Country Pocket

I’ve heard quite a few musical takes on the January 6th insurrection, but Cory Reinisch is the first to write it as a love song. It was an audacious move, but it worked. 

The idea behind “Empire Falls” is that as we quite literally got to watch society crumble on the news, our thoughts would turn to loved ones. How to comfort and protect them. How even in the darkest of times, the ones we love make fighting for a better life worth it. The absurdity and brutality of that day contrasted with the simplest family values makes for a surprisingly effective commentary on the whole mess.

“Of course that happened,” he said of the insurrection.  “Maybe we didn’t know exactly what it was going to look like, but we knew something like that was going to happen. It feel like there’s not much we can do to stop this tidal wave of horseshit. But at the end of this, at least I have you in my life. I thought that was a nice sentiment, a little bit of light in some darkness.” 

Reinisch is clearly passionate about politics. Seemingly forgetting that our interview was set to air on radio, he cursed quite a few times about the hucksters and wannabe despots who make up so much of our political conversation.

“I’m fascinated by our inability to parse out bullshit,” Reinisch said. “I think we let the devil in the door and now we don’t know what to do with it,” he added, mentioning Donald Trump as an inspiration for the song “Birth of a Salesman.” 

Much of the album focuses on extremes. There are examples of virtue: The values of “Good Man’s Countryside,” the solid foundation of “McCulloch County Wind Chimes,” the magic of witnessing someone in their “Golden Age.”  There are of course the villains of “Empire Falls” and “Birth of a Salesman,” not to mention an ex in “Gaslighter” and crooked preachers in “Cadillacs in the Sky.” It’s a lens he applies to the Trump movement, at least at this point. 

“I truly believe it was with the best of intentions that support was thrown behind this movement at first because it came out of frustration,” Reinisch explained. “Over time, I think there started to be a darkness. It started to be a vengeance ideology.” 

As to why the people who value freedom the most are putting their votes behind eliminating so many personal freedoms?

“I think it’s because they’re too far gone,” Reinisch opined. “It’s not a rosy thought but this movement has gone beyond one man. It’s just anger and revenge.” 

“Friendly Fire” is the most effective song outside the political tracks. It details Reinisch’s refusal to follow a traditional path, stating that it took a unique mix of self sabotage and determination to put him on the path to a music career.

“I’ve had to deal with raised eyebrows and questions my entire life, and that’s fine,” said Reinisch, “I was always going to do what I was going to do.”

As The Sparks Fly Upward documents problems in our society from lying and corruption to glorified political violence and cruelty. But it’s in tracks like “Empire Falls,” “A Good Man’s Countryside,” and “Friendly Fire” that Reinisch presents an imperfect solution: hold tightly to your values and goals and focus on the ones you love. The metaphorical fires are unlikely to stop burning soon, but it’s still possible to focus on and ultimately do the right things.

Above is the full episode as aired on WUSB’s Country Pocket, including both my interview with Cory Reinisch of Harvest Thieves and the songs we discussed, starting with Birth of a Salesman, which may or may not be about a certain president. 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://www.harvestthieves.com for more.

Rachael Kilgour sings in whispered tones at times on several tracks of My Father Loved Me, and it fits.

She delves into sensitive topics in her family’s history and psyche on the album so it makes sense that she’d approach them delicately. It also works in that she’s creating an intimate connection with the listener as she goes through her inherited insecurities and experiences with her father as his dementia progressed. 

But for all the raw nerves the album touches on, Kilgour sees it as a medium for healing. Due to her father’s progressing dementia, Kilgour struggled to get to know her father as an adult and uncovered a lot doing research talking to her family for this album.

“I wrote the songs to get to know Dad, to say goodbye to Dad, but it’s also about me, about figuring out why we’re alive, and I don’t think there’s a way to do that without talking about the hard stuff,” Kilgour explained. 

Throughout the record, Kilgour acknowledges that there were some complications in her relationship with her father. His depression and her parents’ separation took a toll on their relationship. There was a car crash they were involved in. And there were the demons she inherited from him. 

When it comes to her low self esteem, “the torch has been passed,” Kilgour said. “I think it’s a little bit of a mixed message when parents love and support us so well but struggle with their belief in themselves.” Of the title track, Kilgour said “It feels like a little prayer every time I sing that song that I’m getting better at figuring it out and loving myself.”

A particularly powerful moment on the album comes in Dad Worked Hard. Kilgour questions a lot about how the world works through the lens of watching her family struggle financially as injury and dementia forced her father to retire and to require care.

“He was humiliated by it, I think,” Kilgour said of her father’s aging process. “It’s a common thing for men of that era. Slowly, Dad couldn’t do the physical work. He couldn’t provide for his family. It was really hard to watch him struggle with it. I think had he accepted it, it would’ve been easier.”

On an album that’s primarily mournful, reflective, and appreciative, Kilgour’s anger at the fact certain treatments for her father were out of their financial means stands out. She seems able to reconcile her father’s suffering when it comes to mental and physical conditions, but she views society as more at fault for not being structured more fairly.

“I felt that we were making these decisions about his care based on financial limitation, which felt very unfair,” said Kilgour. “It left me thinking about how we value different kinds of labor.”

As her father aged, Kilgour moved to Boston. Soon after, he passed. It’s a topic she still experiences guilt over, even as she acknowledges spending every second with her father wouldn’t be realistic or enjoyable. 

“He felt really comfortable with me and took a lot of pride in spending time with me,” she said. “It’s still hard to think about having denied him of that, I guess.”

Kilgour was able to come home for the last week of his life and be there with her family. She tries to hold onto her father’s best qualities along with the good memories.

“I would like to be a helper in the way that he was. I’d like to be as reliable, maybe not quite as stubborn. And I would love to love the people I love as well as he did.”

Above is the full episode as aired on WUSB’s Country Pocket, including both my interview with Rachael Kilgour and the songs we discussed, starting with My Father Loved Me, which examines their complex but positive relationship. 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://rachaelkilgour.com for more.

Photo by Sara Pajunen

Gabe Lee may not be able to move mountains or live forever, but that doesn’t mean he feels helpless. On his album Drink The River, he argues for an empathetic values system and urges listeners to act locally.

“Grasp what you can control and take care of the things within your own community and life that are within reach,” Lee said. “If you have things that you’d like to change about the world, that’s great, but occasionally we have to respect nature, government, and things that are going to sweep us off our feet from time to time.”

“Merigold,” the stormiest song on the album, reminds us of those forces. Lee based it on a touring acquaintance’s death and the way her young husband reacted to it. There are desperate prayers and death wishes that make his pain palpable. Lee sees this as just one more reason we should treat each other with kindness.

“There are a lot of folks out there just like you who are dealing with life and the things that life brings along,” Lee explained. “I don’t know if there’s anything you can do but remember that you can never know what a person has been through and to give folks the opportunity for your empathy.”

Lee often explains his songwriting as if it’s more of a science than an art, though that’s not to say the results are anything but pure-hearted and gorgeous. “Even Jesus Got The Blues” tells the story of a woman who doesn’t exactly have her life together walking into a church. The song focuses on her joy and redemption in the back pews, but it’s aimed squarely at the regular church goers up front.

“It’s more a message for the folks who choose to lay judgement when they have no basis,” Lee said. “We watch the news, we read the paper, we think ‘my goodness isn’t that terrible, thank God it’s not me.’ I don’t think it’s worth congratulating yourself that you’re better off that somebody. I think there’s a certain switch that might need to turn for folks to consider the world as more of a community.” 

Lee has in the past performed as more of an alternative country act, though “Drink The River” is dominated by a grassy folk sound that seems to fit perfectly with his voice and these lyrics. It’s by far his best album to date and the new sound has a lot to do with it.

“We just wanted to keep it, I don’t want to say simple, but very roots based,” Lee said. “I think cutting the fat and getting to the point of what the lyrics meant; the process was making the stories the point of listening to this record.” 

The lyrics all build to a meaningful message.

“Not to try to solve any world problems with a simple record, whatever you’re going through you’re not alone, Lee said. “Whatever anger you may harbor in your own situation, remember that other folks survived this and that means that you can too.” 

Above is the full episode as aired on WUSB’s Country Pocket, including both my interview with Gabe Lee and the songs we discussed, starting with Drink The River, which recognizes limits to what we can do for the ones we love. 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://www.gabeleetn.com for more.

Croy And The Boys’ latest album would be powerful if it were simply a bleak examination of the way the deck is stacked against working people, history is whitewashed, and gentrification is proceeding along. But “What Good’s The Medicine?” finds even more strength in its hope for humanity. It would be easy to examine the systems we’ve created and assume the worst about the people involved. Instead, Croy ends the album by questioning the concept of original sin. His almost naive faith in human kind is remarkable and heartwarming.

Folk music is, at its purest, a genre that empowers and empathizes with the working man and woman. Croy is armed with evidence and anecdotes. The title of the album is a reference to soaring prescription costs and our never-ending dependence on them. Croy, a construction worker during the day, doesn’t sound thrilled with his life on early tracks like “What I Had to Do” and “The Tunnel Has No End.” His failed try at college left him with debt and he works hard to support his family, though the obligations to others and society weigh on him. The reality is a bit more complicated. 

“I do think about things a lot and I try to process the world around me and sometimes it comes out negative,” Croy said. “I don’t think it’s all doom and gloom but I think people have to work really hard to make it if you’re working class.”

Though college didn’t work out, Croy doesn’t regret some of the critical thinking skills he learned there. And though having a kid forced him to give up on making music a full-time career, he is getting to spend the time with them he decided to pursue instead.

“I think that there are pathways, I think the unions can help deliver you some measure of stability,” Croy said before noting that the possibility of injury still makes life in the trades fragile.

One form of social criticism Croy wholeheartedly endorses is on display in “Video Spectrum In Bowling Green.” He details some of the incredible cultural discoveries he made in a small business and how his options dwindles as it was replaced by a Blockbuster and then a Redbox. Sure it ignores the advent of streaming, but this isn’t quite about a video store. It’s about gentrification in Austin

“I’ve been here for 15 years and there’s been lots of change and most people would interpret it as way too much growth,” Croy explained. “The loss of [the video store] was more that just a movie store closing. It was one of these touchstones of classic old Austin goes away. I think Austin was a place that for a long time was full of creative people where you could come as an artist and be inspired. With the rising cost of living here, a lot of this has gone away.”

Croy’s personal politics are very much left of center on the album, though he absolutely doesn’t identify as a Democrat. 

“I feel like I live a little outside of the American political spectrum, Croy said. “The Democrats aren’t providing anything other than things not getting worse. Joe Biden said as he was running that nothing will fundamentally change and we’ve seen that to be true.” 

Croy was particularly upset at the steps Biden took to avert a railroad strike by declaring it would be illegal for the union to do so.

“He stood on the side of capital against labor and working people see that.” 

But it’s the hope that makes all the sadness documented on the album tolerable. “Better Man” and “I Get By” show flashes of it. The idea of self improvement and coping in the face of injustice isn’t exactly liberating, but it’s necessary and well spoken. “Throw ‘Em Out,” by contrast, is a brief trip into a progressive society we can only dream about. Or, perhaps, one day achieve.

“I think it’s really helpful to spend time thinking about what a better world would look like instead of just looking at problems,” Croy explained of the song, maintaining that humans are capable of building something better. “I think that human beings are a communal species. We’re not the fastest, we’re not the strongest, we don’t have big claws or sharp teeth but we’ve been able to survive through community.”

Even if Croy returns us to reality in the form of “I Know About No Money” before concluding his album, his earnest case for a utopia resonates. 

“Through history, the things that we do together have defined our humanity, Croy said. “I think we live in a system now that pits us against each other in a lot of ways, but I think that’s unnatural.”

Above is the full episode as aired on WUSB’s Country Pocket, including both my interview with Croy and the songs we discussed, starting with “What I Had To Do,” which starts the album with a little bit of autobiography. 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 http://croyandtheboys.com for more.

The Lucky Valentines are the rare band to have an official motto: Making sad things beautiful. By that definition, Losses is an extraordinarily successful effort from Shaun and Jamie Carrier. 

“Swallowed” accomplishes the task quietly and stunningly. It tells the story of Shaun’s father walking out on his family with details that engage the five senses and pull on the heartstrings. It’s a loss that shaped Shaun tremendously, from childhood pain to his desire to be a better father to his own children. The low guitar plucking and simple fiddle lines build from a place of absolute pain to a lasting message of hope. Few songs are quite as perfect as this one.

“Swallowed is about my first memory as a boy, which is the night my dad left,” Shaun said, fighting back tears. “There’s this pain that comes from the initial loss and then the ultimate loss,” he added, referring to his father’s eventual death. “Then there’s this other ingredient which is this fire that we carry and foster, which is the love and hope. I get to be a father to my children. I get to love them. That love gets to survive.”

Much of the album charts a similar, beautiful course. The loss and pain are well documented but there’s almost always a sliver of hope that somehow makes the pain both easier to handle and more acute with the knowledge that someone had to not only feel it, but also heal from it. 

“Ashes to Ashes” is a different kind of farewell, a letter to deceased ancestors who build a beautiful home. It starts out by telling them that their property is in disrepair and their children have all moved far away. But it also celebrates the positive legacy they left for neighbors and family even if all reminders of it will eventually fade.

“It’s telling that person, ‘you’re so wonderful and I appreciated you and I saw how hard you worked,’” Jamie said. “The love is what sticks around even when the rest of it is blowing away in the wind.”

As for her own legacy, Jamie is concerned that people won’t express what they feel about her until after she’s gone. 

“I know that it will disappear eventually but I’d rather see the fruits during my life,” she said.

Shaun is a member of the Chippewa tribe and Native spirituality informs Breaklands, a gorgeous imagining of dying and returning to the Earth. Native generational trauma and a drug addiction informs “Sober,” which rather bluntly describes a spiraling out and the imminent death that will follow if the character doesn’t change. Their hope for forgiveness and peace in the afterlife leaves little hope for their future on this mortal plane.

“Junkmail” is a particularly powerful song that returns to Shaun’s father. This time, he’s passed and Shaun is left to sift through his father’s belongings to find a will or some other trace of his last wishes. A particularly powerful portion of the song imagines Shaun wearing his father’s clothes, taking some of his  possessions, and sleeping in his pickup. It’s a heartbreaking way to imagine getting to know the man who walked out on his family at the start of the album.

When it came to planning his funeral and processing his loss, Shaun referenced a Native writer’s work.

“She talks about this tradition of not using a person’s name once they’ve passed on because while they’re on their way to wherever we go, it can call them back,” he said. “For me, the way I take that is that if there’s anything I can do for the people that I lose, it’s to let them go as best I can. That looks like working through the things that are hanging me up about them and to engage in forgiveness.” 

 Much like he does in his best lyrics, Shaun engages directly with the sadness and winds up finding a beautiful solution. This band’s motto seems good for more than just music.

Above is the full episode as aired on WUSB’s Country Pocket, including both my interview with Shaun and Jamie and the songs we discussed, starting with Ashes to Ashes, which is a strange and beautiful way of updating the dead on what’s happened since they left. 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://www.luckyvalentines.com for more.