Country Pocket

On “Without Making A Sound,” the final track on Bella White’s so-far career best and 2026 best album A Sign In The Weather, White describes feeling that a relationship is over as like a change in the weather. It’s not exactly something she’s choosing, but something palpable and in need of a reaction. 

“I feel like I wrote this as I was ending a chapter in my life. It’s having that perspective and recognition that something isn’t working. It feels like a weather system coming down. It’s everywhere. I can’t pretend it isn’t because it’s in the air,” said White. “I have to stop faking it. Because I’ve been faking it, and that’s not going well. I’m now feeling this coldness. I’m feeling it in a way that’s unsustainable.”

Though “Without Making A Sound” was the first song White wrote for the album, she chose to place it last. It makes sense in a way; there’s a certain finality to her language on the track. The magic of A Sign In The Weather is that White chose to go both backward and inward when building a story around her first piece of writing. It’s also in the way she chose to assume a slightly naive disposition, describing the events in her life and her emotions with a bit of astonishment and as though she had the power to reject them. When she experiences heartbreak, that slightly bewildered approach makes it feel like she’s explaining heartbreak for the first time in human history. It’s refreshing and deeply cutting. “There is just no space for the bad times again/we place our sadness down, so can it come to and end?” she sings on “Better.” Her plea to the universe is so completely doe-eyed and unrealistic that it hurts to hear. It’s an absolutely brilliant device.

There’s no particular change in White’s life that covers all the fractured relationships covered on A Sign In The Weather, though a breakup is clearly part of it. Depression is, too. Again, White describes it as though she isn’t quite grasping what’s happening in her mind, isn’t quite in control of the narrative. Lyrics from “Little Things” include “There’s a difference between what I’ve done today/and what I’ve said I’d do” and “I’ve hardly even cried/though it’s boiling up inside me.” Her lyrics suggest that she thinks she can set a narrative and overcome overwhelming feelings, though on another level, it’s clear she knows she can’t. She blames it all on “little things inside me singing ‘I don’t want to.’”

It’s the ever present feeling of yearning, of wondering what could be, what’s around the corner, not necessarily feeling right with yourself all the time,” White said of those little things. “Even if you are, I’m often feeling like I’m missing something.” 

What White is describing here isn’t exactly unheard of. She mentions being 24 at the time she wrote the album and seems to feel a disconnect with peers who are maturing at different rates. Meanwhile, her own emotions are becoming easier to identify, but aren’t responding well to being repressed instead of given space to breathe. Just about everyone who was once a young adult should be able to relate. It’s that disconnect between being able to name and being able to truly manage painful feelings and situations that White uses to generate unease and sadness on A Sign In The Weather. 

“Lying is easier than accepting reality. Not even lying to someone in particular, but lying to yourself,” said White. “There’s this tension in feeling like you have to mask or hide something because it’s easier than facing the music.”

During our conversation, White indicated both that she’s made some progress but hasn’t completely found her footing for her next phase of life. In one situation, she remembered realising “I have to submit to this feeling in order to move through it,” and described doing so as something that was positive, but didn’t feel positive. Talking things out has helped her. 

“I try to centre myself if I can, which can look like writing in my journal, writing a song, calling a friend, talking it through. Or it can look like doomscrolling on my phone,” said a refreshingly candid White. “It can take on a lot of different appearances depending on what it is that I’m feeling. But when I’m in my best version, whatever that means, it would look like some kind of verbal processing.”

White, who sometimes speaks in a rather singsongy voice, said she feels time in chapters. When she sings “I heard the song end/and I lost a friend,” she compared it to getting a cue at the end of an event that it’s time to leave because the music has turned off. A portion of the thought is taking place in her unconscious mind, but White is recognising the patterns and acting on them. That doesn’t make it any easier.

“Whether or not it’s a romantic relationship or a friendship, when it’s the end of the chapter, you’re often holding up a mirror, seeing yourself through a different lens, because something that’s been really stable in your life is not there anymore,” said White. “You’re having to become independent again or figure out how to stay grounded or stay yourself without a sounding board or someone to depend on.”

When White describes herself quite literally standing in front of a mirror in “Doing Well,” it takes on several meanings. On the one hand, looking at herself presenting well in a mirror is natural, as she’s trying to fake it until she makes it, she explained. On another, it really does feel good to see yourself standing up a little taller. 

“Sometimes I don’t really know how I am until I’m faced with it,” said White. “Sometimes it does take seeing it back to see that you’re feeling good.”

“I thought that I’d be worse off that I am/and I have not been,” she sings on the track. Yet, she implies the situation is still quite delicate. “I’ve been doing well for the first time since you called,” she sings, indicating that the next struggle is likely a call away.

In this way, the most positive emotions expressed on the album are not necessarily positive. On “Dream Song,” White sings about feeling loved and protected. The title indicates that it’s only a wish, though at least it’s a clear thing to look for in future connections.

“Pink Living Room,” though certainly one of White’s more openly self aware songs, does an amazing job at demonstrating what her crumbling relationships were doing to her. She first mentions having to apologise for things she shouldn’t have to in a prior relationship before revealing that “now I’m here with another man/he’s got a pink living room and a warm hand/and he’d say to me that he’s sorry when he shouldn’t have to.” White described the experience as past emotions “trickling into your present moment in a way that’s hard to navigate.” It ends with her fielding a difficult phone call, perhaps the one implied in “Doing Well.”

That almost brings us back around to the first track White wrote and the last on the album. “Two Times” describes a betrayal and the ramifications and allows a little anger to seep in to an otherwise inwardly focused narrative. Then it’s time for White to leave.

“I watched from afar/as I broke my own heart/‘cause I don’t seem to want you around,” sings White on “Without Making A Sound,” artfully expressing her disconnect with and great respect for her emotions. Trying to tip toe away in the night may not have literally been White’s strategy, but it’s certainly something she wishes she could have done..

“It’s to avoid hurt. Hurting anyone. It’s a non-confrontational conflict-adverse fear, but probably actually damaging in reality,” said White. “I don’t think I’ve ever successfully left without making a sound, but I’ve wanted to. I wish I could, but in reality I can’t.”

In that way, the album closes with both finality and a realisation that more pain is to come. By keeping the character in her songs just a bit less mature than the songwriting, White has managed to take a breakup story and turn it into something beautifully layered, aching, and always about to fall apart.

“It’s my first album where I feel like this is my voice,” said White of what I described of her improved songwriting.

A Sign In The Weather doesn’t just benefit from one voice, however. White somehow manages to sing with two voices, one calm and aware and one scared and reactive, both bringing out the heartache in what the other is feeling. Despite making quite a few mistakes along the way, they seem to be guiding each other to where they need to be.

Above is the full episode as aired on WUSB’s Country Pocket, including both my interview with Bella White and the songs we discussed, starting with Little Things, which sees Bella struggling to keep up with some negative emotions. 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://bellawhitemusic.com for more.

“I always knew it was coming, I just really didn’t see it coming at 33,” said Joshua Ray Walker of his cancer diagnosis.

Seven of Walker’s eight grandparents had at the very least suffered from the disease, and his father died from it. His was stage three colon cancer, diagnosed in 2024.

“If I hadn’t had appendicitis, it probably would’ve taken me a little longer to find I had a mass in my colon,” said Walker. “Silver lining, I guess.”

There was still frustration, most clearly expressed on “Blue Genes:” “I got unlucky in my veins/so I’ll be the last to carry my name.” Elsewhere on the album, Walker mentions “wondering how I’d pay for all the bad hospital food”

“I do have terrible eyesight, I have terrible teeth, there’s lots of disease in my family, mental and physical. As far as the gene pool goes, I feel like I got the short end of the stick,” said Walker. “And that’s not something very nice to put into words when you still have family members who are living. But it’s how I was feeling in that moment.”

Needing to stay home in Texas was one of those silver linings.

“It was the first time in my adult life that I wasn’t travelling. I put a lot of that energy I would’ve had on the road into writing and producing records,” said Walker. “It was a trying time for sure, but a big change for me having so much time at home to see family and friends.”

After two surgeries and a first round of treatment, doctors found a mass on a scan of Walker’s lung. An 80 percent chance of recovery dropped to 14.

“There was a 50-50 chance whether I’d live for two years,” said Walker. “As someone who’s had multiple family members go through hospice for cancer, if they tell you that you have two years, maybe you have one good year. One of the things I did was make a one year timeline to finish all the creative projects I had in the works.” 

Ain’t Dead Yet is the final creative project from that list. It’s Walker’s most frank and personal release to date, one that touches on mental health, difficult conversations, and harsh realities. He looks back on his life, sometimes with tremendous gratitude. Though the cover looks like a scene from his funeral, Walker is still doing well two years later. Doctors discovered the mass on his lung was benign and he’s now in remission. He’ll tell you he’s better off than before he had cancer.

“I’ve dealt with mental illness, depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, pretty heavy stuff throughout my life. Whenever I got sick, I feel like I really showed up for myself unquestionably,” said Walker. “I was going to fight to be here, and that was kind of a revelation for me as someone who thought about checking out early. I had my perfect opportunity to just let it happen. Whenever the decision is taken out of your hands, it puts it into perspective.

The title track captures the joy of that revelation, “I think I’m ready to try again,” Walker sings, looking back on mistakes and feeling confident in a new path forward. Walker came up with a traditional country sound, sometimes telling tragic stories of sex workers and sometimes cracking jokes. He revealed a slightly weird side on a covers album, making country songs out of thoroughly unexpected tracks like Lizzo’s “Cuz I Love You” Yet this was the first time a Joshua Ray Walker album seemed to lean into an easy feeling and a softer sound. The harrowing journey is still documented on some tracks, but leading with that deep exhale completely changes the way harder moments hit. There’s still emotional investment, but not a sense of dread.

In a world where Walker didn’t recover, “Chasing Sunsets” would have been his most memorable and haunting track. “Memory lane is a freeway now,” he sings, describing his life flashing before his eyes. The high notes and regrets give a sense of his unease with his situation, but his decision to end the refrain on a line that doesn’t rhyme with anything is the most power: “When it’s my time I hope that I won’t feel alone.” In choosing to present that feeling that way, Walker highlighted it as uniquely real and painful. This is a man whose job it is to package complex emotions in neat couplets absolutely refusing to make this one thought more digestible. “Shoot Me Straight” is similarly blunt, asking people to say their goodbyes to him instead of dancing around the subject. Both those songs are clearly written from the perspective as someone about to pass, but later in the album, Walker is even upfront about the fact that the diagnosis that changed his outlook on life was not all positive: “Some people say all’s well that ends well/some people must have never been through hell.”

The most powerful decision Walker made was choosing to end the album, that last piece of art that would have served as a farewell, on a slightly older single in “Thank You For Listening.” It’s a quite genuine expression of gratitude to his audience, and in a way to his journey. After finding out he’d get better, Walker decided to stick to his original one year plan. It paid off more than artistically. A line from the album seems to have rung true: “If this were my final curtain call/I’d have no regrets at all”

“I got engaged, took care of my mom, got a lot of art made,” said Walker. “If that had been the last good year, I feel like I did a pretty great job.”

Despite being a critically acclaimed songwriter and possessing a powerful voice, Walker still seems in awe that people keep showing up to support him.

“I really appreciate the people who have given me the opportunity to do what I got to do. I think ‘thank you’ is a pretty good way to end anything,” said Walker. “I’m shocked I get to do any of this. I played on the street for years so I could get gigs playing to no one in dive bars. I’m going to sell out a show in the arctic circle on this tour. Just a kid that grew up playing on the streets in Dallas. The fact that anyone listens just blows my mind.”

If discovering that he truly wanted to live was Walker’s most important revelation, the whole experience of making a short term plan was a clear second. He described a life of making goals for at least ten years down the line, touring 250-300 days a year in order to build his dream career.

“That was the first time I took an inventory of my life where the goals were short,” said Walker. “I realised the life I wanted was really obtainable, it was similar to the life I had. I just needed to do more things I love with the people I love and less time doing things I don’t like doing with people I don’t like doing them with. That seems like such a simple realisation, but getting told there wasn’t a lot of time left really put that into perspective. My threshold for things I don’t want to do was so high because we’re all working toward this payoff.”

There will be some permanent changes in Walker’s life. Though he’s on a ‘victory lap’ tour at the moment, including a date in London I’ll be attending, Walker indicated that he’d like to maybe only spend 150 days a year on the road. On the title track, he bemoans that he “worked myself half to death.” Though he said he and his fiancé navigated long distance fairly well, it’s not the way he wants to live forever. Walker’s even revisited his declared intent from “Blue Genes” to never have children.

“Circumstances have changed since the song was written. Neither of us are in a rush, but it’s not off the table. It didn’t change my mind as much as I could be persuaded,” he said. “If I’m gonna do it, I want to make sure that I’m present. At this point in my career, that would be impossible. I know plenty of great musicians who are great parents and are gone a lot, so they seem to pull it off. I just can’t imagine how I would at this point.”

With the last of his three cancer tapes complete, Walker is about to embark on a creative chapter that didn’t factor into his previous plan. His intention to tour less for a healthy work-life balance never seemed to enter his thinking before the cancer. Which is to say, things he couldn’t previously imagine are well within his reach.

Above is the full episode as aired on WUSB’s Country Pocket, including both my interview with Joshua Ray Walker and the songs we discussed, starting with “Ain’t Dead Yet,” which generates its happiness from the fact things almost wound up so sad. 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.joshuaraywalker.com for more.

Andy Hedges is careful to say that he’s not a cowboy, though to assume he is one is an understandable mistake. Hedges has an encyclopedic knowledge of ranching and cowboy culture and a love for everything Western. His voice is deep, measured, and has the sort of drawl that all together is worthy of a role in an old radio drama. He runs a podcast and spoke to me over zoom, but most of his cultural references come from a time before modern technology. He was home schooled in Tokyo, Texas by a father who was a bull riding pastor. He listened to old music on cassettes and grew up around cows and horses.

“This would be in the 1980s, but it was almost like I was growing up in the 1950s,” said Hedges. “It had a tremendous influence on me. When I was a kid, I thought all I wanted to do was go work on a ranch and be a cowboy.”

It turns out that Hedges would discover a different niche in the Western world. While watching an episode of Austin City Limits, he was first exposed to cowboy poetry in the form of Michael Martin Murphy.

“I was just hooked. I had found what I was interested in as a kid,” said Hedges. “I was obsessed with cowboy poetry, cowboy music, and I’ve been immersing myself in it ever since. I’ve always gone out of my way to say that I’m not a cowboy. I’ve never earned my living ranching. I have a tremendous amount of respect for the men and women who have those skills and who made those sacrifices. But I have spent a lifetime living in the rural west, really pursuing these stories. By the time I was 15, 16, I was travelling on my own to perform at cowboy poetry events and ranch rodeos. That’s really the tribe of people I feel like I belong to as a close observer. I’ve sometimes been called an amateur folklorist. I feel like it’s a culture you could spend a lifetime pursuing as an artist.”

It’s not just Hedges’ aura that feels frozen in time. The values expressed in The Westerner are what America was built on. With cynicism and nativism squaring off in public debate, it’s easy to forget the beautiful ideals America, and specifically the West once held dear. Hedges put the title poem, written in 1915, to music. The idea of a fresh start and a values based meritocracy is a gorgeous one, and the phrasing makes it all the more enticing: “My name is mine for the praise or scorn/and the world began when I was born” and “Class and rank are a worn out law/for all clean men are as good as I.”

“Out West, we don’t care where you’re from or what colour skin you have. We care about your character, whether you treat people fairly or are an honest person,” said Hedges. “If you’re not, things are not gonna go well for you out here. I think that’s a Western value, and it’s cool to see it reflected in writing from that many years ago. I think there’s still relevance for these old songs, these old poems. Some of the beauty of this old music is that it’s tradition that’s being passed on and people find them to be relevant, but I don’t get too wrapped up in how it’s going to strike people in 2026.”

By focusing on the history and old texts, Hedges is indeed acting as a sort of historian. He presents the ideas for us to judge, but he presents them well. The songs he set to music himself are especially good, taking advantage of his low register and strength when he’s half speaking. There’s a wistful quality to his voice, quite perfect for the Western mindset he described.

“When you look at the old poems, from the very beginning of the American Cowboy, there was this lament for the passing of the West,” said Hedges. “The first people settling this area, I think they knew they were seeing things that would never be seen again. I think they knew civilisation would be encroaching on the West. There was always that sense of loss, even in the earliest cowboy songs.” 

Hedges says his deep respect for those working the land comes from their commitment to tradition and willingness to do what it takes to live the way they want to.

“The way of life has continued on. The working cowboy is alive today, but you see a lot of family ranches not able to survive,” said Hedges. “A lot of things have changed. A lot of places would be horseback more than they are now because now there’s pickups and trailers. They still value those skills. They try to improve on that all the time. There are probably better horsemen and people more knowledgeable about working with livestock than there were in the old days, so some of it’s even improved.”

His guest vocalists in Dom Flemons and Ramblin’ Jack Elliot are well chosen. They’re both former guests on his podcast and both full of cowboy knowledge and stories themselves. Hedges’ podcast, Cowboy Crossroads, includes a wide range of guests including cowboys, poets, musicians, photographers, and other folklorists. The fact that Hedges converted interviews into guest spots shows how amiable and knowledgeable he is. He’s also a fantastic listener. 

“What often happens is that through that time you spend together, you kind of get to know a person. By the time we finished that interview and it came out on the podcast a bit and corresponded about it, you get to be friends,” said Hedges. “You never know when you interview somebody what kind of stories may come out, and that’s a real privilege to get to collect and share those stories and be a guardian of these people’s lives.” 

During our interview, Hedges even recited the first poem he learned as a teen. The subject is a rotting cow in a stream, and the speaker goes into detail: “She was… oozing and slipping her hair/her eye sockets were alive with maggots that thrive on dead flesh.”

As a teen, Hedges was asked by a restaurant owner to recite one of his poems to a group of older diners. 

“It didn’t occur to me that my favourite poem might not be appropriate for the setting,” said Hedges of the poem, which eventually reveals the character made the mistake of drinking from the stream. He must have been talented even then, because he got a gig delivering poems at the restaurant. Hedges is one of the few guests I’ve had over the years who mostly works with material written by others. It’s his role in the process of preservation and education about a little-known art form that makes him a unique performer.

“I’ve written a few things over the years, but I’ve always been more drawn to the form of a recitation. Cowboy poetry in its earliest forms was an oral tradition, rather than passed through the page,” said Hedges, who went on to carve out his own style. “I was really blessed. I came under the influence of a whole group of people who participated in this, so I heard all kinds of styles and voices. People used their own personalities to bring poetry to the stage.”

You get the sense that there’s no cynicism in Hedges’ admiration for Western life. He’s not naive, and his album lists struggles legal, emotional, financial, and physical. But he values he espouses — hard work, strong character, acceptance, and respect for elders who show such traits — are rock solid. Hedges manages to avoid passing too much judgement a few thornier issues, including some serious womanising on “Eight Bucks and Change,” in which a the main character possibly earns redemption by working hard to tame horses. “Names” also explores the idea that a difficult to tame horse and a similarly tough man could make a special connection. Redemption, through action and emotional progress, always seems in reach. Long before social media and social security followed you everywhere, people used to go out West for a fresh start. That spirit is still present in the poems Hedges curated.

No character comes out looking better on the album than Tom Blasingame, a man legendary for keeping a strong work ethic into his nineties and his noble death. Sensing he was not long for the world, he dismounted his horse gently to avoid spooking him and laid down to rest. It’s described with stunning beauty. Blasingame’s virtues aren’t the least bit flashy: consistency, consideration, fidelity. To hear them celebrated with such tenderness is genuinely enough to soften a hardened heart. 

‘He’s really living his life for something other than the financial rewards of the job,” said Hedges. “Valuing freedom and spending your time doing the things you want to do and living out of doors. I admire people who choose to live that way. There’s a closeness to your creator in that lifestyle.”

Above is the full episode as aired on WUSB’s Country Pocket, including both my interview with Andy Hedges and the songs we discussed, starting with The Westerner, which sets out some fairly progressive values to be enforced in a rather conservative way. 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://andyhedges.com for more. Andy also has a podcast, interviewing poets, musicians, and other figures associated with cowboy life. Check that out at https://andyhedges.com/cowboy-crossroads.

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.