Basic Folk

Welcome to the third preview of Basic Folk: Backstage!  For this episode, we're taking you inside a very special moment that happened one night at Miles of Music Camp in 2019. It was a late night music hang where a guitar was being passed around. I had my mic with me and my friend Christopher Pappas asked me to start recording. He has been working on a song, "Lighting Myself on Fire,"...

Help produce Basic Folk by contributing at basicfolk.com/donate It’s hard to put into words why I love MC Taylor so much, but I know when it started. His band, Durham’s Hiss Golden Messenger , stopped by to play live at WYEP in Jan of 2017. They were the first band I interviewed after Tr*mp was inaugurated. Like a lot of people (and like the white liberal woman that I am), the state of things had...

Help produce Basic Folk by contributing at  basicfolk.com/donate Once Baltimore claw-hammer banjoist, radio host and community organizer Brad Kolodner got a banjo in his hands, it was game over. Brad had previously played the cello in the school orchestra and had held a strong interest in sports, but his true passion for old time was realized at Meadowlark Music camp in Maine. He signed up for the...

Help produce Basic Folk by contributing at basicfolk.com/donate   Miko Marks’ story starts in Flint, MI where she was immersed in music, specifically country music (Loretta Lynn and Kenny Rogers were in heavy rotation) and in the music found in Black church at the Church of God in Christ. As a young girl, she first sang live in that church and found the experience to be overwhelming when she notic...

Help produce Basic Folk by contributing at basicfolk.com/donate ! Dori Freeman is an Appalachian woman using her music to break the stereotype of her region, which specifically is her town of Galax, VA - where she was born and still lives. Dori's new album, Ten Thousand Roses, is a celebration of layered sound, beautiful drums and lyrics from an evolving songwriter. Her voice came to us fully...

Help produce Basic Folk by contributing at  basicfolk.com/donate Editor's note: Lizzie No interviews Valerie June on Basic Folk! Be sure to got back and listen to Lizzie's previous guest host spots on the pod and subscribe , so you never miss Lizzie! Today’s guest, Valerie June , grew up as country as country gets in Jackson, Tennessee. She remembers writing songs at an early age with frog...

Welcome to the second preview of Basic Folk: Backstage!  For this episode, I wanted to share a very special interview I did with my favorite person to talk to: KT Tunstall . We discuss 2013's Invisible Empire // Crescent Moon , which is one of my favorite LPs. Born out of two difficult personal shifts, the death of her father and the end of her first marriage, IE // CM was recorded in Tucson a...

Help produce Basic Folk by contributing at  basicfolk.com/donate Ok I think that Erin McKeown was really into this conversation solely because it allowed her/them to dig deep into the new record Kiss Off Kiss . Halfway through the interview, Erin proclaimed how fun it was to get to address each track... I concur! It was very fun. KoK was funded through a generous gift from a friend of Erin's,...

Help produce Basic Folk by contributing at  basicfolk.com/donate Mary Gauthier 's book, Saved By A Song, is a must-read for all humans with feelings that need feeling. Gauthier has been writing and recording songs since the the early 90's, but she actually started her music career relatively late at age 30. She had grown up as an adopted child in Thibodaux, Louisiana, which was something t...

Help produce Basic Folk by contributing at basicfolk.com/donate ! Carl Nichols (aka Buffalo Nichols ) found out that he liked playing guitar way more than anything else when he was around 12 years old. He took his older sister's guitar (what? she wasn't using it) and started obsessively learning to play. He'd listen to songs 200 times in a row to get it right. Very soon, he was out per...

Help produce Basic Folk by contributing at basicfolk.com/donate ! This special episode of Basic Folk features Allison Russell , Jake Blount , Kaïa Kater , and guest host Lizzie No in a roundtable conversation about Black artists in folk music. Black musicians are more visible than ever in the roots music space, but they continue to face unique challenges from tokenizing placements on festival line...

Help produce Basic Folk by contributing at basicfolk.com/donate   You can contribute $5 a month or more and get access to Backstage, our exclusive bonus content. Here's a preview of what's happening Backstage. Hope you will join us!    For our first Backstage ep, we are going to check out something we like to call “Field Music.” We’ll hear a recording of a traditional song from a folk musi...

Help produce Basic Folk by contributing at basicfolk.com/donate Editor's note: Lizzie No interviews Dar Williams on Basic Folk! Be sure to got back and listen to Lizzie's previous guest host spots on the pod and subscribe, so you never miss Lizzie! Dar’s new album, ‘I’ll Meet You Here,’ is out now. Dar Williams , originally from Mount Kisco, NY, grew up in an era and a household where ever...

Help produce Basic Folk by contributing at basicfolk.com/donate Amy Helm grew up surrounded by some of the most influential musicians in American roots music, including her father Levon Helm , legendary drummer and singer for The Band. That also meant that her childhood was a “very colorful” experience where she was raised by a “village of brilliant and talented people who were also wrestling with...

Carolyn Kendrick 's California childhood was filled with music: from listening to music to musicians in her family, especially her father, a professional jazz drummer. Having a well revered musician in her family meant overcoming a reputation that preceded her, but it also gave her a special relationship with the beat as a guitarist and a fiddler. She talks about her connection to rhythm and h...

Editor’s note: Basic Folk is pleased to introduce our listeners to one of our favorite podcasts by sharing an episode in our feed! One of my favorite and most insightful interviews on Basic Folk has to have been from Ben Arthur . Ben let the walls come down and allowed us to both dig into his psyche. It was a rare privilege to be able to strip feelings and actions down to their studs and really ex...

Martin Sexton 's career was built by his work as a street musician on the Boston scene in the 80's and early 90's. His audience knows him for being connector by making them a part of the magic he, the performer, creates onstage. On the street, he would use tricks like strategically placing himself in an area that would bottleneck a crowd and keep people around with delightful audience...

Editor's note: Lizzie No interviews Alisa Amador on Basic Folk! We're so pumped for you to hear this conversation with Lizzie and Alisa. Be sure to got back and listen to Lizzie's previous guest host spots on the pod and subscribe, so you never miss Lizzie! Alisa Amador's EP Narratives is out on 9/17/2021 It was such a treat to talk with Alisa Amador . I love the way that she talks...

Help produce Basic Folk by contributing at basicfolk.com/donate Chris Thile  ( Nickel Creek , The Punch Brothers ) has been making music nonstop since he was 5 years old. His musical parents found him a mandolin, he started taking lessons and jamming at nearby Southern California pizza shops. He met Sara and Sean Watkins when he was 12 and started the band Nickel Creek. In the meantime Chris'...

Paula Fuga is a magic person. The Hawaiian singer/songwriter has lived through some of life's horrors. When she was young, her living situation was extremely unstable for several years. She lived with her mom, who suffered from addiction, on the beach around a pretty shady crowd of people. She accounts her survival to her dream of being a performer. That dream would manifest itself into vision...

Editor’s note: Basic Folk is pleased to introduce our listeners to one of our favorite podcasts by sharing an episode in our feed! I truly appreciate an interview where the hosts are basically scholars on their subject – aka they come so prepared it’s wild. Scott and Paul are industry professionals who are super knowledgeable about the songwriting craft, so they come at these interviews with a uni...

Becca Mancari does things her own way. Raised in New York and Virginia, Mancari found herself living a nomadic lifestyle in her teens and twenties. As she grew as a songwriter and performer she also found her footing as an outspoken queer woman. She re-negotiated her relationship to spirituality and gender and this transformation found its way into her music in powerful ways. Her 2020 album ‘the g...

Help produce Basic Folk by contributing at basicfolk.com/donate Two years into starting his band Mandolin Orange, Andrew Marlin and his partner Emily Franz were having second thoughts about their band name. Nine years later, they announced their new name: Watchhouse. It's easy to understand why it took so long: they were putting out records, gaining momentum and quickly establishing themselves...

Help produce Basic Folk by contributing at basicfolk.com/donate Ok, so yes I cried when I interviewed Rachel Baiman . Her writing is stirring and brutal and then when you read about the inspiration behind the songs on her new album Cycles , it's like automatic water works for me. From frank observations of her grandparent's loss of agency to women reckoning the heaviness and grief of mothe...

Help produce Basic Folk by contributing at basicfolk.com/donate John Hiatt 's latest is a collab with bluegrass great Jerry Douglas, with Jerry as producer and his band as backup for Hiatt. John's digging into some serious past memories for these songs, which include a song about his older brother Michael. Michael died by suicide when John was only 9 and it's only until now where he&#3...