Now, aside from certain misgivings pertaining to the diversity and focus of such events, there’s also a long and likely important discussion as to what degree protest alone can change (see Micah White’s case in The Guardian, citing the relative failure of Occupy). However, there is little doubt that activism is as or more important than it’s been for years. The tricky part will be maintaining this level of enthusiasm and commitment to equality beyond single marches or petitions. As White writes at the end of his piece: “The Women’s March on Washington has a role to play in this unfolding drama, but only if we cultivate a few moments of detachment from the thoughtless excitement to truly take time to consider this question: what happens on the day after the women march?”

The answer, I think, should be a doubling down on listening to women, non-binary folks and people of colour. Like, truly listening. Allowing them not only a voice but also the respect/power/position that will enable such a voice to enact social and political change. This can and should start at the smallest levels, equating to nothing more than a commitment to seeking out non-male/white opinions and voices and considering them with equal weight. Look for female journalists and authors and thinkers, PoC musicians and artists and film-makers. Heck, even just read The Le Sigh and Swell Tone and The Grey Estates, anything to shift your perspective away from the dominant voices. Do this until your bookshelf and record collection and Twitter feed look a little different, and the worldview that’s being beamed to you will look a little different too.

We’re under no illusion that our blog posts and mixtapes will solve anything, or that we’re preaching to the converted in this cool little echo chamber. So consider this as us shutting up for a few minutes, both to give space to voices that need it and a reminder that we’re standing by, on your side. You’ve lit the match, it’s time the void went flash. Never think that what you are doing is too small, and never assume that you are doing enough.

Tracklisting:

1. Jenny Hval – Untamed Region
2. Oh Rose – Running
3. Camp Cope – Jet Fuel Can’t Melt Steel Beams
4. The Breeders – Hag
5. Screaming Females – Mothership
6. BB Cream – Heroine
7. Shannen Moser – A Funeral, A Friend, My Sanity
8. Tanukichan – Enough
9. Noname – Reality Check
10. Patti Smith – Kimberly
11. Sammus – Perfect, Dark
12. Vagabon – Fear & Force
13. Diet Cig – Tummy Ache
14. Jay Som – The Bus Song
15. Haybaby – Her
16. Betty Becky – Telegraph Ave
17. Suburban Lawns – Janitor
18. Heavens to Betsy – Nothing Can Stop Me
19. Tacocat – Dana Katherine Scully
20. Colour Me Wednesday – Two Fifty For You Girls
21. Allison Crutchfield – Dean’s Song
22. Cherry Glazerr – Nuclear Bomb
23. Mal Devisa – Dominatrix
24. Nicole Dollanganger – American Tradition
25. Angel Olsen – Sister

P.S. This seems a good time to remind you that Nancy Kells of Spartan Jet-Plex recently put out Friends For Equality, a compilation in support of the Southern Poverty Law Center, ACLU and Planned Parenthood. In addition, she has arranged a benefit show in Richmond, VA in support of Forward Together and Sister Song (full details here).

There have also been similarly great releases like Wren & Shark and Friends, Don’t Stop Now (featuring covers by the likes of Lisa Prank and Augusta Koch of Cayetana) and Our First 100 Days. Oh, and some specially written songs by Hip Hatchet and Adeem the Artist.

Photo by Benjamin Lovell

The post Lit a Match, the Void Went Flash: A Playlist for Moving Forward appeared first on Various Small Flames.

“I’m sure the music world has long had it’s own version of [Vonnegut’s] Girl Pool. Picking up where Bikini Kill et al. left off, Girlpool’s music seems like a reaction against this… Coupling lyrics of everyday feelings with high-pitched screams of frustration, they come across not as hyper-realistic freedom fighters, but as real people with a just cause, people growing bolder with every small success, people ready to stand up for what is right”

But frustrated screaming is a tiring business, especially when it has little effect. Perhaps this is why their début album, Before The World Was Big, sees the duo take a new direction, swapping out the aggressive energy for wide-eyed sincerity, a yearning for simpler times where big issues passed over oblivious heads. This simplicity is present both musically and lyrically, with sparse instrumentation employing a minimal number of chords used to support their conversational vocals. And that’s conversational in subject and tone, with delivery ranging from hushed intimate whispers (e.g. on ‘Dear Nora’)  to chipper, excited babbling (‘Before The World Was Big’). The effect is something alluringly childish, a return to the (pre-)adolescent values of happiness, friendship and trust which lots of adults would do well to aspire to. Opener ‘Ideal World’ sets this up, acting as a bridge from the previous Girlpool releases by declaring the aims and intentions of the new record and giving context to the new direction:

“I was taught what to believe,
now I’m only certain that no one is free.
Tranquillise me with your ideal world”

The title track faces this directly, admitting a boredom with familiar surroundings and pining for a time when expectations were lower, when the idea of being bored or stuck in a dull town didn’t occur, when time was marked by board games and bath times and candy bars. But this is not one of those twee bands that uses juvenile imagery ironically. Girlpool aren’t saying we’re-so-cool-we-can-even-be-cool-playing-with-dolls. Rather, they’re saying that their minds are scary and their bodies are scary and world is very scary. They are opening up, voicing their insecurities and flaws.

Mom and Dad, I love you
do I show it enough?
I just miss how it felt standing next to you,
wearing matching dresses before the world was big

What makes this sharing of worries and secrets so cathartic and uplifting is that Tividad and Tucker are doing it together. Whatever her/his circumstances, the listener can’t help but feel part of something, recognised and included, not alone. When they ask “Do you feel restless when you realise you’re alive?” on ‘Chinatown’, you feel like shouting affirmatives, so when the song continues “I’m still looking sureness in the way I say my name / I am nervous for tomorrow and today,” you know you are on the same wavelength. As they sing on ‘Pretty’:

“I could only stare at my feet
when you said you felt
close to me.
Transfixed on lullabies,
I’m suspended when I find myself needing you
talk to me, tell me any story,
see me.
You don’t have to be alone”

It seems crazy that we have to write about a young band ‘returning’ to simplicity, especially as Tividad and Tucker are still teenagers. But in reality this is not regression but progression. The band have realised that the modern world wants (and forces) young people to grow up unnaturally fast, and while the first self-titled EP was thrashing against this, Before The World Was Big manages to offer a more sustainable and productive antidote. In a weird way, Girlpool have grown up – becoming confident enough to share their dreams and vulnerabilities and in turn galvanise a lonely generation too afraid of ridicule to live the lives they desire.

Before The World Was Big is out now on Wichita Recordings.

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“A kind of communal voice for the people of native cultures being ignored into oblivion by those with influence in modern America… [a celebration of] the people who are under-represented in US entertainment”

We are saving our review for nearer to the July release date but in the mean time we were lucky enough to get a chance to speak with Crain and delve into her writing process and influences.

Jon: I was writing about an album called Grow/Decompose by Young Jesus which seemed to be somewhere between the traditional album and narrative-driven concept album, and it struck me that this seems not only clever and enjoyable but also a very modern way of writing. That is, fragmented and but cohesive on a wider scale. Under Branch & Thorn & Tree (not to mention your previous albums) strikes me as much the same, a collection of songs that are loosely related but without a single clear narrative. Do you feel the same way? Is each song a separate story, so to speak?

Samantha: Each step of the process involved in making an album is very focused for me, in that, it happens in bursts. I usually write most of the songs in a concentrated amount of time, then completely fixate on the arrangements of those songs for a time, then move to recording and production ideas, and then on to the packaging and art and media surrounding the album. So yes, it makes sense that most of my albums including this one have a theme running throughout them because of the manner in which I work on them. I remain largely the same person throughout the process of the album because it moves very quickly. My creativity comes in bursts, as I said. In the case of this one, Under Branch & Thorn & Tree, I was focused on the importance of painting women as multi-dimensional people in a working class, blue collar world. It moves outside of that small focused area at times to include underdogs of all types, any set of marginalized people. After writing “Kid Face”, my last album, I felt I had really dried up my well of personal experiences because that album was so autobiographical. So I needed to look around me for inspiration. But, back to the songs relating to each other, yes, they all do relate to each other because I wrote them with a target in mind. Each song is its own instance though and exists encompassing the bulls-eye.

You told Stereogum that you “don’t write protest songs in the traditional sense, but I’m always listening to the voices of people around me.” I recently read an article by Alynda Segarra (of Hurray For The Riff Raff) where she calls on folk musicians to ‘fall in love with justice’. Do you feel that folk still has the influence and reach to have a positive impact on societal matters?

I definitely think music still has the power to influence politically and socially, it is just a matter of bringing it back into the popular mainstream. I would love to see a time when art does not just imitate life, but art creates the kind of life it imagines. I think this has manifested before in the 60s folk scene, punk in the 70s, a lot of Mento and Reggae, I could go on…. Music has the power to change minds and to nudge humanity down a different path but for the most part I feel like most music just wants to follow the mass around asking what they like and what they want from them. There are bigger things going on, music and art needs to direct attention towards those injustices. Its a good challenge too, to try to do that in a creative way, not just a blatant, literal way.

To return to that Stereogum piece, you said that the songs are written from the perspective of the underdog, “the 99% of us that are working people.” Do you feel that folk (or at least the semi-mainstream line) has been somewhat taken from the working class? Would you lay the blame with the deluge of super-popular middle-class banjo strummers that have flooded the airwaves over the past few years? Or do you think true folk continues independent of popular trends?

The music of the people will exist regardless of what is going is on in the mainstream, there has always been an underground and there will continue to be because zeal and passion will always remain. However, I do think that the music successfully reaching our ears is based on the interests and experiences of a Lilliputian and privileged party. As controversial as the idea may be, coarseness and affliction have been the backdrops for the most moving art, and, yes, the fading recognition of a passionate 99% in favor of a white and heterosexual deep pocket has made music and art quite insipid.

On the note of folk being taken away from the people, the Segarra piece I mentioned earlier focusses on how folk music is has become something made by and for white heterosexual men, something which I think could be applied to art (or rather: Art, the important capitalised sort) in general. I’ve read a few similar pieces recently: Mitski said she feels she has to be “150 percent and better than everybody in the room to be considered competent,” author Claire Vaye Watkins recently had an epiphany via Twitter where she realised she had been writing to impress white males, and Anwen Crawford wrote about how female music critics aren’t taken seriously. Do you agree that the whole idea of approval/praise in Art is geared towards what men want to consume? Do you feel you have ever put out something which went against your artistic instincts in order to gain patriarchal approval/validation? What needs to change to ensure people have creative freedom in the future?

I do know this is something that happens, artists, especially female artists, feeling they must pander to men in order to be successful, but I’m much too obstinate to let anyone have much influence over what I put out into the world. Not everyone has the same disposition though so the main thing here that we need to work towards imparting is gender and race equality, I’m not talking about legally (although that is a huge first step), I mean really injecting those principles into the framework of society. The more widespread and standard those principles become, the closer we get to a place where artists create freely, and, even more importantly, where people live freely.
I read that you once studied Creative Writing to some extent in college? Do songs blossom from your story writing, or vice versa? Or are they separate endeavours without much crossover?

My “extent” of college lasted just under 2 semesters, so like 8 months. I hated college and I got out of there as soon as I saw another option. Anything I learned about writing, I learned from just reading a lot. I used to write short stories as a kid and into my teenage years but the minute I started writing songs, that all went out the window, I had found the most fitting form of writing for myself. So songwriting is all there is now. I’ve dabbled with the idea of play writing and maybe getting back into short story writing but I’d need to really switch gears to fully focus on and learn that discipline.

Does literature have a big influence on your music? [if so] Who would you say are the writers who have had the biggest impact on your work?

Yes, most of the words that inspire me most weren’t set to music. D.H. Lawrence, Breece D’J Pancake, Dylan Thomas, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Louise Bogan, Flannery O’Connor.I know it’s kind of par for the course of a musician but is it ever a struggle releasing new music? I’ve always wondered how artists feel when complete strangers at their shows know all the words and cherish the songs as something personal to them. Is it difficult to hand over the songs to the listeners after expending so much energy and emotion?

I don’t find it difficult. For me, by the time the album is coming out, by the time the songs are reaching a public, my energy has already cleared the intensity of the connection with the songs. I can still speak about them and sing them with fervor and dedication because they are mine, but the hypersensitivity has mellowed, a bit like “I can see clearly now the rain is gone”.

Finally, could you share four or five of the acts you are listening to at the moment. They can new or old, popular or obscure, whatever you find yourself returning to.

Favorite music right now: Frazey Ford, Chad VanGaalen, Eef Barzelay, Chopin Nocturnes, and Sibylle Baier.

Samantha Crain’s new album, Under Branch & Thorn & Tree, is out on the 17th July. You can pre-order it now from her official website or Full Time Hobby, and if you sign-up to the mailing list then you can get ‘Outside The Pale’ as a free download right now. The impatient among you should head over to the store and delve into her back-catalogue. Crain is also touring extensively this summer, including some UK dates (see below). A full list can be found here.

31^st July : Perth – Southern Fried Roots Festival

1^st Aug: Perth – Southern Fried Roots Festival

2^nd Aug: Glasgow – Broadcast

3^rd Aug: Leeds – Brudenell Social Club

4^th Aug: Manchester – Gullivers

5^th Aug: Bristol – The Louisiana

6^th Aug: London – Sebright Arms

7^th Aug: Brighton – Hope and Ruin

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The latest Pasture Dog release is Southern Gothic, a collection of songs that uses a combination of everyday life-type scenes and vivid, strange imagery to create something equal parts unsettling and comforting, just as the title suggests. Lots of music that is inspired by Southern Gothic fails to get past the weird-for-weird’s-sake sort of deal where oddity or perversity or violence is included because it seems to add indistinct depth, but Masi’s songwriting manages to capture the wider perspective. Here, the strangeness is specific and targeted, cathartic confessional hymns to critique human behaviour and the good ol’ Social Norms it has created.

‘Lazarus Saturday Sulking’ kicks things off, a song packed with Biblical references that serves as an intimate exploration of gender roles and sexual identity. Masi’s narrator is isolated and, worse, understands enough to resent the isolation to the degree that it forces her into deeper isolation (and so on etc.), a sort cyclical it-really-fucking-sucks-that-this-has-to-be-so-hard-and-that-makes-it-harder situation, as made clear by the inability to communicate which lays at the core of the song:

“I’ve been coughing up “sweetheart” into the crook of my arm. It’s force of habit, it’s the crime I commit. But he calls me baby like an insult. To bury my love is an old art. And I’ll do it again.”

Masi’s lyrics are poetic, reading like a stream of thoughts scribbled down late at night when gripped by an overwhelming urge to say everything, be it to a loved one or herself. “Because I can’t stay so long in the same static place,” Masi sings on “Louie’, “and I can’t sustain to make all the same mistakes, over again and over again.” ‘Garden Tomb’ has a dreamy feel, the slight reverb acting as a subtle funhouse mirror, rippling the track in odd ways, while ‘Labrador Blue’ opens with a more hopeful guitar strum: “I don’t worry anymore,” declares Masi, “I don’t get so overwhelmed,” although this positivity does not seem to last as the song closes with the narrator feeling blue while reminiscing about the past.

‘Lizard Patrol’ speaks of the confused line between positive/negative identity perspectives, the indecision of (or oscillation between) 1. hating yourself, 2. understanding that you don’t hate yourself and 3. working towards conditions where it would be considered normal not to have to hate yourself should you choose to embrace the image you envisage as You. It’s bizarre situation of understanding what is right and moral while being susceptible to all the pain and doubt that the human body/mind is so good at, pain and doubt which leads to self-limitation and sabotage even though your rational clear-headed opinions know you are moving in the right direction:

“I can’t let my thoughts get so outstretched. but really I was limiting myself, and limited the ways that I could fix – oh god how am I gonna fix it?”

The theme of an internal dissonance between love, hate and acceptance is made clearer on the final track. ‘Everything That Rises Must Converge’ is named after a Flannery O’Connor story, a tale concerning a recent graduate named Julian. The man is ashamed of his mother’s racist perspective yet fails to connect with any of the African American characters, highlighting an inherent racism in his own personality. “True culture is in the mind” he argues, only for his mother to counter “it’s in the heart.” Julian feels like a transitionary stage between past bigotry and future tolerance – he knows what he ought think yet still harbours the subconscious prejudices that are a product of the society in which produced him. For me, Pasture Dog explores the twenty-first century equivalent of this, that is, the exact same thing. Be it with racial equality or sexual/gender identity, it seems many have accepted the theory of equal rights (ie. in their minds) without fully embracing the change of attitude on a deeper subconscious level (in their hearts). Masi explores the very real pain suffered by someone on the wrong end of this inconsistency, someone trapped in and tormented by the outdated heart-shaped morality that pokes through in even the most well-meaning person or society.

You can grab the album on a pay-what-you-can basis via Bandcamp.

P.S. For those of you who are into pictures and words, Masi also runs the art magazine Field Notes, which collects a variety of visual and literary pieces into a colourful journal. All of the issues are available online here.

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Girlpool is Cleo Tucker and Harmony Tividad. The pair met at high school and developed their musical aspirations in LA at The Smell, an all ages, drug/alcohol free underground club that has played a part in the career of a number of noise bands (see The Mae Shi, No Age, Abe Vigoda). Unlike the aforementioned bands, Girlpool make relatively simple indie rock music sans drums, relying on their distinctive vocals and cutting lyrics to make the impact. The result is a slightly skewed guitar-driven EP that feels continuously on the verge of spilling over, restrained but for how long?

You can probably guess the main target of this barely restrained fervour from what I’ve already said about the band’s name. Tasked with listening to the “faceless voices of scientists on dictaphone records,” the women of the Vonnegut’s Girl Pool leave their “cloister of cement” only once a year to go “a-carolling” and get chocolate bars at Christmas time. The song ‘Blah Blah Blah’ captures the ridiculousness of the fact that these women (read: any women) are controlled by “anybody with a dictaphone,” i.e. even the most uninspiring, unoriginal, banal men:

“You leave me crying in the fucking rain
I want you
You’re too busy watching other girls
In the little skirts, with their pretty curls
Why don’t you
Hot one you know you want it
Then when you find you got it
You call me

I hear you talking like
BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH
BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH
BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH”

Next song ‘Paint Me Colours’ looks at privilege through the prism of teenage heartbreak: “I’ll never understand what it means to be a man who is white ‘cos he never has to fight.” This grounding of big ideas (racial/gender discrimination) in ‘normal’ things (teen angst) works really well, although of course the big ideas are intrinsically linked with and impact upon normality. ‘Slutmouth,’ opening with the line “sometimes I want to be a boy,” challenges just what ‘normal’ is in our society, dealing with the belittling ‘norms’ such as street harassment (I don’t wanna get fucked / by a fucked society / cos everywhere I look / someone’s blaming me / I don’t really care about the clothes I wear”) and social expectation (“I go to school every day / just to be made a housewife one day”).

The single ‘Jane’ gets back to more hopeful messages. Detailing how the titular character punches a boy called Tommy in the mouth (bear with me). The song implores people in similar situations to heed their advice, a call to arms to all facing inequality, a conviction that things can and will be better:

“Girls and boys if you are listening
Don’t ever feel imprisoned
Feeling like your mouth is glued tight shut.

You were born for a reason
Share all of your feelings
If you are a Jane put your fists up too.”

While I’ve never seen the cloister of cement, or handed out sweets to it’s inhabitants during the holidays, I’m sure the music world has long had it’s own version of the Girl Pool. Picking up where Bikini Kill et al. left off, Girlpool’s music seems like a reaction against this. But it is to their credit that the album isn’t a scream-filled futile rage but instead an assured confidence, a determination to say things as they are. Coupling lyrics of everyday feelings with high-pitched screams of frustration, they come across not as hyperrealistic freedom fighters, but as real people with a just cause, people growing bolder with every small success, people ready to stand up for what is right. Things have changed for the better but the playing field still isn’t level, and the unerring confidence of Tucker and Tividad plays like the hammer blows against any remaining walls of the cloister of cement.

The EP is out now on Wichita Recordings and you can buy it here.

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Adult Mom (who we featured on our Favourite Free Music list) is the bedroom pop project of Steph Knipe, and here she is supported by a full band. This band gives Sometimes Bad Happens a well-developed sound that is not as lo-fi as you might expect from the bedroom pop tag.

Lyrically, the release is a refreshingly honest (you could say naive, but aren’t we all?) take on young relationships and their termination. That sort of I-hate-you-but-can’t-stop-thinking-about-you-so-now-I’m-starting-to-hate-myself feeling. ‘I Make Boys Cry’ is interesting in that it deals with the whole romance/love thing from a different angle, ditching the angsty male ‘I love her/I miss her/I need her’ POV for a more realistic female perspective. Forget in-depth think pieces or convoluted psycho-/sociological essays, you won’t find a better description of the crux of feminism than the line: “I make boys cry because they don’t understand that i am a person.” Women have feelings too, huh? Who would have thought it? To quote the song in full:

“i make boys cry in parking lots outside of restaurants
but boys make me cry too when they tell me
‘i love you! i love you! i love you!’

how many times will i be the one to enlighten and never get anything?

i make boys cry because they don’t understand that i am a person
yeah i get sad too but i don’t take it out on you

it’s shit that your love for me scared you so much
but “i love you! i love you! i love you!” is not enough.”

But despite the songs being full of sadness and confusion and hurt, they serve to point things out beyond the obvious ‘I’m sad, this sucks.’ Out of the bad times catalogued here comes something affirming, an acknowledgement that x is bad, and y is bad too, but I’m still alive and functioning and now I know x and y is bad so maybe I can deal with it better. Knipe describes this better than I can:

‘”Sometimes bad happens” is a direct quote from a toddler after dropping a truck full of sand on the floor and it resonated with me because it’s simple. Sometimes bad does happen, it’s a given, and sometimes we have to just move on and accept it. Accept bad shit, accept pain, accept being heartbroken, and one day you will be able to grow taller. Be angry and wild and sad and wacky because sometimes it’s all we can do to survive. Appreciate sadness and its temporary quality. That’s all, thank you to everyone in life.’

Sometimes Bad Happens will be officially released on the 22nd August, and you can buy it on Bandcamp, or on tape via Miscreant Records. The good folks over at The Le Sigh are streaming the EP on Soundcloud.

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First up, we were lucky enough to speak to Alynda Lee Segarra from Hurray For The Riff Raff, fresh from an appearance in The Sunday Times, who’s (lovely) album Look Out Mama is out today (review here).

One of the themes that strike me on Look Out Mama is the idea that loneliness can be escaped by moving somewhere fresh. Much has been made of your travels down through America. Obviously the type of music is (at least in part) determined by your experiences with other musicians but how much did the journey influence the stories and ideas on the album? Could you have written these narratives in The Bronx?

Loneliness cannot be escaped simply by heading somewhere new, although everyone has their knee-jerk reactions to feelings of isolation and sadness.  Leaving town is most definitely mine. I think loneliness is only cured by a sense of community, by love and understanding with those around you.

Sometimes when I travel I interact with someone I never would have met had I stayed at home and done “the right thing” and that person will illuminate my mind to what it means to be truly happy. That is a precious moment, but it’s something you gotta take with you and put into motion. A big lesson i’ve learned is if I want to feel really satisfied I need my community of artists. I need people that I respect artistically around me to feed off of and learn from. To show new songs to and get feedback from. These people are what has really inspired my music, the idea that we can create our own lives and build something together. When I reached New Orleans I found my second family. So, it’s thanks to that great city.

For me, the album harks back to an expansive old country that is exciting and welcoming. Here, sitting at my computer (as someone whose experience of the US is limited to the ‘big’ cities), the idea of the ‘old America’ seems very distant yet very alluring. Is the traditional sense of adventure still available if you look for it?

Adventure is everywhere, but you do have to work harder at finding it. There’s a lot of forces today that are trying to sell you a packaged version of life. If you want to break out of that then kudos to you, you’re making the world an interesting place to live! You got to take risks, you’ve got to find your passion and follow it.

I reluctantly used the term ‘Country’ to describe your music in the review. The demographic has a rather bad rep (especially here in the UK – I can’t really think of any respected British Country acts). Do you see yourself as a Country musician? I see the big Country ‘stars’ in the US and can’t help but feel there is a rather large disparity between them and what you are trying to do.

That term should be reclaimed. I want to take a lot of things back, music in general! The Carter Family is who I think of when I think of Country music, Hank Williams Sr and all of those incredibly talented musicians that I’ve learned from on records.

Now, a lot of people may say that since I’m from the Bronx, the term “country” does not belong to me.  Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but I feel that music, and that has to do with feeling someone’s soul on a record, not just where they came from in the world.

So I’m gonna do my best to do it right and do it from the heart. I’m also gonna do it the way I am, and that is not with the goal to make a million dollars, or to spread some message of war or bigotry. My point is, I know there is a huge history of country music from the past that I would love to be categorized with, and my goal is to remind people of that music. There’s also a lot of folks today who are with me on this, and we get the privilege of touring with them!

A question I always want to ask musicians – removing the aforementioned personal experiences and any musical influences, what else shapes your songs? Are there are writers or other artists which you would say have a large impact on your thinking?

Frida Kahlo, Angela Davis, Audre Lorde, and of course friends and family. I am very influenced by feminist thinkers and artists, lately my major inspiration has been Sampat Pal of the Gulabi Gang in India. She is the leader of a group of lower caste women who stand up for each other in times of domestic violence.

Finally, could you suggest 4 or 5 bands or musicians that you are currently enjoying? They could have formed yesterday or died fifty years ago, be known to three people or playing on MTV, any artist that is catching your attention at the moment.

I love this question! Shovels and Rope, Sam Doores and the Tumbleweeds, Morgan O’Kane, Spirit Family Reunion, Clear Plastic Masks, Feral Foster, and the Alabama Shakes. These are musicians of today making me proud to be alive in these times. My dream is that we all play a festival together someday.

Thanks to the good folks over at Loose Music for putting us in touch and to Alynda for answering our questions (in super-quick time too!). We appreciate it!

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