean that as a high compliment.

“It’s about a night where I dislocated my knee in mosh pit,” said Simpson. “That’s the moment of the record that’s the most manic and freaked out. That’s the craziest thing that happened in my life.”

“It was a show so no one could hear Maddy screaming,” said Guy. “She was kicking me with her non-dislocated knee.”

The image of someone disfigured and screaming for help with no one able to hear is quite literal, but it works on several levels. The pair were at the rowdy rock show because they were the first act. An acoustic pair from Berklee could, aside from one knee, keep pace with basement punk rockers. 

“I think that’s what makes us so unique,” said Simpson. “We were taking classes with all these traditional players but all our friends were from the DIY scene in Boston”

The punk influences show up throughout the album. While the occasional scream is natural on a punk album, it’s truly out of place in acoustic bluegrass. Again, this is a compliment. The genre-bending has a way of making a typically grim lyric of the genre go from mournful to concerning.

Sweet Petunia have found their community and influences and it works. They call Boston home.

“It’s just a matter of whether you’re willing to participate in it genuinely instead of as a stepping stone,” said Guy of Berklee students joining a basement gig.

It’s amazing to hear how their environment changed their music for practical reasons at first before shaping their exciting identity. Without drums or bass, they had to find some way of quieting the crowd.

“Part of why we started playing really fast and really loud was because we were playing with these really loud bands,” said Simpson. “It would be a bar or a basement where people were loud and drinking and not really paying attention to the music. We realised we needed to be able to capture their attention somehow. By the time we got to the quieter stuff, people were locked in. Our friends if they are in the crowd like to do some shushing.” 

It’s hard to say if the album would have worked as well without the reordering of all the tracks. The emotion would still explode through the speakers, but the downhill slide is what creates that sinking feeling for a listener that makes Foggy Mountain so effective as an artistic statement. The pair are delightfully casual about the fact they put out lyrics like “I wouldn’t have to worry about this corporal form” and “I’m a tiny little squishy ugly bug.” (Both from Grub, by the way, a peculiar but fantastic listen.)

“Being in your early twenties sucks really hard and that’s just what was showing up in the songs we were writing,” explained Guy. “We’re pretty far removed from where we are at now, but definitely some downers for sure.”

The two even found humour in their dramatic statements, like the sentence “I wonder how it would feel to fall out the window” in the claustrophobic “Nothin’ Yet.”

“We put it all out there. Sometimes we’re singing these songs and I can’t believe I’m telling everyone this,” said Guy, laughing a little. “We work at a music venue so sometimes we’re playing these songs in front of our boss. What other job is it chill to express that you’ve thought about throwing yourself out a window in front of your boss? And he just has to be cool about it. It is lowkey journal factory explosion sometimes. For my parents and my grandparents, maybe there are a couple of skip songs.”

(“Lowkey journal factory explosion,” for the record, is the first phrase a guest has ever used that made me feel genuinely out of touch with the younger generation. I’m sure more will follow.)

The two have since developed some coping mechanisms, especially a good laugh. Simpson joked about a “cousin’s friend’s dog” knowing about all her issues as a result of her putting them into song. They also know how to put things into perspective. 

“I think it’s always good to remind yourself that it’s not that deep,” said Simpson. 

“If nobody tells me I did anything wrong, then I guess I didn’t do anything that bad,” Guy added on, reminding us all to stop worrying about whether that one person hates you. They really don’t. They’d have made it clear.

“Puke” is the emotional nadir of an already rocky journey. It’s a state of literal paralysis driven by overwhelming emotion. “I guess I’ll piss myself,” the pair scream. In a world where almost anyone can put out content, “Puke” still feels unique.

“I was in a really emotionally fraught relationship. I was really stressed out every morning and waking up dry heaving because I was really fucked up in the head,” said Guy. “It was manifesting physically. I just wanted to go hang out with my parents like I was a little kid and not have to worry about anything like people being hurtful or taxes or going to the doctor.”

It’s the song they chose to close the album on and the song they usually end their sets with. The intensity is blistering and can provoke some real outlet of emotions from those in the crowd. And, you know, perhaps radio hosts listening and having flashbacks to a decade earlier. 

“We probably can’t put much after that. When we play it live, it’s usually the last song in our sets,” said Guy.

The skill the pair seemed most pleased to have learned from Berklee is how to perform a song without becoming stuck in it.

“I think a lot of them we’ve been playing so long that we don’t have to feel the thing as when it was written,” said Guy. “We imbue the performance with the essence of that but not having to put yourself back in that headspace makes it easier.”

“It’s lowkey acting. Part of taking vocal lessons is learning how to convey a song without having felt that emotion yourself,” said Simpson. “I guess you do that with your own songs too.”

Both members of Sweet Petunia want to remind you that it’s okay to ask for help, just like they do in their lyrics.

“Ideally, everyone knows what I need and they’re just going to give it to me but that’s just not how life works,” said Guy. 

“You have to ask people for a ride to the airport. You have to ask people to watch your cat when you’re out of town,” said Simpson, “Because people want to help you.”

“Sometimes you have to break up with your dumpy ass partner,” added Guy.

“Sometimes you just have to live your life and then you realise when you turn 25 and your frontal cortex fully develops you realise everything is going to be okay,” said Simpson.

Much like the band and “Puke,” I think I’ll stop there. I probably can’t put much after that. Except, perhaps, the video of the interview.

Visit www.wusb.fm and https://www.sweetpetuniaband.com

Cody Diekhoff, known on stage as Chicago Farmer, told me with pride that he pushed against his label to lead his latest album Homeaid with a thirteen verse epic with no refrain. He won that battle, and in the process reintroduced himself after a six year hiatus with a story that’s just as much about a high school friend as it is about America. 

Tina Hart of “Tina Hart’s Mustang” is a real person. 

“We used to hang out on these benches, and you’d wait for somebody to pick you up. Then you’d get in the car and ride around with them for a couple of hours, then they’d drop you off at the bench. Then somebody else would pick you up,” Diekhoff explained reminiscing about a time before smart phones and astonishing gas prices. Tina Hart was “the coolest girl around. She wasn’t super popular or anything but I was attracted to her because she had this really cool car. She lived a little bit faster and a little more dangerously. So the first time she asked me to hop in and go cruising around with her, I felt like I was riding around with a local legend.”

I think that’s enough of a country song for most writers, driving next to an amazing woman. Instead, Diekhoff sings through the decades and adds a little fiction. Tina really did fall on hard times and sell her legendary race car, but he invented the rich man who bought it and couldn’t drive it to a victory. The song ends in a chop shop, with mechanics coming to a revelation that’s equal parts beautiful and obvious: “It wasn’t Tina Hart’s Mustang/It was all Tina Hart.”

“People look at you certain ways in life, and money’s never really impressed me, it’s more somebody’s spirit,” said Diekhoff. “Tina’s got that spirit, especially when she drove.” 

I saw it as a parable about billionaires and algorithms dividing a nation that used to run on a spirit that was civic in nature. Diekhoff pointed to AI chopping up pieces of art and spitting out something shiny, easy, and soulless. Either way, there’s something irreplaceable about lived experience. 

“I think that’s what folk and Americana music does,” said Diekhoff. “It brings the focus back to the heart of it, which is people and the connections and their souls and their spirits.” 

Diekhoff isn’t all about slow burns. Peshtigo, a song about a wildfire written from the perspective of someone burning in it, delivers on intensity and a few hard rock elements. There’s a rawness in his yelps that matches the subject matter. Battlecry, a lament that’s simultaneously about everything and nothing, feels a bit like a sing a long for an overwhelmed world. It’s very much meant to be heard live. “Sorry You’re Sick” is a sweet love song that perhaps has a poor idea of what makes for good medicine.

But it’s the ‘story songs,’ as Diekhoff calls them, that are the best part of Homeaid. They have compelling characters, but more importantly a modern folk wisdom that’s authentically homespun.  

“Twenty Dollar Bill” is a solid reminder to always be prepared. Diekhoff’s grandfather was a country boy working the land. His grandmother came from the city. Again, Diekhoff took a germ of truth and turned it into something a bit more pointed. 

“She started giving me a $5 bill to put in my shoe for an emergency,” Diekhoff said of his grandmother. “Then when I told her I was going to be a musician, I started getting a $10. And then when I told her I was going to move to Chicago I started getting a $20. Sure enough, when I was in Chicago, I had a few emergencies and I needed to reach in and grab that a few times.”

At that point, Diekhoff takes a real encounter in Chicago and gives it a fanciful ending. 

“I was on a train late at night and this guy really wanted my guitar,” said Diekhoff. “He was a pretty scary dude and if I was sober, I probably would’ve given it to him, but I wasn’t sober, so I stood up for myself. I thankfully walked away with the guitar, which was the only one I had at the time, so I really needed it. I felt like I was 10 feet tall at that time. My dad gave me that guitar and I couldn’t really let it go.”

In reality, Diekhoff ended a confrontation by calling a man’s bluff. In the song, he reveals he also had a knife from his grandfather in his shoe and the thief winds up dead. He did have the courage of his family line with him, a bit more metaphorically speaking.

“Even when I’m in Chicago, I feel like my roots are with me and my grandparents are with me, and they were that particular night,” 

Diekhoff said. 

I had a pretty good feeling he hadn’t killed anyone, but I was curious if he carried a knife. He revealed many people actually ask him if he carried out the stabbing. 

“Johnny Cash shot that guy in Reno just to watch him die,” Diekhoff joked. “At least mine was in self defence.” 

The one place on Homeaid where Diekhoff shows real anger at the state of the world is “Mile Marker 25.” It’s a song about domestic violence, a topic Diekhoff has touched on before. “When He Gets That Way,” from a previous project, is all fury. “Mile Marker 25” is much more about empathy, but it celebrates the woman’s victory: “There’s a cross on mile marker 25,” he sings after describing a fictional explosion. 

Diekhoff is actually being a bit humble here. He and his wife actually discovered a man hitting a woman while driving one night, past a genuine mile marker 25.

“We pulled over and started honking the horn,” said Diekhoff. “The guy took off and left his girlfriend all beat up and bloody by the side of the road. My wife went over to console the woman and I called the police. They were there in like a second. We ended up going to court and the guy got put away.”

The topic resonates back to that same town in which we met Tina Hart. 

“I remember some guys that were jerks. I remember that happening in my home town and I was really upset by that,” said Diekhoff. “I was really upset to learn that during the pandemic, that was even more of a thing because people were stuck at home all the time. I never thought about how difficult it would be to live like that. The character in the story had enough and was at a breaking point and decided to burn the whole thing down.”

Diekhoff said the women in his life who have overcome hard times, including domestic violence, are an inspiration to him. It’s certainly a believable statement coming from the grown up version of a teenager with a crush on an older girl who would win drag races. He’s clearly done a lot of thinking about what that woman from the side of the road went through during her “black and blue winter.”

“This incident wasn’t a first in my opinion. She probably knows it’s going to happen but doesn’t know when it’s going to happen,” said Diekhoff. “I’m very fortunate that I have an outlet like music and other people have outlets they can turn to in their life instead of just turning to a bottle. A lot of this stuff stems from alcoholism.” 

There’s plenty of beauty in that outlet for listeners too. Diekhoff cited teenage boredom and angst as factors in deciding to write songs. Those are also factors for many who decide to start drinking. Instead, he has these downloadable and performable ways of connecting with people. There’s certainly some melancholy and outright darkness in the world Homeaid is describing. But hope is not lost. 

“I think we’re losing touch with each other and reality,” said Diekhoff. “Hopefully these songs bring people back to each other and the connection for a few minutes.”

Above is the full episode as aired on WUSB’s Country Pocket, including both my interview with Cody Diekhoff/Chicago Farmer and the songs we discussed, starting with Tina Hart’s Mustang, which turns out not to actually be about the car. 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://chicagofarmer.com for more.