Author: Anita Overcash

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The Lone Bellow succeeds collectively during upheaval

The Lone Bellow relocated to Nashville to record its 2017 album, Walk Into A Storm, in the historic RCA Studio A. The Americana trio plays the Jefferson on Thursday. Publicity Photo.

In many ways, you could say that indie rock trio The Lone Bellow’s third album title is biographical. Before recording Walk Into A Storm, released in fall of 2017, members of the group had to make a tough decision—wait for one of their own to check in and out of rehab before recording, or proceed in his absence. The answer was simple: wait patiently for their bandmate to return.

Brian Elmquist (guitar, vocals) left Zach Williams (lead vocals, guitars) and Kanene Donehey Pipkin (mandolin, bass, keyboards, vocals) in a predicament when he came head-to-head with alcoholism. Waiting for him meant that the band’s scheduled record time at the acclaimed RCA Studio A in Nashville was reduced from 30 days to seven.

“It was a moment where we had to make a decision of whether we were going to put Brian’s well-being first or the making of the third record,” says Williams. “It was really scary making those decisions then, but I’m glad we did. He’s had a beautiful success story so far and we’re taking it one day at a time. It’s been really good.”

Taking things one day at a time is nothing new for Williams, who picked up pen and paper and learned to play the guitar after his wife was temporarily paralyzed from a horse-riding injury in 2004. After her recovery in 2005, Williams moved his family from Buckhead, Georgia, to Brooklyn, New York. But the migration prompted a larger herd, so to speak, as 10 or so of Williams’ college friends trickled up to the city that never sleeps in pursuit of their dreams.

One of these friends was Tony Award- winning Broadway actress Ruthie Ann Miles. “Another developed a game company called Chess At Three, and some others went into fashion,” Williams says. “The city was really kind to all of us.”

For Williams, who met Elmquist and Pipkin and formed The Lone Bellow, the accomplishments of being signed to a major record label with albums that made the Billboard 200 was more than enough. Add on the recording of the band’s second album, Then Came The Morning, with Aaron Dessner of The National and a nomination at the Americana Music Awards, and you’ve got a success sequel.

Calling Dessner “an incredible producer,” Williams says, “It was so fun because we are such different bands and I think we both fed off of the two sonic textures of each other’s band.”

Williams describes The Lone Bellow’s third album as more hopeful, lyrically speaking, than some of its past efforts.

“We’re really just trying to dissect the human condition as best we can with every song we write and every show we play,” says Williams. “I write a lot about the regular beauty found in the mundane of life.”

Songs like “May You Be Well,” a track for Williams’ daughter to enjoy while he’s on the road, and “Between the Lines,” written while Elmquist was in rehab, take a personal approach to the songwriting craft.

Williams credits The Lone Bellow’s interconnectedness and longevity, despite recent hardships, to gratitude. He also notes that the band is more like family than friends.

“We have super terrible conflicts and we’ll get over it and be okay 10 minutes later,” he says. “I think that you have to genuinely care for your fellow bandmates. You have to care about their creative input and…as human beings. That’s gone a long way.”

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LADAMA learns, educates and transforms

LADAMA performs at Red Wing Roots Festival on July 13. Publicity photo

Hailing from parts of Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, and the United States, the Latinas who make up LADAMA are passionate about music and its ability to transform lives across the globe. The four women in the group have had their own lives transformed by music after meeting through OneBeat, a musical exchange program that connects musicians around the world for collaborative projects.

LADAMA is comprised of Lara Klaus (pandeiro, vocals, drums) from Recife, Brazil, Daniela Serna (vocals, tambor alegre) from Bogotá, Colombia, Maria Fernanda Gonzalez (bandola llanera, vocals) from Barquisimeto, Venezuela, and Sara Lucas (vocals, guitar, hand percussion) from New York City.

Linking up through the OneBeat (a partnership between Bang on a Can’s Found Sound Nation, and the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs), “was a life-changing event,” says Lucas, who is also a member of the Brooklyn-based experimental band Callers. “It was so exciting, not only of working in each of our communities and learning how each of our communities celebrates music and expression, but also learning the rhythms, the language and the culture of each place.”

Along the way, Lucas picked up Spanish, allowing her to sing in the language. After forming in 2014, the band released a self-titled album in 2016, with tours across South America and the United States to follow.

The debut consists of songs that are primarily sung in Spanish—the diverse styles of cumbia, maracatu, onda nueva and joropo are mixed with elements of pop, soul and hip-hop to form an eclectic global fusion of South American zest. Songs in English include “Compared to What” and “Atravessadora,” which give those lost in translation a taste of the band’s lyrical craftsmanship.

Lucas explains that “Atravessadora” is Portuguese for middle man. The song was inspired by an unsettling event in which a woman tried to rob her at the end of a tour, and the feelings that transpired afterward, and it mixes sharp shrieking and pan scratching with a variety of drum tones.

“I felt a lot of compassion for this person because I think they were in a situation where they felt compromised,” she says. “People from all over the world find themselves in compromising situations where they are a middle person and they are controlled by other people and have to do compromising things to survive.”

“Compared to What” is a cover of a protest song from the 1960s by Gene McDaniels. Lucas says that the song spoke to the band in a different way than it was intended decades ago. “The song became a universal song for us as all of our governments turned right politically,” she says.

While lyrical content on the album runs deep, tracks take listeners to distinct parts of the world where musical traditions are upheld, and where music and dance go hand in hand. On “Porro Maracatu,” the band studied traditional rhythms from Afro-Brazilian and Afro-Colombian cultures in order to unite them.

All the members of LADAMA have worked in music education with an emphasis on empowering women and youth, and they incorporate educational workshops in their tours. The desired outcome is simple: They want to empower others to create. And while the band has inspired many along the way, one community of youth in Colombia turned the tables.

“The students really inspired us and a lot of our methods mainly through body percussion,” Lucas says. “Now, we recognize that every community around the world has their own way of activating creation in communities.”

The process involves using the body as an instrument and understanding the physicality of music, and LADAMA has integrated it into its music.

“It becomes about internalizing rhythm and song expression by using your body as the first instrument,” she explains. “We explore that through the rhythms that we know and learn from others along the way, and then we show how we use it in our own compositions.”

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The Alt unearths old songs and switches its lineup

The Alt’s Eamon O’Leary injects the sound of Appalachia into the group’s traditional Irish music on Friday at C’ville Coffee. Photo by Paul Gaudynski

Of the many roads that could be taken, The Alt—an Irish folk band comprised of John Doyle (guitar, bouzouki, vocals), Eamon O’Leary (guitar, bouzouki, vocals) and Nuala Kennedy (flutes, whistles, vocals)—chooses the beaten path on its music journey. The band’s self-titled debut is not, however, a collection of Irish tunes that are beloved by the masses, but a collection of overlooked gems from Irish, Scottish, English and Kentucky (yes, we said Kentucky) tradition. Of the latter, O’Leary explains how one track, “The Letter Song,” is influenced by the Bluegrass State.

“There’s a kinship between songs from Appalachia and songs brought over from Ireland and Scotland,” says O’Leary, who hails from Ireland and resides in New York. Similarly, Doyle splits his time between Ireland and Asheville, North Carolina, where the band chose to record the album, hunkered down in a mountain cabin. Kennedy, who is in the band but not currently touring due to pregnancy, resides in Ireland, but has spent time in Scotland.

The Alt
C’ville Coffee
April 13

In the Appalachian setting, the trio’s members tapped into their heritage and reflected on its lineage and influence in North America, specifically in Appalachia’s country and bluegrass music.

“I think John’s idea with this band…was more about harmony singing and song tradition rather than the instrumental dance music tradition,” says O’Leary.

Though the group pulls lyrics from old songs and manuscripts, they create the instrumentation and harmonies to go with those findings from scratch. Take, for instance, the first track on the album, “Lovely Nancy.” That song comes from author Sam Henry’s book, Songs of the People.

“It’s a massive collection of songs, some are well-known and some lesser-known,” says O’Leary. “I would come across some text that looked interesting to me and come up with an arrangement, and then the band fleshes it out.” O’Leary explains that he’d never even heard many of the songs featured on the album played before.

“With a project like this there’s definitely an attempt to unearth things that are less commonly heard,” says O’Leary. “That’s not to be deliberately obscure, but because there’s a lot of beautiful songs that don’t get heard.”

There’s a kind of show-and-tell process related to the tunes that members of the group each bring to the table. “We teach each other songs and we learn songs from each other from the tradition,” says O’Leary who notes how Kennedy taught him and Doyle the song “Cha Tig Mor Mo Bhean Dhachaigh.” The song, written in Scottish Gaelic, required a quick language lesson from Kennedy.

“In Ireland, everybody learns Irish Gaelic in school growing up but some of us neglect it in later life,” says O’Leary. Scots Gaelic is closely related but different, so it was new for me, but we’d always be familiar with the translation of the song because you have to know what you are singing about.”

O’Leary notes that Kennedy discovered the song from a friend living in Nova Scotia, Canada, where Scottish Gaelic is still widely spoken. “A lot of songs go on those kind of journeys,” he says.

Like the evolving songs, The Alt will perform on Friday sans Kennedy. Joining the group in her absence will be Cathy Jordan, frontwoman of traditional Irish folk act Dervish. She will bring her bodhran, accordion and vocal talents to the band.

“Working in a new group is exciting,” says O’Leary. “New people bring a different perspective and energy to the music.”

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Southern Culture on the Skids goes out on a limb

Southern Culture on the Skids blends in some folk while maintaining its loyalty to rockabilly at the Southern on March 16. Publicity photo

Who really needs an opening act when you have alter egos, right? For the Chapel Hill-based band Southern Culture on the Skids, this was a question well explored in the late ’80s when the group found itself without the funds to pay an opener. With their instruments by their side, they flip-flopped into The Pinecones, a laid-back, acoustic folk-rock cohort, before exiting the stage and returning as Southern Culture on the Skids, the dolled-up rockabilly shebang.

SCOTS frontman Rick Miller remembers raising some eyebrows. “We’d get stuff like, ‘Wait a minute, didn’t you guys just play?’ or ‘Were you guys related to that opening band?’”

The trio, featuring Dave Hartman on drums, Mary Huff on bass and vocals and Miller on guitar and lead vocals, revisits that ’80s alter ego on its new album, The Electric Pinecones. The record incorporates some of the old Pinecones band vibes into current SCOTS-esque electric rockabilly, surf-rock and Americana elements.

“I think we explored a more folky side of what we do with some melodies that were a little bit different for us, but there’s still a lot of variety on it,” says Miller. “We stepped back a little bit from trying to be more humorous, but I wouldn’t say we’re serious.” Miller notes that there are fewer songs about food, though a track titled “Rice and Beans” does appear.

Heavily influenced by his upbringing in the South and frequent trips to New Orleans on SCOTS tours, Miller leads the bluesy, swamp-like honky-tonk twang that makes its way on the album. He moved from North Carolina to California when he was 12 years old and returned to the Carolinas for graduate school, which was when SCOTS formed. “I think moving away helped to give me a different perspective,” says Miller.

The Electric Pinecones album starts out with “Freak Flag,” a surfy pop anthem that stresses the importance of loving who you are.

Miller says that song was influenced by his son. “If you’re honest with yourself and you’re who you are, you’ll be happy,” he says.

“Freak Flag” has turned out to be one of the band’s more popular tracks, with help from “Little Steven’s Underground Garage,” a syndicated radio show hosted by Steven Van Zandt (guitarist for Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band). It even earned the program’s weekly honor of Coolest Song in the World.

Miller believes that the band’s next album may have a similar feel to The Electric Pinecones. “I had a lot semi-finished songs that I didn’t get onto that record,” he says. “This has been a really good thing for the band creatively, by being able to step away from SCOTS and move in a different direction.”

Though SCOTS has earned ample success on Americana charts, the journey hasn’t been easy. Miller reminisces about living in vans and sleeping on a lot of floors.

“It took us 10 years before getting signed to a major label where we got a little bit of a bump in our career,” says Miller. The band has been on independent labels since its stint with Geffen in the late ’90s. But despite a rotation of band members in the group’s early years, it’s triumphed in its longevity as a trio.

“Sometimes I tell people that the secret to our success is the lack of,” says Miller. “We never got to that point where egos and big money decisions got in the way of us being ourselves, being friends and making music.”

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Noah Gundersen considers the distress of modern times

Noah Gundersen gets heavy at the Southern on Saturday. Publicity photo

Noah Gundersen recently saw the world’s largest easel. He says that the roadside attraction, located in Goodland, Kansas, is a whopping 80 feet tall with one of Vincent van Gogh’s sunflower paintings stretched across it. That stop, like many, is just one of the perks of having a good tour manager, he says.

There’s little way of knowing exactly what other stops are in store for the Seattle-based singer-songwriter as he embarks on his current tour, which arrives at the Southern on Saturday, but he’ll likely find other cultural oddities along the way.

Gundersen has already found his way from indie-folk to harder hitting rock soundscapes. His 2017 release, White Noise, is proof of that. The album, a follow-up to 2015’s folk-caressing Carry the Ghost, is his most rock-laden yet and he’s gone as far as to dub it a “sensory overload.” But Gundersen notes that his decision for a dramatic shift in musical styles came naturally.

Noah Gundersen
Saturday, February 10
The Southern Cafe and Music Hall

“Music has always been pretty closely tied to my own personal life,” he says. “I’ve never been able to really separate the two. The music that I was making at the time didn’t feel current. I just wasn’t connecting with it and I felt like a new chapter was necessary, so I began the process of discovering what was true to me now.”

For White Noise, Gundersen worked with a producer, Nate Yaccino, in addition to longtime band members and collaborators Abby Gundersen and Jonny Gundersen (his siblings) and Micah Simler. Gundersen feels that the eight-month process required more patience and time, but that the results are rewarding.

“Previously I made records pretty quickly without taking as much time as I probably should have,” he says. “Further down the road I would be dissatisfied with the product, so with this record I didn’t want to repeat that mistake.”

He also didn’t want White Noise to be as hyper-confessional and personal as his past efforts. “I still wanted them to be intimate. but more so focused on the way I was experiencing the state of our culture and the political climate,” he says. “…I think there’s a lot of fear and uncertainty and anxiety in the world, which I was trying to mirror on the record.”

Songs like “Sweet Talker,” “New Religion,” “Wake Me Up I’m Drowning” and “Number One Hit of the Summer” each have different elements of themes related to political and social turmoil. These frustrations slither through the course of White Noise much like the snake seen on the album’s cover art.

Gundersen says that technology and communication also played a role in contributing to the sometimes dreamy and other times nightmarish disarray of White Noise tracks. He explains that the song “New Religion” was influenced by “a kind of self- consumption that we have with social media and with fake manufactured ideas that emphasize what life is supposed to be.”

Meanwhile, the song “Heavy Metals” is “about being okay with how small of a space we fill in the universe and coming to terms with it,” says Gundersen.

Gundersen is currently performing stripped-down versions of these songs with Abby. He describes the benefits of touring with his sister and the connection that it’s caused him to find on the road.

“Touring can be lonely,” he says. “You’re away from family quite a bit so it’s great to be able to take a part of my family with me and be able to still have those bonds.”

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Bully frontwoman talks audio engineering, screaming and Losing

Alicia Bognanno leads the grunge-pop band Bully. Publicity photo

There’s something Alicia Bognanno of the Nashville-based grunge-pop act Bully wants to get off her chest. Her latest album, Losing, released on October 20 via Sub Pop, is not a breakup record.

“I want to scream that to the top of my lungs,” says Bognanno, who easily could. The 27-year-old singer/songwriter/audio engineer/producer frequently screams lamenting lyrics in unison with raw grungy guitar chords and alternative screeching melodies in Bully.

Although she did go through a break up with the band’s former drummer, Stewart Copeland (not to be confused with the former drummer for The Police, who shares the same name), she notes that songs from the album were written under different circumstances, each one having its own story and influence.

Bully
The Southern Cafe & Music Hall
November 17

The album, a follow-up to the band’s 2015 debut, Feels Like, was recorded at Steve Albini’s Electrical Audio in Chicago. Bognanno became familiar with Albini—who produced work by grunge acts like Nirvana and Pixies—and his studio when she did an internship there. But Albini hasn’t produced any of Bully’s records. Instead, producer is one of the many hats that Bognanno, who graduated with a degree in audio engineering at Middle Tennessee State University, insists on wearing.

Bognanno believes that in the future it could be beneficial to use an outside producer for a different perspective. “I just honestly think I have control issues,” she says, all the while insisting that she is open to the idea of taking off the producer hat.

Bognanno took her first audio engineering class when she was just 17 years old. As a teen growing up in Rosemount, Minnesota, it became her outlet to the music world: “I wanted to be involved with music for as long as I can remember and I felt like that was the first opportunity that was presented to me where I felt like I could get into it,” she says.

Had a former teacher not connected her with the program, she probably would have skipped college altogether. “I knew that was what I wanted to do,” she says.

While in college, Bognanno picked up the guitar and started writing songs. Her internship with Albini increased her knowledge of microphones and professionalism in the studio—she was able to witness producers and engineers while they worked with clients. But when she had free time, Bognanno experienced the real intern perks: dabbling with her own music and the programming tools in the studio.

Like Albini, she prefers analog recording and mixing to digital. “It’s a different way of going about things,” says Bognanno. “It’s interesting to take the analog route in such a digital world.”

Musically influenced by Kim Deal, Pixies, The Breeders, Land of Talk and Courtney Barnett, Bognanno says her vocal development came through listening to others and DIY practice.

“In college I became more familiar with unconventional vocalists,” says Bognanno. “I think that opened up a lot of doors for me because I feel like I don’t sound like Christina Aguilera when I sing.”

There was no Screaming 101 class for Bognanno to enroll in for the development of her voice.

“There’s no telling if I am doing it in a safe way or not,” she says. “I’m probably not. I’m most likely damaging my vocal chords, but I’m not going to think about it too much. There are just certain moments where it just feels more appropriate to scream than it does to sing. That was always the aftermath of songwriting for me.”

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Joan Shelley masters the art of fret finger work

Joan Shelley teamed up with producer Jeff Tweedy to release her self-titled album about love, life and horses. She performs at The Southern Café and Music Hall on Saturday. Publicity photo

Singer-songwriter Joan Shelley describes her latest self-titled album as being like an oil painting with minimal brush strokes. “I think of it as doing the most with the least,” says Shelley. “It’s trying to do something subtly, but by being able to see the gestures. I don’t like to overwork it.”

The album, released in May, is a follow-up to 2015’s Over and Even. It is also an exploration of new musical terrain for Shelley, who performs at the Southern on October 7.

Following a 2014 tour with the quirky folk singer Michael Hurley, and after many listens to the song “Hog of the Forsaken” from his Long Journey album, Shelley decided to pick up the fiddle. She wanted her voice to cling to the fiddle the way Hurley’s does. The alternative to her usual guitar medium required her to take a week’s worth of fiddle classes. But in the end, Shelley went back to her comfort zone.

Joan Shelley
October 7
The Southern Cafe and Music Hall

“I had to perform a few times with the fiddle and it was so new and so hard. Also, the more nervous you are, the worse it is,” she says.- “When I picked up the guitar again it was a huge liberation just to be familiar with it again.”

To shake things up, Shelley pushed herself to tinker with new tuning techniques, and continued to pursue complementary elements between her voice and the guitar.

She and longtime collaborator/guitarist Nathan Salsburg approached Jeff Tweedy, frontman for Wilco, to see if he’d be interested in producing the album. Along with guitarist James Elkington, they headed to The Loft, Wilco’s studio in Chicago, to begin recording in December of last year.

During that time, Tweedy’s son, Spencer, was introduced to the group and offered to play drums on some of the songs. All of the songs on the album that contain drums, with the exception of “Pull Me Up One More Time,” were recorded on the first take—partly due to limited time and partly due to luck.

“The first take where everyone was a little bit unfamiliar was the most magical because everyone was on the edge of their seat,” says Shelley, who was both captivated and challenged while working with a producer for the first time.

Studio guru

Jeff Tweedy, best known as Wilco’s frontman and the co-founder of Uncle Tupelo, has put his studio expertise behind several successful acts including Mavis Staples, Richard Thompson, White Denim and Bob Dylan. Tweedy won a Best Americana Grammy for You Are Not Alone, his 2010 collaboration with Staples.

“I’m used to working with an immediate circle of friends, but for this I was in a new city and a new environment, working with new professionals,” says Shelley, admitting she had to face her vulnerabilities. “Sometimes it felt like a pop quiz and I didn’t want to mess up.”

The album opens with “We’d Be Home,” a solemn track that sets the scene with subtle acoustics that glisten on the folk canvas. Much of the album addresses love, relationships and expectations.

“It’s about new love and watching yourself in that moment when you feel like you can change everything about yourself, but suddenly being self-aware of that chemical dose of love.” Shelley says.

But there’s a different influence on the album’s final track, “Isn’t That Enough.” For this song, Shelley, who grew up in Louisville, Kentucky, with a mother who cared for several horses, looked to her childhood backyard. She sings “I’ve watched the foal roll in clover and steam in cold.”

“[That line] is about seeing an animal come into life and leave,” says Shelley. “It’s a blessing for me being raised that way because it helps you understand the world. We only get one shot at it. Horses are so beautiful and such noble creatures.”

On the same song she also addresses the pageantry of the Kentucky Derby. “Getting ready is more intense and more about identity and presentation,” says Shelley. “The meaning comes in getting ready for this thing because the actual race is 60 seconds or whatever and then it’s finished.” Shelley, by contrast, is just getting started.

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Nicole Atkins finds a new muse in Rhonda Lee

At Lockn’ on Thursday, Nicole Atkins performs songs of heartbreak and resilience. Publicity photo.

Like many creatives, psychedelic indie rock songstress Nicole Atkins had to hit rock bottom to rise to a reawakened level of musicianship. Not only did she move from her longtime home along the Jersey Shore to Nashville, Tennessee, but she faced writer’s block, alcoholism and she literally fell into a sinkhole.

Atkins, who will perform at the Lockn’ Festival on Thursday, soared into her music career, debuting with 2007’s Neptune City, followed by 2011’s Mondo Amore and 2014’s Slow Phaser. Her newest album, Goodnight Rhonda Lee, was released on July 21 and is her most transparent album to date, as it exposes her personal problems.

“I come from a long line of high-functioning alcoholics and it doesn’t really suit me emotionally,” says Atkins. “So, I did a lot of hard work to get rid of that need to feel like I need to drink in order to have fun or be myself.”

On songs like “Rhonda Lee,” “Colors” and “A Night of Serious Drinking,” Atkins confronts her battle with alcohol abuse. The name Rhonda Lee started out as a bowling alias that Atkins used, but later it turned into the name of her drunken persona.

“I was really nervous telling people and the press what these songs are about, but I can’t say it any other way, because that’s what they are about,” says Atkins. “The cool thing about talking about it is that I get to talk about the good things that came from it and how my mind has free space to think about music and arrangements, and to make music for other people.”

Last summer during a weekend at Bonnaroo, Atkins realized she’d overcome her addiction. During the long weekend with friends she didn’t crave a single drop of alcohol. “That’s when I knew ‘Okay cool, I can still have fun doing the things I love,’” she says. “I love being in bars and I have to be in bars for work and I love going to festivals and I love live music.”

Acclimating to her new life in Tennessee was also a challenge.

“The first year was really hard because it was a big adjustment, she says. “I grew up on the Jersey Shore and lived in New York for a long time, so landscape-wise it was a big adjustment—not being by the beach and having to drive everywhere. Also having a husband that’s a tour manager and friends that are working musicians, I was home in a new town by myself.”

One night after a gig in Knoxville, Atkins fell into a 10-foot sinkhole in a parking lot. After a trip to the hospital she returned to Nashville feeling uneasy about who to ask for help—her family was far away and her husband was out of town.

“When word got out about what happened, I never had more people coming by and checking on me and taking me to the doctor and bringing me food,” says Atkins. “They just showed me so much love and care. I hit rock bottom literally, but something really good came out of something really shitty.”

On Goodnight Rhonda Lee, Atkins delves into the isolation she felt in her early stages of that relocation, as well as depression and failing relationships.

The album’s first single, “A Little Crazy,” co-written with Chris Isaak, is a heartbreaking ballad exposing deep regrets that Atkins channels through her cavernous vocal chords.

“With this album I just kept thinking about what musical genres sum up who I am, what I listen to and what I can physically do best, and it was Roy Orbison, Lee Hazelwood and Aretha Franklin,” says Atkins. “I really focused and honed in on those kinds of sounds because I feel like the combination of those sounds is who I am.”

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Secret shows and familiar paths cross on The Future Islands’ “The Far Field”

Synth-pop sensation Future Islands uses its own past as inspiration on new album The Far Field. Publicity photo.

Future Islands has come a long way since its first show in 2006 at an anti-Valentine’s Day party in Greenville, North Carolina. Now based in Baltimore, the indie synth-pop group—composed of frontman Samuel T. Herring, bassist/guitarist William Cashion and keyboardist Gerrit Welmers—has busied itself touring the world and selling out countless gigs, including a show at the Jefferson on Tuesday.

FutureIslands - TheFarField

Future Islands

The Jefferson Theater

May 30

Cashion says the band’s growth was gradual before a performance of “Seasons (Waiting on You)” on the “Late Show with David Letterman” in March 2014, which made Future Islands a YouTube sensation. The rest is history.

The band’s fifth album, The Far Field, was released in April and is a follow-up to 2014’s successful Singles. Some of the tracks emerged during a winter trip to NC’s Outer Banks, while others were written in Baltimore and then recorded in Los Angeles. Prior to hitting the road with the new album, the group played a series of secret shows, linking up with North Carolina-based act Jenny Besetzt for opening sets under fake names such as The Hidden Haven, This Old House and Chirping Bush.

“We just wanted to be able to play all the new songs without any expectations that we were going to play old material,” says Cashion. “We went to places that we knew friends would find out by word-of-mouth and come out to the show, but we didn’t want to announce it online and make it into a big thing because we were still figuring out how the songs were going to work.

He explains that there are always alterations on songs when they’re played live: “The biggest thing is the way that Sam sings the songs changes drastically from when he demos the songs to when he’s in front of an audience, and based on what Sam does, that will influence how the drums interact with the vocals and have an effect on the way I’m playing the bass, just trying to give different emphasis to the dynamic of the song.” Cashion says that when they first played “Seasons (Waiting on You)” live, they quickly realized the chorus needed to be heavier.

“We just wanted to be able to play all the new songs without any expectations that we were going to play old material.”

For nearly all of the unanounced shows, Future Islands’ cover was blown by folks who knew the band. Cashion believes the best-kept secret gig was held in Arlington, Virginia, at a small bar called Galaxy Hut, where they played in front of only 50 to 60 people who offered feedback between songs. At another show in Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina, the band’s debut performance of the single “Cave” was so embraced that the audience was singing along by the end.

“That gave us more confidence and revealed the strength of the song that we didn’t necessarily know,” says Cashion.

The group looked to its sophomore effort, In Evening Air, for eliciting a deeper raw energy feel on The Far Field. Both album titles reference work by poet Theodore Roethke, who has been an inspiration for Herring lyrically, and the two album covers were designed by the same artist, Kymia Nawabi, who played keyboards and tambourine with Future Islands in its early days.

Thematically, The Far Field takes several twists and turns. To the band, it feels like an album that’s best experienced while driving.

“It really lends itself to a long road trip. A lot of it is reflecting on our history as a band,” says Cashion. “When we play our song ‘Ran’ now, Sam says it’s a song of a thousand shows. He’s referencing how just a year and a half ago we played our thousandth show down in North Carolina. We’re starting to write songs about writing songs, and we’re referencing ourselves and our own experiences as a band and the hardships of it.”

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Kishi Bashi confronts love through new sounds on Sonderlust

Kishi Bashi performs at the Jefferson on April 26. Publicity photo

Kaoru Ishibashi ditched his violin for samplers, sequencers and electronics on Sonderlust, the third album released under his pseudo name Kishi Bashi. The composer—largely known for his mastery of the violin, which led him to accompanying Regina Spektor, Sondre Lerche and Of Montreal on tours—just couldn’t muster the inspiration to pick up the stringed instrument.

“I kind of put it [the violin] aside as I was working on the album and I ended up getting into a lot of sampling and resampling,” says Ishibashi. “I was creating new sounds through software called Ableton Live and I got really excited about the sounds I was making.”

At that point, Ishibashi found his instrumental direction for the album. He plays more keyboards on the record than he does violin—although he does conduct other musicians, some of whom play violin on several of the album’s symphonic jams.

But there was more to Ishibashi’s dramatic shift. As he prepared to make Sonderlust, released in 2016, his personal life hit a wall—he and his wife separated.

“The music itself was almost like an outlet for me because it was a pretty dark time for me,” says Ishibashi. “Lyrically, I just kind of poured my heart into the songs. Things are a lot better now, but it was a difficult time.”

Despite the marital woes, Sonderlust features upbeat electro-pop melodies that come alive through synths, acoustics and orchestral layering. Lyrics address heartbreak and hardship, making Sonderlust an emotional roller coaster through the ups and downs of love.

“I tried to stay positive. I’m a very optimistic person,” says Ishibashi.

Still, he finds certain songs from that period of his life hard to emotionally digest. One of those is “Can’t Let Go, Juno.”  Lyrics from the song lament: “It’s a new day / Another full of heartbreak / And every time I’m checking in with myself / I’m drinking my soul away.”

“That one is a very difficult one for me, even to perform,” says Ishibashi. “I do it, but I’m very emotionally connected to that one.”

Other tracks like “m’lover,” “Honeybody” and “Say Yeah” are more upbeat crowd favorites. On the start of “Say Yeah,” Ishibashi experiments with a pocket piano.

“I surround myself with a lot of instruments and if I hear a cool sound, I’ll just mess around with it,” says Ishibashi, who drifts between ’80s and ’70s territory throughout the 10-track album.

“This album in particular has a lot of throwback sounds in it,” he says.

He cites jazz funk fusion musicians Herbie Hancock, Bob James, George Duke and Herbie Mann as some of his influences.

“My past albums [including 2012’s 151a and 2014’s Lighght] were more orchestral. There was a lot of strings and it was more avant garde and experimental. I didn’t go crazy on this new one,” Ishibashi says. “I would say this album is not that adventurous compared to my other ones, but it’s definitely a different direction. I wanted to keep it simpler.”

The album was also a learning experience for Ishibashi.

“The one thing I learned is that with time you heal,” he says. “I don’t know if I’ve learned that much about love. It’s still pretty crazy, but it’s a wonderful, beautiful and, at times, a painful phenomenon,” he says.

Ishibashi, who is a 41-year-old Japanese-American, plans to follow his current tour with songwriting inspired by a new muse. He’ll be working on writing music that raises awareness of the Japanese-American internment. February marked the 75-year anniversary of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066, which led to the incarceration of more than 100,000 Japanese-Americans who were forced into internment camps in the United States.

“I’ve been commissioned to write a symphonic piece, so that’s going to be my focus for the rest of the year.”