Country Pocket

Sweet soulful sounds and relatable, empowering lyrics are the unifying theme on Kelley Mickwee’s Everything Beautiful, which otherwise captures a number of moods and stages of life.

Mickwee didn’t write songs for this record so much as she assembled them from her catalogue. She wrote some songs a long time ago and only one specifically for Everything Beautiful: Force of Nature. It was, like few other soul tracks before it, inspired by an episode of the NPR show StarDate. 

“The beauty of life is the movement of change/It don’t ever stay the same/Light takes time to travel/Making its way through all that matter,” Mickwee sings.

“I don’t think I got it right, which is good because that would be plagiarism,” Mickwee joked. “I remembered pieces of what he said and put it together to fit what my point was.”

Her beliefs veer all over the place, jumping from scientific fact to religion to nurture. It’s a good reflection of where Mickwee is spiritually. She’s a bit all over the place and doesn’t pretend to know the answers, but finds use in positive practices.

“It’s all a wonder to me,” Mickwee said. “I feel very connected to astrology and Native American culture. I do a lot of grounding. Just straight up feet on the Earth. I’m not a Christian. I investigate different avenues.”

“Force of Nature” isn’t alone in being joyful; “Joyful” is quite literally the name of the first song on the album. “About Time” is an inspirational political sermon. And the title track is a sublime nature walk and the rare song of remembrance that avoids focusing on the pain. When the emotions hit, it’s hard to tell whether they’re hurting or healing you. There’s plenty of other moods on this album, but none so frequently drawn on as joy. 

“Comes Out Wrong” is one of the more unique tracks for Mickwee. It’s vulnerable and devoted in ways that few songs are. It’s a preemptive apology that’s genuine. It seeks to reassure loved ones that conflicts aren’t everything.

“It’s really hard to always remember how much I love them,” Mickwee admits, saying the song makes her think more of family members than a romantic relationship. “I was really humbled by an experience 9 or 10 years ago. Once you’re humbled, you learn the beautiful act of apology. I discovered how to be vulnerable and be accountable.” 

Perhaps the discovery was too life-changing.

“I admit I’m wrong all the time now,” Mickwee half joked. “Probably too much.” 

“You Lie” is a direct and somewhat fun takedown song, but “Long Goodbye” is a more satisfying breakup. The song presents the idea that trying to change someone is just a drawn out way of losing them. It’s something I’ve experienced from both sides but haven’t been able to put into such incisive words.

Of all the lyrics I’ve been delighted to hear put to soul music, it’s the self-examination and anxiety of “Verge of Tears.” 

“You’re not the kind of man you think you are,” an artifact of gender left in from a male cowriter, is the harshest line the narrator hurls at himself, but the notion that everyone else can see his internal distress is the main fear of the song.

“The truth is no one can,” Mickwee says. “You think that your stuff is so important and other people are going to want to talk to you about it or pick up on it, but no one cares. They got their own stuff.”

It’s these specific scenarios that makes Mickwee’s writing so good. And while the songs may have been written at different times, they compliment each other so nicely with a consistent soft soul vibe. And whether Mickwee is uplifting, resolute, or pissed, she’s certainly empowering at each opportunity. 

Above is the full episode as aired on WUSB’s Country Pocket, including both my interview with Kelley Mickwee and the songs we discussed, starting with Force of Nature, which turns StarTalk into inspiration. 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 http://www.kelleymickwee.com for more.

Jontavious Willis is a leading voice in acoustic blues who describes the format as “close to religion.” He’s also a self-described amateur music anthropologist who interviews older blues musicians in his spare time.

“I didn’t know it had a name, but I knew I liked it,” Willis said. “I knew I liked to hear where songs came from, how people pick up songs, how they relate to the folks around them, and how they put themselves in their music.”

I interviewed Willis with more or less those intentions. During our conversation, he came off as tremendously knowledgeable, almost like an encyclopedia, assuming an encyclopedia could display emotions like passion and humor. I had to bleep him more times for radio than any of my other 200 something guests by a factor of about three, yet he knew enough about the format to insert his own public service announcement for the suicide hotline into our discussion on “Ghost Woman.” In an understandable burst of emotion, he revealed that he would have killed if facing the conditions that Black Americans were subjected to before the end of slavery. In over a decade of doing these interviews I haven’t experienced many conversations this dynamic. 

His new album, West Georgia Blues, is also the name of a style he’s developing. Jayy Hopp, who played second guitar on much of the album, is a fellow practitioner and Willis’ mentee. Willis performs as though the British Invasion never occurred, preferring to draw his modern influences from more local sources.

“You’re going to get hip-hop out of Georgia,” he said. “You’re going to get gospel out of West Georgia for sure. I don’t use pop music as a standard. I’m paying homage to the past, but also, I’m doing it now.”

A line from the title track sums it up nicely: “Some people sing the blues just ‘cause they know the song/But we singing these blues to carry tradition on.” 

The album still presents diverse sounds within those parameters. “Ghost Woman,” a throwback to 1920s style laments and the longest track on the album, borrows lines from a number of songs from the era and repackages them into a coherent story. The warble in Willis’ voice came naturally at first, he said, but he exaggerated it to match the old recordings. The requests by the narrator for a ghost to stop haunting him and for a river to wash him away are desperate and powerful.

“Keep Your Worries On the Dance Floor” sounds like the sort of soul that would be at home in the 50s or 60s. It also spells out one of the things that makes blues so appealing by offering to help alleviate pain through good music with frank lyrics.

 “I try to make it intimate, I try to make it personal, I try to talk to folks and not just shred and make the show all about me,” Willis said of his shows. “I want to get folks involved in my music, whether it’s listening or dancing. I want there to be a relationship for the time that we have.” 

West Georgia Blues sounds almost experimental on “Time Brings About a Change” as Willis spits about a butterfly talking to a dying caterpillar about the future it might have with wings. The idea that those who embrace change can evolve while those who don’t are stuck in a more infantile state was striking. 

I was curious how Willis, keenly aware of Black and American history through his musical knowledge and conversations with elders, would interpret the times we were living in. Like the butterfly he is, Willis said not everything needs to be perfect for him to appreciate the 160 years of change since the blues emerged from newly freed Black Americans.

“We’re living in a mighty fine time, and I’m glad to be alive right now,” Willis said. “Politics is always going to be politics, and we have further to go, but we’re always going to have further to go. Humans can’t live in harmony with themselves, so you know they ain’t gonna be able to live in harmony with people that don’t look like them or talk like them.” 

Above is the full episode as aired on WUSB’s Country Pocket, including both my interview with Jontavious Willis and the songs we discussed, starting with “Keep Your Worries On the Dance Floor,” which illustrates the relationship Willis has with his audience. 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 http://jontaviouswillis.com for more.

Kaia Kater has covered a lot of traumatic topics on her past albums, and to some extent that pattern continues on Strange Medicine. But she’s coming at it from a different perspective now. 

“There was this feeling that if I want to write a song like ‘Both Sides Now’ or ‘Clouds,’ I have to put myself through hell. If I want to write anything good, I have to be traumatized,” Kater said. “In 2016 I wrote a song called “Rising Down” which was about police violence against black people. That was a really important song to me and to a certain extent it was very cathartic to write, but I also didn’t think about the fact I’d have to sing it each night.”

She’s progressed on this album as a result of reexamining her assumption. In “Floodlights,” Kater dredges up an age gap relationship she entered as a 17 year old. But this time, she’s on stage singing and able to move past spotting a man who had once caused her pain. She’s also learned the difference between songs she wants to release and songs she writes simply to help her process things. They don’t necessarily all need to be released. A key test she’s instituted involves how she portrays the protagonists in her songs.

“I think I’m much more keen to give whatever character it is in my song some kind of agency, so that when I sing it each night there is more of a 3D look at what life experience is. It’s complicated.”

It’s that type of reframing that makes Strange Medicine go down a lot easier for both Kater and the listener. The targeted woman in “The Witch” is standing up to her accusers, something that feels pointed even with the sweet harmony vocals of Aoife O’Donovan. Burned to death, the character still lets off lines like “I’ll stitch myself back together again” and “I’ll see you soon and hunt you then.” 

“Fedón,” which tells the story of a Grenadian abolitionist and revolutionary, does not focus on the fact his revolution failed. Instead, it spotlights his bravery, ingenuity, and the eventual triumph of his ideals. “Something’s blooming/I can hear it,” Kater sings.

“It had to have this pulsing war-like energy and it had to have forward momentum. It had to be something you look to when you feel discouraged,” Kater said of the song, noting that it feels good to share a story of a marginalized person standing up to the system rather than suffering under it. “Maybe what he really understood is that in 300-400 years his mission would be accomplished. It’s this kind of faith that you lose the battle but not the war.” 

“Maker Taker,” the song that frames Kater’s prior need to highlight trauma in her songs as pressure from record executives and critics, is an airy battle cry: “I’ll starve those hungry ghosts/Play what I know about hope/and confusion and laughing in tour vans.”

“In Montreal,” a highlight featuring fellow Canadian Allison Russell, presents that hope through growth. Kater sings to her younger self about ways she could improve, it’s implied that growth has occurred because she’s the one suggesting it. And therefore her problems in the present day seem likely to be solved. 

Perhaps certain critics may prefer unadulterated trauma, but pay attention to popular culture and it’s full of stories more like strange medicine. The average movie certainly has trauma or danger to overcome, but for the most part, the audience craves stories where the good guys win. People are looking to live vicariously through those victories, to be inspired by those coming of age stories like “In Montreal.”

There is one song on the record that breaks with the theme of agency. “Often As The Autumn,” a ghost story about a shadowy force picking off livestock one by one repurposed by Kater, takes us back to a time when not many of us had much control over what was going on.

“I think at that point we were three years deep into the pandemic,” Kater said. “I was 26 and I had all these plans and I felt like it was so unfair that there was so much death all around me. I was in New York when it started and I remember seeing those trucks. I felt like I was a human subjected to some biblical wrath. I think I needed something scary to recon with.”

The sound of the track is ridiculously cool, built from an untuned viola and a children’s sized pump organ and a vocal track without and room sound. Kater still gives agency to one character in the song, though it’s not the terrified women or the sheep. 

“I wanted this one to be the listener sitting with the inevitability of death. I think the creature is particular because it’s not motivated by good and evil,” Kater said. “I actually have a lot of affection for the creature. Whenever I sing, I feel conviction kind of like I identify with the protagonists in the other songs. I think the creature is telling it like it is, and there’s something cool about that.”

Above is the full episode as aired on WUSB’s Country Pocket, including both my interview with Kaia Kater and the songs we discussed, starting with Maker Taker, in which Kater explores and rejects the notion that she has to write songs from a place of trauma. The interview begins with the second video in the playlist. You can hear the show live every Monday at 11am on WUSB 90.1 FM or check the blog to watch it as a YouTube playlist. Visit http://www.WUSB.fm and https://kaiakater.com for more.

Steve Dawson, like many other songwriters, is an empath. And like many other songwriters and empaths, he has a way of processing losses at a personal and societal level at the same time. Take “Sooner Than Expected,” a song that mourns everyone from relatives who passed on to the increasingly hostile climate. Both were things Dawson knew would happen, but both seem to be occurring on an accelerated timeline.

It’s a gorgeous song, one of a few that shows Dawson only gains strength when he sings more softly. His vocals have a quality that allows for slight breaks on sensitive topics and he’s an expert highlighting them with sparse instrumentation. 

In our conversation, Dawson discussed facing the anxiety of a rapidly changing world, specifically when it comes to forces like death and climate change that no individual songwriter has the power to battle. 

“I try to take deep breaths and enjoy what I’m doing for the day,” Dawson said of his coping mechanisms. “Other days I’m filled with anxiety. It’s very helpful to talk in real time breathing the same air. Focusing on my insignificance is actually helpful to me.”

Still, he worries about those forces and about a population that seems indifferent to destroying our institutions. 

“When I see that half of the country is desiring retribution and this authoritarian world, it makes me very angry,” Dawson said, contrasting his “reasonable” liberal community in Chicago with his upbringing in Idaho. 

“Leadville,” a scorched-earth song documenting the questionable behavior that went on in his small town, was written as an answer to songs that idolize small town life.

“It’s a reaction to a lot of mythologizing that goes on in a lot of Americana and country songs about small towns and how those people are better than others,” Dawson said. “There’s plenty of horrible people in small towns just like everywhere else.”

“Try that in a Small Town,” a violent Jason Aldean song with a music video that featured racist undertones, was the first that came to Dawson’s mind that fit the description. The bad behaviors mentioned in “Leadville” feel so believable both because of how specific the descriptions are and how much some of the characters could’ve been ripped from a recent news story. Some of the offenders, like a handsy principal, probably get a pass due to their politics. Others, like the hedonistic restaurant employees, are just being ‘good old boys’ without realizing that their lifestyle isn’t exactly kind to the women they brag about.

Idaho was not exactly the ideal place for Dawson to grow up. He very much had different values than people around him and was bullied. 

“I kept to myself,” He explained of his childhood. “That’s where I learned guitar.” 

“Leadville,” with its angry drive and its increasingly less matter of fact tone, is the most compelling up tempo song on the album. But it’s the quieter songs and ballads where Dawson is absolutely unreal. 

“A Mile South of Town” is an intimate and detailed look at an accident scene he came across years ago in Idaho. While driving, he came across a man, once riding a nearby motorcycle, and a deer laying in the road dying. 

“That image has just stuck with me my whole life,” Dawson said. “I got out of my car and I did look at the deer and its eyes were open and it was breathing fast and I got the sense that it was panicking. I probably made more of a connection with the deer, because the guy was passed out and clearly had been drinking pretty heavily.” 

Dawson makes the bold stylistic decision to sing from the perspective of the man who crashed. Since he never learned who the man was or what his ultimate fate was, Dawson invented details of his life that sound broadly believable for the community he lived in. The narrator’s calm observations, prediction of being discovered too late, and empathy for the deer all heighten the atmosphere around the unusual and dark situation. There’s no anger toward the deer that essentially ended both their lives; it’s just a simple and deep connection between an animal scared to die and a man processing it a bit easier. 

Lighter tracks like “Time to Let Some Light In” and “I am Glad to be Alive” bring some much needed balance to the album, but the lyrics aren’t quite as unique or powerful as some of the darker songs or mood pieces. “Weather in the Desert,” which details a friend’s failed suicide effort, move from a respectful acknowledgement of what happened (“It was a solid plan”) to a desire for small talk. Here Dawson’s rambling style works better. The anchor of near tragedy means that any awkward moments or lost threads feel like a natural part of a conversation. “Walking Cane,” a song that documents repeated failures to wrestle climate change, feels the most urgent. “Oh, California” has the strongest harmonies. But it’ll be the thought of looking into those deer’s eyes and surrendering that will stay with listeners the longest.   

Above is the full episode as aired on WUSB’s Country Pocket, including both my interview with Steve Dawson and the songs we discussed, starting with A Mile South of Town, which mines a strange subject for one of the most striking images painted by a song. The interview begins with the second video in the playlist. You can hear the show live every Monday at 11am on WUSB 90.1 FM or check the blog to watch it as a YouTube playlist. Visit http://www.WUSB.fm and https://stevedawsonmusic.com for more.

Work-life balance is a difficult struggle to capture in an album, much less a soaring classic. Phil Cramer of Steele Creek is more than up to the challenge on a superb sophomore outing that regularly uses nature to explain complex ideas. It’s a beautiful piece that declares that challenges and the grind worth enduring, but not at the cost of missing the rest of life.

There’s a strange duality about life that “Ridgeline” manages to capture with a unique scene featuring a man pushing a rock up the hill. It’s emblematic of the complex mediations on work, domestic, and mental health topics Cramer explores through metaphor and deep thought on Toward The Light. On the one hand, there are “hard forevers” we have to deal with. Work. Chores. Other obligations. It takes up most of our time pushing that rock up the hill and breaking the momentum for a little inner peace can make it all the harder to continue on our way. But the view is breathtaking. Family is much more important. Cramer is perfectly happy to let that stone roll down the hill in exchange for time with his son or a chance to rest and take it all in. 

“It’s not a linear path,” Cramer said. “The stone’s gonna keep rolling down that hill. But if we want to get over the mountain and see the other side, we gotta keep pushing it up there.”

“Ridgeline” doesn’t just set the tone for the album ahead. The imagery of pushing a boulder up a hill and the views worth resting for conjure a strong image that’s timeless, clear, and gorgeous. And to compare something that big with a kid playing in the park is an effective way to establish the value of family life.

“Yes, we can pursue whatever’s on the other side of the mountain, or even that sense of peace, but it it’s coming at the detriment of of spending time with family, that’s when it starts to become a concern,” Cramer said, noting his family that includes three young children. “Helping them on their journey is the most important thing.”

“Marrow” continues to explore this topic. Its lyrics of missing family while away from them are a bit simpler than the opening song, but the melody is catchier and gives Cramer a better chance to flex his vocal might. “Resurrection Fern” is a metaphor for a relationship as it ages and is based on a New Orleans plant non-natives might not be familiar with. Galleries of hanging ferns there can look dead after a period of drought but spring back to life when the rains return. It’s hard work, according to Cramer.

“It’s in a place where you have to find each other again and again,” Cramer said of a maturing love. He explained that at that point, love isn’t so much a promise but something that actively needs to be nurtured. “The point is how I’m going to show up today for you. I’m gonna keep trying.”

A standout line in the song flashes back to when Cramer was “young enough to make plans as the universe unravels.”

“I think it’s a blessing that each new generation comes with its fresh energy and wants to reinvent the world anew,” Cramer said. “You make lots of big plans then, but it does get harder and more complicated as you have more responsibilities.” 

Another highlight on the album is “Tidewaters,” a song that sees an older person wade into the ocean and contemplate relaxing, something they haven’t done much of in their life. Cramer feels it’s quite important to relax a little, as well as find some form of wholeness. He chose the ocean setting for the way it makes him feel.

“If there’s any place that’s gonna put you in touch with the rhythms of the Earth and some kind of divine spirit it’s sitting out there watching the waves crash in both powerfully and indifferently,” Cramer said. “It’s one of the vastness of the universe moments for me. It becomes a moment when I’m most centered and rooted.”

The character in the song either seems ready to enter retirement or is already there and struggling to adjust.  

“It could be someone dealing with the wreckage of having worked so hard for so long and trying to find what’s left at the end of that,” Cramer said. “Culturally, we make it pretty hard for ourselves.”

There are plenty of other strong tracks on the album, including the incredibly relatable “Serpent’s Prayer” that talks about racing thoughts haunting us in the night. “Towards the Light” has perhaps the most compelling line in the album, where Cramer says he’d “lay down like a stone inside the stream” to give his children a chance to walk across him safely. 

Cramer explained he wrote the line “having had my own struggles with mental health and anxiety in particular and then looking at my son and first of all hoping that he doesn’t face those same problems, but also knowing those problems will come because we’re human and we’re all dealing with our own struggles.”

“I want him to be able to learn from what I’ve been through. At the very least wanting him to grow from the point where I left off.”

Above is the full episode as aired on WUSB’s Country Pocket, including both my interview with Phil Cramer and the songs we discussed, starting with Ridgeline, which turns work-life balance into an epic struggle on a mountain through metaphor. The interview begins with the second video in the playlist. You can hear the show live every Monday at 11am on WUSB 90.1 FM or check the blog to watch it as a YouTube playlist. Visit http://www.WUSB.fm and https://steelecreekband.com for more.

“Won’t you leave me alone, there’s nothing to find/but I’m afraid of what you might see in my eyes,” sings Marley Hale on the first track of her brilliant EP By My Own Ways, warning men that she’ll waste their time and she’s not what they’re looking for. 

“It’s the perfect way to start the EP,” Hale remarked. “Are you sure you want to know? Then the whole EP is kind of a self exploration. 

Well of course I want to know. Someone with doubts and angst swirling all around may not make the best date, but if they’re honest and insightful enough to admit it and a good enough songwriter to convey it, they’ll absolutely make for a good listen. 

By My Own Ways really is that kind of vulnerable EP. A good deal of it plays out as a conversation Hale is having with herself about failures, the need to cut and run, the desperation she was showing by hanging out too late at a bar. Her jaded view on love and herself is incredibly relatable to anyone who’s ever suffered through a breakup and sworn off ever trying anything like that again. 

“To Those At My Window” is indeed a perfect way to start things off, and not just because reverse psychology can occasionally be effective. Hale drops hints throughout the song that this view she’s taken of herself is a result of someone else putting her down. It feels quite likely that her line about wasting men’s time was the result of that idea being planted by a disappointed man.

Much to my surprise, Hale meant it quite literally when she pointed out that there were so many other ‘ripe young flowers’ to choose from.

“I was staying in this little cabin and there were a few bees that kept buzzing at the windows of the cabin,” Hale said. As for the bees choosing her over the flowers outside: “I felt like it was a perfect metaphor. People don’t know who you are and don’t want who you actually are.” 

“Drunk On You” is a necessary introduction to a souring relationship. Comparing addiction to alcohol to addiction to a person is not exactly novel, but it’s powerful for someone who’s lived it like. Though she’s since sobered up, Hale was at one point the target of “Dear Girl”‘s speech about a reckless girl at a bar determined to “take the night home.” No lyrics were quite as compelling as when Hale expressed anger at herself for drawing questionable men into the bar. 

“I think that song came from a place of shame and frustration with myself that I hadn’t been the person I wanted to be,” Hale said softly. “I hadn’t cared for myself the way I wanted to care for myself.” 

“On Your Knees” and “Good Man” conclude the story with Hale moving toward both personal growth and a breakup. Her repeated use of the phrase “good man” was meant genuinely, even if not all his actions had good outcomes.

“I had men in my life who by all accounts were good people,” Hale said. “And they are good people. But just because someone is a good person doesn’t mean they’re going to treat you well all the time or treat you the way you want to be treated. It was the realization that to be treated well I had to respect myself and it didn’t matter how good a person anyone around me was. That respect came from myself first.”  

One of the nicest touches in “Good Man” is that it features another woman encouraging Hale to raise her standards. It’s a nice contrast to the angrier self talk of “Dear Girl” and gives me hope that Hale may be kinder to herself in the future. Because while her disappointment in herself may make for a fantastic song, it can’t be easy for Hale to have that sort of scorn directed at herself. 

Above is the full episode as aired on WUSB’s Country Pocket, including both my interview with Marley Hale and the songs we discussed, starting with To Those At My Window, which is dedicated just as much to bees at it is men. The interview begins with the second video in the playlist. You can hear the show live every Monday at 11am on WUSB 90.1 FM or check the blog to watch it as a YouTube playlist. Visit http://www.WUSB.fm and https://marleyhale.com for more.