Category: On Air

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.

Larry McCray has undoubtably witnessed a lot of change in his life. He grew up in rural Arkansas with no electricity or running water. He went to school during desegregation and at one point was nervous to mingle with white musicians. He survived a devastating divorce that went public due to his ex wife’s financial crimes. He’s facing back surgery after decades of touring have taken their toll. Yet, his love for music remains the same.

“My body’s not the same, but I’m still very enthusiastic about going on the road,” McCray said when we spoke. “The music tastes as good as it always has.”

On Heartbreak City, McCray benefits from years of wisdom, a new life and songwriting partner in Peggy Smith, and production and financial backing from blues superstar Joe Bonamassa. 

Still, it was a 25-year-old lead track in “Try To Be A Good Man” that caught my attention and set the stage for his grounded, relatable “Heartbreak City.” This isn’t a blues of exaggerated pain or raging libido; McCray excels as a man doing his best to handle modern life.

On “Try To Be A Good Man,” McCray advises the listener that they don’t have to be perfect in order to do their best at being a good partner. You may not have to “work two jobs,” but you probably should “give her all the love you can.” 

“It’s not a perfect world, but I thought that was a very good way to give each alternative,” McCray explained. “You have an option to do the right thing.” 

The song reminds us that the all moments of slight weakness we all experience — perhaps looking in the direction of another woman — don’t have to define our self image if they don’t define our actions. “You know what’s right/you know what’s wrong/late at night, you know where you belong,” he sings.

As relatable as this message may be for men, Smith wasn’t impressed. 

“Why do you have to try?” McCray recalled her asking him. “Why can’t you just do it?”

All joking aside, the partnership has been transformative. 

“Peggy changed my whole life,” McCray said. “Long story short, I had a very unpleasant and tumultuous marriage. But when she came into my life it was the best thing that ever happened to me and my relationship with women.”

It doesn’t hurt that she’s a great lyricist.

“She just says all these things and it’s easy for me to put music to it,” said McCray.

McCray is quite an optimist considering the genre he represents, and that comes through on this album. “Bye Bye Blues” and “Keep On Loving My Baby” are straight up happy songs, but “Bright Side” captures the determination with which he handles difficult situations. “Instead of counting the tears that you cry/take a look on the bright side,” he sings on a song that could very much be describing his divorce.

“The only thing to keep you going is life itself,” McCray said of his tenacity. “Until your life ends, you have to live. I look at it as not having a choice. What ever it is, that obstacle, you have to believe you can conquer it.” 

He explained his optimism has come from witnessing so much progress in his life. Growing up in the segregated South with few luxuries or modern conveniences amazingly set him up to have such a healthy attitude now.

“It was like living close to 100 years behind your time,” said McCray. “Coming from an environment like that really gave me a lot of grit. When you are forced to live in a less favorable environment, you have a lot of appreciation for the positives in life.”

Unfortunately the progress McCray has witnessed, he said, is showing signs of faltering in the last decade. Songs like “Hangman” capture a bit of that anxiety and pain. The scene in which a man interrogates a preacher on the pulpit about the loss he experienced is about as raw as the album gets. It also wades into political territory when describing fears of police violence. In the end, there’s not much to be done when the hangman swings his rope.

“I’m not a real political person, but sometimes you can say in a song what you can’t say in conversation,” said McCray. “It goes from a direct application to a thought in general.” 

Yet, he remains an optimist. There are certainly messed up people in this world, but a story from his youth reminded him that hope arises anew with each generation. When he saw his white school friends in public, they weren’t allowed to acknowledge each other. But back in class, they were excited and happy about the encounter. 

“The children didn’t have a problem with each other but a lot of the old ways the parents were teaching them had to be overcome,” said McCray. “I think the majority of people are past all this stuff.”

McCray would like to see progress be made again, yet he’s still able to appreciate how far we’ve come.

“I’m grateful for the fact that at some point in my life there was an acknowledgment and people were moving in the right direction,” said McCray. “It just proves that given a chance, people don’t have a problem with people. I’m so happy that I don’t live a segregated life anymore. That’s what life is all about, the exchange of culture. So many people are afraid of what’s different than themselves. It ain’t really that they hate somebody.” 

Above is the full episode as aired on WUSB’s Country Pocket, including both my interview with Larry McCray and the songs we discussed, starting with Try To Be A Good Man, which maintains both realistic standards and accountability. The interview begins with the second video in the playlist. You can hear the show live every Tuesday at 12pm on WUSB 90.1 FM or check the blog to watch it as a YouTube playlist. Visit http://www.WUSB.fm and https://larrymccrayofficial.com for more.

When love is right, it feels right. Anna B. Savage had no problem being single and didn’t imagine a future like this. But it was love, and it felt right.

“This warmth, this is how it should be,” sings Savage on the lead track of her album “You & I Are Earth.” 

“It’s lovely but it’s also scary,” Savage said. “It’s been very surprising to me. I didn’t think I’d feel this way for someone ever. And I didn’t have any qualms about that. I really loved being single.”

Savage underwent a few major changes to create the experiences for this album. She moved to Ireland for grad school and decided she enjoyed it there. In “Donegal” she expresses her “vast lack of knowledge” on the subject of British Irish relations as she wonders if she’s found a home “forever.” 

“There’s a very long history of colonization and cultural and literal genocide against the Irish people,” said Savage. “It’s not really taught about in English schools so you learn about them peripherally, but they’re not peripheral at all. It was sobering to fill in some of the gaps in my knowledge about English and British history.” Still, she says, “I have been met with only loveliness and generosity.”

“Donegal” also contains a request from her mother: don’t fall in love while in Ireland.

“Obviously I failed horrifically,” said Savage, acknowledging she was much more unlikely to move back home. “I’m happily in love, but yes, my poor mom.” 

Ireland is a world Savage prefers, and finding a true love just adds to that feeling of rightness.

“Here, my understanding of nature and my experiencing of it, that barrier is much more dissolved than it is in London,” said Savage. “In London I feel I need to go out of my way to find the natural world. Even though, obviously, we are part of the natural world. Having that closeness feels good. It makes much more sense for a human existing in a body.”

“Mo Cheol Thú” details some magnificent intimate moments between the couple, as does “I Reach For You In My Sleep.” It’s not just the clearly real details that make the relationship come alive. Savage’s shock at the whole thing is somehow more touching than anything else. When she reaches for her partner in her sleep, it’s an extraordinary feeling. “That’s never happened to me,” she sings. The unexpectedness and newness make it magical, as does the overwhelming feeling of satisfaction she’s giving off. The fact that he’s just as mystified about reaching back adds to the perfection.

As a touring musician and an independent person, Savage needed to find a slightly less conventional love. “The Rest of Our Lives” covers the fact that time apart can be just as valuable as time together when finding an ideal match.

“One of the important things for this relationship is that we are both very independent,” Savage said. “That merging, sometimes it can be an assumed nice thing and then actually it turns a bit bad. It’s been nice to feel connected and together but not always merged.” 

“I love living apart sometimes/because it’s okay/there’s no rush/we’ve the rest of our lives,” she sings.

“I feel very secure, very calm,” said Savage. “Whether we miss each other or whether we’re annoyed that we’re getting under each other’s feet because we’re together for too long, it just feels manageable and calm.” 

Savage explains that the title of her album relates to the way everything about her relationship feels natural and right. It also covers her adoration for her new home. She rejects the idea of fate or soulmates, but is open to this interpretation of perfection.

“It’s a connectedness, a rootedness, a connection with everything,” said Savage. “If I’m a tree in the earth, I will see many storms and probably most of them won’t knock me over. And even if I do get knocked over, I’d become a part of the earth in another way. My body would be feasted on and become a habitat for things in other ways.” 

The album matches its title. Savage’s voice, often deep and low, matches well with earnest guitar picking and a few moments where high notes and backup singers reach toward the heavens. The warm, minimal nature of the sound is a great fit for the humbleness Savage displays in accepting love and happiness as such a pleasant surprise. 

Though it isn’t heavily addressed on the album, Savage did note the importance of self love quite beautifully during our conversation.

“It’s something I’ve been struggling to do my whole life. I think if I hadn’t had worked as hard at it as I had, I wouldn’t have found the type of love that I have now,” said Savage. “Also, it’s just nice to be nice to yourself. Why wouldn’t you?”

Above are the songs that were aired on WUSB’s Country Pocket, including Donegal, which finds her quite at home in Ireland. Anna has requested that the full interview not air on YouTube, but the music is there for you to engage with. You can hear the show live every Tuesday at 12pm on WUSB 90.1 FM or check the blog to watch it as a YouTube playlist. Visit http://www.WUSB.fm and https://annabsavage.bandcamp.com/album/you-i-are-earth for more.

Pug Johnson may not be “El Cabron,” which roughly translated to bastard, but he certainly knows how to write a song as one.

“It seemed like a fun, mischievous type of a guy who would have a lot of good stories,” Johnson explained of the concept for his album. The funny stories work quite well, especially when he later adds some depth to the character.

El Cabron, at the peak of his childish antics, is not the type of guy you’d want to be around as a woman. On “Last Call,” Johnson well-worn trope in which it seems like he’s about to drop an f-bomb. Brilliantly, he flips the script again by using the cop out to get even more explicit: “Get out of your head/get into my truck/I know a nice spot where we can go suck/on some Dos Equis beer/maybe an ear or a toe.” 

“He can’t just say the expected thing,” Johnson said of his character. “He’s got to go for a little bit of a shock factor.” 

The joke works better than almost any other time it’s been used because by the end of the refrain, every listener and possibly even the woman he’s singing to wishes he would’ve just said fuck and  kept it more normal. 

“El Cabron” strikes on a few more songs including “Pipeliner Blues,” a song that leads to a double entendre about laying pipe, and “Buy Me A Bayou,” in which the title of the track is rhymed with “something worth kissing I could lie to.” Johnson identifies with the character he’s created, to an extent. 

“I was never too wild or anything, but that’s a subjective question,” said Johnson. “I’m sure my wife would say I’ve been El Cabron all the way.”

So Johnson may not be singing “Thanks to the Cathouse (I’m in the Doghouse)” from experience, but “Waxahatchie” sounds a bit more like something he could relate to. In that song, a man smokes his life away and is oblivious to the fact that his woman is growing frustrated. 

“I disappointed a lot of women,” Johnson admitted. “Patience is definitely a virtue. I’m more patient now than when I met my wife a few years ago.”  

Mindy Johnson, who serves as Pug’s manager, is an important part of this album. She was able to turn Pug’s life around both personally and professionally. Pug credits Mindy for getting him out of a rut of performing only locally and convincing him to become more professional. The two currently travel together as husband and wife, talent and manager.

“Mindy came in and believed in me more than I believed in myself,” said Johnson. “There was a point where I didn’t think I could make it as a solo act. I didn’t think I was interesting enough.”

Mindy’s belief was a powerful thing for Pug, who in turn wrote a song called “Believer” for her. “You made me a believer/you made me more than I could be,” he sings. 

It’s this love story that makes “El Cabron” much more compelling than a collection of clever and funny songs. Johnson shines perhaps even more brightly describing his evolution into a loving husband. “Believer” describes the transformative effect of love and support on someone who’s given up on themselves. It’s a relatable song delivered with conviction.

“Change Myself Today” is the emotional capstone of the album. It’s an acknowledgment of failure both emotional and professional. The slow and sweet music backing Johnson’s earnest vocals make his determination come through. 

“Being a pretty awful [man] for a while and having to live with that can be pretty good motivation,” said Johnson of his inspiration.

While the depths of his debauchery were certainly exaggerated for humor on this album, I suspect the highs of his newfound purpose are entirely real. Hilarity and sincerity make for a more than interesting enough solo act; Pug has nothing to worry about. In fact, I’d say his lines about sucking ears and toes are quite unforgettable.

Above is the full episode as aired on WUSB’s Country Pocket, including both my interview with Pug Johnson and the songs we discussed, starting with “Last Call,” which genuinely made me laugh out loud by inverting a cliche. The interview begins with the second video in the playlist. You can hear the show live every Tuesday at 12pm on WUSB 90.1 FM or check the blog to watch it as a YouTube playlist. Visit http://www.WUSB.fm and https://pugjohnson.com/ for more.