Basic Folk

Zack Hickman is bound to go down in folk history for his incredible handlebar moustache, but fellow bandmates in his numerous groups know him for his extreme talent and keen ability to bring together musical projects. Born in Lynchburg, VA to physician parents, he grew up on a micro farm where his family grew produce, flowers and (of course) tended to bees. He eventually found his way to Oberlin C...

David Dye is a public radio music host pioneer. What Dye, WXPN and NPR did with starting the World Cafe changed the landscape of music on the radio for the extreme better. David is a music fan first and was allowed to express that knowledge and love for sharing songs on the radio to a national audience for over 25 years. David is funny and thoughtful and quick with his answers! We go through all m...

Izzy Heltai is brave, curious and charismatic about the world. Izzy is a trans-man who has not yet talked about his gender at length in an interview the way he does on this episode of Basic Folk. He's careful with how he represents himself,  but it's a lovely and informative conversation about finding how to be comfortable in life. He is someone who has a sharp sense of how to achieve that...

Livingston Taylor has managed to carve out an impressive and interesting career as a successful songwriter and extremely effective professor of stage performance at Berklee College of Music in Boston. Younger brother to the very famous James Taylor, this is an interesting and vast conversation with a fascinating man. Liv generously talks about his relationship with his late brother Alex, Carly Sim...

Jenna Nicholls was the imaginative kid who was friends with trees and believed furniture was alive. Raised in Western Pennsylvania, she was raised on jazz, classical and Irish music. Her music is reflective of the golden age of radio and The Great Depression. Her lyrics put people in a place visually and she encompasses a couple different tones including a delightful lighthearted falsetto. Now a r...

Cinematic, multi-talented, mystical/magical, human-songwriter Ethan Gruska is a grounded and extremely likable person. Ethan’s 2017 Slowmotionary, for me, was a personal lifesaver during a hell of a year. He may have come across your radar through his indie band The Belle Brigade with his sister Barbara. We touch upon topics ranging from his mother’s stroke (which happened right after he was born)...

It is wonderful to have songwriter Marissa Nadler on the pod! Ethereal, goth, ambient and gauzy are often used to describe her sound. She has collaborated with musicians like John Cale, Sharon Van Etten and black metal band Xasthur. Marissa gets into the differences between herself and her songs, "I'm a complete nervous wreck with a massive anxiety disorder..." while her songs are very...

I have always really liked Jonatha Brooke. She's one of those writers who always knows what to do, which is the basis for why we like pop music. Her songs take you to the place you wanna go while still hitting vulnerability and insight. This week, JB gives details about her upbringing in a Christian Science household and where she stands now with her religion. We also get to talking about the...

Magic musical human wonder Jocie Adams (Arc Iris) is a very funny, grounded and kind person IRL; on stage she is a mystical badass alien superhero who expressively emerges from a giant vagina at the start of her live shows while wearing a gold bodysuit. Arc Iris' music is rooted in rock, pop, glam, folk and something else that you can't put your finger on (maybe it's stardust?). On Bas...

A bonus ep of Basic Folk where Erin McKeown gets particularly basic about her former project Voice on The Verge. She explains their origin and intention behind the group and I started getting v into all the obscure folk references she made. It didn't make the edited ep, but enough people (4 people) said they would like to hear it!   American Songwriter Podcast Network Advertising Inquiries: ht...

Erin McKeown has been queering the folk world for over two decades with her unpredictable and relentlessly unwavering superhuman musical gifts. Erin gets real in our conversation. She talks about (my favorite) summer camp, being super into drugs and sports in high school, her relationship with her gender (she thinks she's an alien), spirituality and her friendship with Rachel Maddow.   America...

Bill Deasy is one of Pittsburgh's big 90s success stories due to his band The Gathering Field scoring a record deal in 1996 with Atlantic Records. While they only released one album on a major label, the band and Bill have remained a mainstay in the Pittsburgh region and beyond. Bill is calm, real and pretty open about his upbringing, including the trauma of losing a sibling at a very young ag...

Ready to ugly cry? No? Ok, I will give you a moment to prepare... Because tuning into the most vulnerable, intimate and secret human feelings is what songwriter Edie Carey is all about. Born and raised in Suburban Boston, Edie was raised by a poet, a therapist and and English teacher. Her wistful writing definitely takes influence from all three. Hope you enjoy my interview with the "aggressiv...

Amy Ray, one half of the legendary folk rock band Indigo Girls, is known for her strong Southern roots, fierce devotion to all types of music, her activism and (unbeknownst to her) her image as a gay fashion icon (and how she uses her clothes as an activist)... or should I say institution. We talk about all this during our interview, which took place at Brandi Carlile's Girls Just Wanna Weeken...

KT Tunstall is an open-hearted Scottish dreamboat. She is a master at the art of conversation and makes a person feel heard, understand and smart. We get right into it: talking about her relationship with her father, death, sexuality, of course, her roots in folk music. Her latest album Wax is the second in a trilogy of records that will focus on the soul, body and mind as she has entered this ver...

Emily Saliers of Indigo Girls graciously joins me on Basic Folk this week. An iconic figure in modern folk rock, Emily gets into it about the history of her guitar playing, expanding her horizons on her first solo album (Murmuration Nation), her dedication to hip-hop and reflections on Indigo Girls, which was released 30 years ago this week (February 28, 1989). This was an extremely enjoyable inte...

Peter Mulvey's music is emotional, rousing, gritty and real. The Milwaukee singer-songwriter has been at it since the late 1980's playing in the streets of Dublin and Boston before starting his career proper in the early 1990's. Mulvey's upbringing was with liberal parents who are in love with science and activism and fully supported their son's early interest in acting and the...

California-born and Boston resident Rachel Sumner had an early interest in classical music that lead her to pursuing a career in film orchestration. After switching gears at Berklee College of Music, Rachel became interested in bluegrass thanks to discovery the music of Hazel Dickens And Alice Gerrard. Eventually, she met her future bandmates of Twisted Pine at the Cantab Lounge's bluegrass ni...

This week I have Irish singer/songwriter, Mark Dignam, on the podcast! Mark grew up in the outskirts of Dublin, Ireland. It was in Dublin where he gained experience as a performer by busking around town with well-known folk singer, Glen Hansard. Since then, Dignam has brought his love of music to Pittsburgh, PA where he continues to write and perform. In our conversation, we discuss the Catholic C...

Singer/Songwriter Maya de Vitry is on the podcast this week! Maya was a former member of the string trio The Stray Birds, but now she has stepped out on her own with her first solo album, Adaptations.  de Vitry grew up on 7 acres of rolling green in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Even from a small age her musical talent and intelligence were evident. We discuss her singing Iris Dement’s “Our Town” at si...

Originally from a rural Farmington, Maine, Eleanor Buckland of Lula Wiles grew up playing fiddle in her family’s jams. This week on Basic Folk, Buckland talks being a fourth generation musician, her rock guitar father, and the basements tapes she has from her grandma, legendary bluegrass player, Betty Buckland.  As a kid, Buckland’s violin took her to fiddle camp where she cultivated her love of f...

Alex Stanton is a Pittsburgh born singer/songwriter who heads up the indie folk band townsppl. Growing up Stanton spent a lot of time hanging out on the set of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. His mom worked in the art department for the show and that actually ties in with how he got his first guitar. Also Stanton discusses opening his own music school, Sunburst School of Music in Squirrel Hill. W...

Anais Mitchell is about to hit Broadway with Hadestown! But first! The Vermont songwriter is on Basic Folk. Her folk opera, Hadestown, set to open at the Walter Kerr Theatre on Broadway March 2019. Anais tells me about her childhood on a sheep farm in Vermont. She unpacks her love and loyalty in her collaborations and the mystical way she found her visual artist for Hadestown. Lastly, we talk abou...

Before becoming a fulltime performer/songwriter Dawn Landes worked as a sound engineer for many years. After studying for a bit at NYU she left school to pursue an internship at Phillip Glass' studio. Dawn tells me of the impact that Fast Folk had on her career and the role Suzanne Vega played in her life as Dawn’s mentor. We also get into the musical she is working on called "Row" abo...

On Basic Folk this week I sit down with Mark Erelli, a singer-songwriter out of the New England area. Growing up Erelli did a little of everything: tennis, musicals, science, and then... he found rock music. This was all thanks to his high school science teacher who would play bootleg Grateful Dead tapes during exams. Once Erelli had discovered The Dead he said it was like all American music was w...