Quick Q and A with Peter Mulvey
 by Kathy S-B  ·  21 September 2012

Peter Mulvey is one of the foremost urban folkies on the scene. His literate, socially conscious lyrics combined with subtle and sultry right-on instrumental accompaniment has intrigued and impressed many. Although a Midwesterner (he calls Milwaukee home), he has many, many connections to the Boston music scene since he moved there in the early 1990s. Peter is know not only for his solo work but for his collaborations with Kris Delmhort and Jeffrey Foucault as part of the band, Redbird. Peter’s shows never fail to entertain and educate.

How long have you been doing bicycle tours? What gave you the idea to do them?

This will be my sixth year. I’ve always enjoyed long bike rides, and there’s a bike path that goes from my house in Milwaukee to the Cafe Carpe, a club in Fort Atkinson that I’ve been playing all my life. It’s about fifty-five miles, not too tough to do, even for an amateur like me. I’d always thought that if I could find a way to transport a guitar on a bike, I could ride there. And then, six years ago, it occurred to me that from there, it’s only another 40 miles to a gig in Madison, 70 more to a gig in Green Lake, and so on. I went from there. Thousands of miles later, I’ll be rolling up to Marblehead.

Do you have any interesting anecdotes about riding the highways and byways toting your gear along behind you? Do you people give you double and tripletakes?

People do see the guitar and smile. But I also guess that mostly it wouldn’t occur to them I might be going hundreds of miles that way over the next week or two... I doubt that occurs to people.

I don’t know how it changes other people but these tours have changed me. I usually travel with a small group of friends, and there’s something very tribal, very primal, very human about long journeys performed together under your own power. You all get hungry together, sunburned together, rained on together. You fight the wind together, you enjoy the long twilight together, you see deer and cranes and hawks and goldfinches and hillsides and cornfields... it’s something that most of us only read about. It’s a journey. It winds up having heft in your memory.

This tour also celebrates the release of one new CD, The Good Stuff as well as an EP called Chaser. First, let’s talk about the the full CD. It’s a collection of standards. What’s your own personal definition of a “standard?”

Well, for this record, I wanted to avoid the cliche of the singer-songwriter doing a “standards” record — you know, I’ve dusted off a bunch of schlink-ey tunes, and hired a pianist and an upright bassist, put on a suit... it’s been done. So I decided to widen the lens; alongside Monk and Ellington, I decided it was all right to include Tom Waits and Willie Nelson, Jolie Holland and Joe Henry, and also my colleagues Chris Smither, Anita Suhanin, Melvern Taylor. The point here is that a standard is exactly what the word implies: a song that is so good, so stand-alone, holy-crap good, that other songs want to measure up to it. I think that’s true of all the songs on the record.

Your version of “Everybody Knows” by Leonard Cohen is perhaps my favorite on the album. You give it a clean, pure interpretation and even though I know the song inside out, it made me listen to the lyrics in a different way. It truly speaks to the condition of the world these days, doesn’t it?

Oh, it sure does. The song is a gem, a conspiratorial whisper, a loving little murmur from the archetypical wise old sot on the proverbial sinking frigate. That whisper has been made by many a poet but seldom more genially.

Did you have any other standards on your list that didn’t make it onto this CD? (Hint: maybe a second volume is to come?)

Lord, I could have made this record four or five times without repeating any of the tracks. I mean, musical history is awash with precious artifacts. My fondest hope for this record would be that it has some kind of kinship with Elvis Costello’s Kojak Varieties, and Emmylou Harris’s Wrecking Ball, and Chris Whitley’s Perfect Day. Hopefully it’s an iteration of that gesture: you’ve found your voice, as an artist. You’ve written a ton of songs and learned five tons of songs. So you cast your eye on the landscape you emerged from, pick a dozen landmarks, hire some great players you know, and dive in there.

So what about Chaser? You’ve got an eclectic mix of songwriters on this compilation as well. I love the fact that you’ve got Randy Newman and Cole Porter in the same collection...and it works! Your aim, I take it, was to provide a more lighthearted collection.

It is the lighthearted little deal, after the heavier, darker main course. I didn’t really set out that way: we just had the musicians and we took swings at tunes, and recorded twenty. Goody sequenced what he thought was the best line-up and that became The Good Stuff. What was left over, we noticed, hung together and was sweeter and quicker. So we put it together.

Your recent work seems to explore and perhaps stretch your repertoire into a more jazzy / swing genre which is exciting. Is this a style of music that you have always gravitated toward?

Oh, sure. I love the art, the simplicity, the light touch. I came up Catholic and Midwestern and earnest, and all that is in my artistic makeup, but gradually you realize that life is heavy enough: we all have heavy stuff going on, that’s a given, and artistically, a light touch works as well to get at it as anything. Shakespeare understood that, I think, as well as Cole Porter did.

Like Timmy Gearan says on his new tune, “Riverboat”,

Step right up, it’s another flying circus
Some of us need a percoset to get us through the week
Put back on another side of Mingus
Nothing much to bring us up we got to slow it down.

That speaks to me. Let us take it as read that the world is heavy. Let’s swing while we’re able.

Are there any key players whose style inspires you within the world of these “standards?”

Well, yes: Hoagy Carmichael did so much with a fairly modest instrument (his voice). And Jeri Southern, who could be so plain, so un-ornamented, so straight ahead. Of course there’s Ella and Louis, both individually and the records they did together. What a contrast! She’s so superlative, artful, effortless, and then he comes in like the apple with the dirt on it, rough and actual. But both of them so captivating, so sensually overwhelming. You’d run out of adjectives and never get near them.

I’ve been merrily lost in this stuff for some time now, there’s so much territory here, and it’s so much more vivid and engaging than, say, the blogosphere, or the political landscape, or (heaven help us) Facebook. Just putting a record together, with the premise being “Think of a dozen great songs. Got ‘em? Go!” — it’s been such a rich season, and now I’ve been writing and writing, not really thinking too hard, just seeing what grows from all the seeds I’ve watered so far. This stuff is endless.

For more information about Peter Mulvey, check out his website. Dig around the site and take some time to watch the posted videos. They give a great representation of what this man does in concert. For even further musical treats, let your fingers do the walking to the official Peter Mulvey YouTube channel.

Quick Q and A with Ethan Scott Baird (Pesky J. Nixon)
 by Kathy S-B  ·  21 September 2012

Pesky J. Nixon’s bio says it better than I could: Bombastic yet brilliant, these boys from New England exude a genuine musical authenticity and mirth on stages up and down the East Coast. Drawing influences from contemporary urban balladeers, rowdy southern bluegrass, and the sardonic yet wry wit of New England’s localized folk scenes, Pesky J. Nixon (PJN) creates an atmosphere both inviting and challenging for audiences. Compelling harmonies and narratives rein in disparate instrumentation including zydeco style accordion, virtuosic mandolin, a variety of tribal percussion, and a myriad of string instrumentation.

Ethan Scott Baird (one of the founders of the band) found some time in his busy life (full-time computer geeky job, gigging with the band, and preparing for one of the major social events of the year — his marriage to Robin Durst on October 6) to answer some questions. Ethan and the rest of the band are genuine people and musicians who have a whole lot of fun on stage and with their audiences. Their joy is contagious. It’s impossible to leave a PJN show without a smile on your face.

2011–2012 has been an exciting time in the life of Pesky J. Nixon. Being chosen as the act that received the most votes for the Most Wanted Artist at Falcon Ridge Folk Festival must have been right up there as far as thrills for you. What do you remember thinking when you heard the news?

I was with Jake, my music partner, at the time and we just looked at each other and shook our heads in wonder. As far as what we thought, I think gratitude was the overwhelming emotion.

That feeling of gratitude is what led us to work with our now fantastic friends and fellow Most Wanted Artists ILYAIMY to revive the old Falcon Ridge Preview Tour as our way of saying thank you to all the folks that voted for us to return, of course we ended up having a remarkable time doing that as well.

Really everything seems to be a gift at this point in our career. We love what we do, and we just feel a tremendous sense of gratitude every time we get to work with our friends and fans to bring music and entertainment to more people.

PJN has endeared themselves to many in the folk music, especially after the success of the Lounge Stage (at Falcon Ridge). In a nutshell, would you describe the genesis of that stage and what its mission is?

The Lounge Stage is really the baby of our close friend Scott Jones, Jake, and I. There are many remarkable Folk Festivals out there, Clearwater, Philly Folk Fest, and CT Green Fest to name a few — Falcon Ridge is just a unique community and place that is dear to our hearts which is why we spend months every year working with Scott to put the Lounge Stage together.

Just a little history to set up the situation, a severe storm tore through the festival in 2008 and the result was not only an abbreviated festival for that year, but shortening the festival from a four day affair to a three day affair moving forward. Anne Saunders, the festival director, did a wonderful thing for the campers and continued to allow us entrance on Wednesday - even though events didn’t officially start until Friday. The Lounge Stage really was about looking at an opportunity to provide entertainment for the campers that came to listen to music and in the process we were able to showcase a number of very talented artists on Thursday night when hundreds of campers were already on site.

We naively assumed about 50 people might show up but ended up with over 350 our first year and 500 the second year. There are artists that credit the exposure with helping to get them on the official festival’s radar and there are a number of regular attendees who have told us that the spontaneity of the stage is one of their favorite events of the festival.

I think one of the only negative aspects of the folk community can be a kind of cliquish behavior where the traditional artists don’t approve of the urban songwriters, who don’t like or appreciate the bluegrass artists, who don’t understand the acoustic bands. Not to wax poetic but it’s fairly analogous to what’s going on with politics in the country as a whole right now. Jake and I absolutely love all of the sub-genres within the community and the stage is an opportunity to showcase how those sounds can work together. We’ve been fortunate in that we’ve received fantastic feedback from the community regarding the stage. Of course the next step is reaching out to people that have a pre-conceived notion of what Folk and Folk Festivals are and expose them to the musical brilliance, joy, and fun that finds a home under that banner.

Also being chosen as Official Showcasers at the annual NERFA conference was a pretty big deal for you. Given the number of acts who apply and only a handful being chosen, it must have felt like a very special evening, especially considering that it wasn’t all that long ago that you and Jake arrived at NERFA, hardly know a soul and ended up just hanging out in the lobby all weekend.

I remember walking onto that stage in that beautiful theatre looking out at a five-hundred person room filled by our peers, friends, and associates and taking a mental photograph. Our fans are our backbone and friends and family, but it was something very special to be representatives of our community at an event like NERFA.

Tell us about Red Ducks: why you recorded an all covers album and how it’s been received.

Gosh, honestly the germ of the idea was really me spending too much time focusing on the reviews of Monkey Biz (our first studio record) and realizing that the only consistent criticism was that the album wasn’t a reflection of our live sound. Now, as a studio technician, I don’t generally believe a record should sound like a live performance, but going back to my previous comments about some members of the community having a very specific notion on what folk music is or should be I thought it would be fun to put out a stripped down record.

From that point forward Jake and I talked about all the people who really encouraged us and supported us in our first five years trying to figure out who the band wanted to be when we grew up. From a sound perspective we were looking to put it together in the vein of Redbird’s first album (Redbird being Peter Mulvey, Kris Delmhorst, and Jeff Foccault’s folk supergroup). Many of the tunes on the album are the songs of those early influencers - Anthony da Costa, Red Molly, Session Americana, Tim Gearan, and Jimmy Ryan to name a few. Of course we then added songs by folks we would love to work with as well (Gillian Welch, I am literally sitting by the phone). After putting together a list of songs Jake, our drummer Dan, and our mandolin player Eric McDonald spent a day with our engineers and good buddies Matt Ramer from Digilog Sound and Chad Pucklowski camped out in my parents’ living room while they were away for a weekend. I’m told, if you are a true sound enthusiast, you can pick up the background hum of the family refrigerator in some of the songs.

PJN has recently founded a new community based organization called Tribal Mischief Productions. Your first venture for this new group was to produce a CD to benefit the SAMFund and the Andrea Coller Memorial Award which is a terrific way to help young survivors of cancer get back on their feet again after undergoing treatment and rehab.

Tribal Mischief is a production company we’ve started whose charter is enabling community building through entertainment, fundraising, and volunteer work. Our simple charter is to help raise awareness to causes and communities we believe in. It’s funny, I think Grooving Forward: Vol 1 (the disc) is the first thing we’ve put that name to, but Jake and I have been working together on projects like these for years. Pesky J. Nixon is a band I share with Jake, Dan, Eric, and the other musicians we play with, Tribal Mischief is an idea that Jake and I are dedicated to. Things like the Lounge Stage to me are the projects that Jake and I work on while wearing our “Tribal Mischief” hats, not our Pesky ones.

Jake has two kids and I am getting married this month and plan to raise a brood of my own. Working with and developing communities that are progressive and caring just resonates with me. I should point out that we are not political, we’re just idyllic and focused on giving ourselves something meaningful to work towards and gathering a community we can be dedicated to working for.

What’s next for Pesky J. Nixon?

The same thing we do every night, try to take over the world one crowd at a time — make people smile, sell some records, laugh a lot, and go to sleep content that we’ve done our part.

Oh . . . you meant specifically.

This winter Jake and I are going to find some retreat time and write the material for the next album and begin fundraising for it. We hope to get the attention of Clearwater Folk Festival and the Philly Folk Fest this year: Clearwater because I believe wholeheartedly in their mission of green technology, environmental stewardship, and never ending sing-a-longs, Philadelphia because it is another beautiful community that we believe in, and would love to be a part of.

Quick Q and A with Erin McKeown
 by Kathy S-B  ·  15 September 2012

Erin McKeown is one talented woman. She’s got terrific guitar chops, a dynamic voice, killer songs, fun stage presence . . . and she’s got musical spunk. By that I mean that she’s not afraid to experiment with her music. She’s a little bit jazz, a little bit folk, a little bit American songbook, and a lot of soul. Her live show is always stellar. The last time Erin played at the me&thee, she invited the opening act, Brad Yoder up on stage. He accompanied her on sax and it totally made for a most memorable evening.

In reading up about your background, I see that you started college at Brown with the intention of becoming an ornithologist but drifted over to ethnomusicology. What happened within you to make such a dramatic switch?

Science was hard! No, really, it was! It just took so much time, and when push came to shove i wanted to play music in clubs more than I wanted to be in a lab.

Are you a birder? If so, what’s the most exotic bird you’ve seen in the wild?

Alas, my birding days are more or less over. However, I live right on a small river, and the other day, I looked out my window and saw a great blue heron. It was magnificent.

Ethnomusicology is a fascinating subject matter. Do you think that any of the perhaps more obscure musical forms you discovered during your college years have influenced or inspired any of your music?

For sure. I didnt grow up with much exposure to anything besides basic pop music (Michael Jackson, Cyndi Lauper), so studying ethnomusicology exposed me to early jazz, vaudeville, and musical theater. But my peers at university also exposed me to rock and funk and hip-hop, which were equally influential.

One of your early breakthroughs into the consciousness of music fans was your participation as one of the members of Voices on the Verge. Do you have any fond memories of that time in your career?

It certainly was nice at the time to have company on the road. We laughed a lot.

So tell us about your newest project. I know that you had a pretty successful pledge campaign this summer. What’s the latest news on the new CD and can you describe it a bit for us?

We had an incredibly successful campaign! Because of the support I got, I’ll be filming my first music video at the end of September. I’m deep in art preparations for the vinyl and CD packages. I’m planning a really great release tour with my band for early next year.

The record itself is 10 original songs that focus on the urgency of citizenry. electric political gospel. It features my longtime band plus some exciting special guest singers.

Your bio states that you’ve worked with the Beantown Swing Orchestra. I find this fascinating because as I listen to some of your music, I can picture you standing in front of a huge orchestra and crooning with the best of them. Would you like to do some kind of “not your typical” kind of Erin project and rock out with a big swing orchestra? I bet your fans would love it.

I love singing with the Beantown Swing Orchestra. It’s a completely different skill set than being a singer-songwriter. the best i can describe it is that it’s like being strapped to the front of a runaway 18 wheeler. You just have to hang on tight! I’d love to do an album with them sometime.

For more information about Erin McKeown, visit her website.

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