#interviews

The Hot Seats

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The Hot Seats

Call it creative vision. Call it a sense of purpose. Clarity. Self-awareness. However you want to describe it, talking to drummer/percussionist Jake Sellers convinced me: The Hot Seats have it.

I walked away from our recent interview with a stomach full of delicious Pho Tay Do food and a huge amount of respect for the group, which has won fans on both sides of the Atlantic. They strike me as protectors of something vital — something funny and fearless and closer to the actual “root” of the roots music that’s experienced a recent resurgence.

This quote from the article might say it better than any other:

“I think we very much as a band like [what’s] scratchy, looser … I don’t want to say dangerous, but less safe. Take a chance. We’re certainly willing to fall on our faces trying a song we’ve never played before in front of an audience because that’s where the excitement is.”

I love that, and I want to thank Jake for taking the time to meet and explore what he and the band are doing. Click here to read the whole River City Magazine article, or pick up a hard copy at one of these locations.

The Hot Seats — “I Ain’t No Better Now” [Spotify/iTunes]

The Crooked Road

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Carter Fold

Lots to catch up on this week.

To start, I had a couple River City Magazine articles published this month, and I thought I’d share the links and say a little about them. The first one is the result of my two-day Crooked Road trip, which I mentioned in a recent CD Monday post.

The Crooked Road initiative — linking the pieces of musical history that are spread out across the western part of the state — strikes me as profoundly good and worthwhile. I love the idea that, one day, Virginia will be seen as a tourist destination more for its musical tradition than for its military one. Maybe that’s optimistic, but visiting places like the Floyd Country Store and the Carter Family Fold made me want to believe. It also made me proud to be from Virginia. I’d love to get back out to that part of the state sometime soon.

Thanks again to Andrew Cothern and Virginia Tourism for the invitation and for doing such a great job with this initiative, and to Doug Nunnally for making the mix CDs that accompanied the drives between landmarks.

Click here to read the article over at Richmond Navigator’s site — or pick up a hard copy at one of these locations — and scroll down to check out the Hillbilly Gypsies, the group we saw at the Carter Family Fold that Saturday night. (This video is from a different show, but they do a damn fine “Pretty Polly.”)

Hillbilly Gypsies — “Pretty Polly” [Spotify/iTunes]

Clair Morgan

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Clair Morgan

Very excited that my River City Magazine interview with Clair Morgan is up — click here to check it out at Richmond Navigator’s site. Or you can grab a print copy on newsstands now. My favorite is the red stand outside the Byrd Theatre, but there are a bunch of other places you can go. Here’s a full list.

I mentioned this on Instagram last night, but what a privilege this was to work on. These are some of the most talented and friendly musicians you will ever meet, and they took the time to chat about all sorts of fun stuff, including their upcoming album, New Lions & the Not-Good Night, which I’m 100% certain is going to blow minds and win hearts. Morgan won mine in our interview with how much forethought and emotional investment went into the album’s overarching narrative. Check out this snippet from the article:

While the music is light at times, heavier themes lend balance to “New Lions.” “When you think about an adventure you took as a child,” Morgan said, “when you’re looking through that lens, that really happened. But now you’re looking through a completely different lens, whether you’re an adult or a father, and you look back at that scenario from a completely different perspective. What did you not soak in that actually happened that you were not able to absorb?”

Mind already blown. Click here to read the rest, and don’t miss their show at the Camel tonight — they’ll be closing the book on their previous album cycle by playing No Notes in full. Here’s one of that album’s standout tracks, “Battleship Heart.”

Clair Morgan — “Battleship Heart” [Spotify/iTunes]

Brian Cruse

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Brian Cruse

So excited to have finally gotten my hands on a copy of the September/October issue of River City Magazine. Hopefully y’all already snagged a copy and saw the article I did with bassist Brian Cruse. If not, you can check it out here (UPDATED LINK). I really hope you will, because I can honestly say that the conversation that led to this article is among my favorite interview experiences.

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Spencer Strickland

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Mandolin article

I recently had the pleasure of speaking with Spencer Strickland, an award-winning mandolin player who’s part of the Church Sisters — one of the groups featured on the amazing Orthophonic Joy album that you need to hear immediately if you haven’t already — and the Virginia Luthiers, which is a group of instrument makers who play what bassist Gerald Anderson calls “Doc Watson kind of music.” But Strickland isn’t just an award-winning player — he’s also a record-setting one, as he was among the 493 pickers who came together at this year’s Old Fiddler’s Convention and successfully broke the Guinness World Record for largest mandolin ensemble.

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Sound Gaze

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Sound Gaze

So I was on Sound Gaze again! I’m a huge fan of Doug Nunnally’s WDCE show, and I’m extremely thankful to have been invited back last Saturday. The full episode is posted below.

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Robbin Thompson & Steve Bassett

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Sweet Virginia Breeze

I’ve lived in Virginia all my life. In fact, I’m fairly certain I’ve never been outside of the state (JK it’s a commonwealth — just testing you) for more than two consecutive weeks. You could call me a homebody, and you’d be right, but that’s only part of the reason why I tend not to wander. I really, really like it here, and that sense of pride led me to interview Robbin Thompson and Steve Bassett about their song “Sweet Virginia Breeze,” which the General Assembly recently named the state (ahem, commonwealth) popular song. The interview just went up over at Richmond Navigator.

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The Trillions

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The Trillions

Been so anxious to share this: My interview with the brilliant and talented Trillions went up late last week over at Richmond Navigator. You can find it in print in River City Magazine — copies should be hitting newsstands this week.

One thing I have to add:

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