00:00The title, I mean, was kind of a deliberate choice. It's a line from one of my songs called Old
00:06Me, and that song also has the line in it breaking up with the old me.
00:11And so I think it's in a way like a little bit of a wink to the fact that the
00:16new album is really different musically from my last two records that were pretty straight ahead bluegrass.
00:22But if people have followed my music for a long time, like my first album was a little more in
00:26the like kind of Americana or pop vein, and then I did a covers album that was kind of all
00:31over the map, genre-wise.
00:32So I really do like to be like a chameleon and change my sound, and the last few years have
00:38been so fun playing bluegrass, and that's the music I grew up with.
00:42It's a huge part of who I am, but it's not like the only thing that I do and the
00:47only way to express myself.
00:49So I feel like this new album incorporates bluegrass elements, and there's even like one or two songs that could
00:55have been on a bluegrass record.
00:57And I'm playing banjo, and there's still fiddle and mandolin and all that stuff.
01:01But it's also kind of pushing into new territories with the songwriting and the production.
01:06And some of these songs, the press release says that they're five years old.
01:11So you've been sort of stockpiling the songs, have you?
01:15Yeah. Yeah, this record was a long time in the making.
01:18I was, during the pandemic, I was writing kind of like non-stop, and I felt like I had either,
01:25I had like two paths I could go down.
01:27I had this bluegrass album I'd written that became Crooked Tree, and then I had this other record that was
01:32more kind of unknown.
01:33I didn't know what it was going to turn into.
01:36But I started talking to a producer, Jay Joyce, in Nashville about making a record, and this was five years
01:41ago.
01:42And I sent him some songs.
01:43But ultimately, I felt like I didn't have the material that stood alone as a record for what I wanted
01:52to do in that realm.
01:53And I had this other batch of songs that ended up on Crooked Tree that was like, I felt really
01:57strong about.
01:58And I knew I wanted to record them.
02:00And that's just what the door that kind of opened up to me creatively at the time.
02:05And then fast forward five years, I've still been writing constantly, and then I finally felt like I had this
02:10other batch of songs that I wanted to record with Jay.
02:14And his production ideas were amazing.
02:17He was so fun to work with, but we've literally been talking about doing this for five years.
02:21And so I'd say maybe like four or five of the songs are from that original kind of batch that
02:27I had been working on during the pandemic.
02:28And then I've been writing songs all along the way since then, and probably the bulk of them I've written
02:34in the past year or so, year or two.
02:37But there are still those ones that I really loved from back then that I ended up recording finally.
02:43Do you have a sort of a set process for songs?
02:46Because I've found from interviewing loads and loads of people that, you know, some people will jot something down very,
02:53very quickly.
02:53And the song sort of slowly builds and other people will actually sit down and say, no, I'm going to
03:00write a song now.
03:01You know, there seem to be two camps at either end.
03:05So where do you fall in that sort of thing?
03:07I fall somewhere in between.
03:08Like there's certain songs that I write from a little small idea that I had that maybe I wrote down
03:13in my phone or in a notebook somewhere.
03:15And I'll just kind of collect these little song nuggets as I go throughout my life.
03:19But I don't always have time to sit down and write an entire song.
03:23So that's really helpful to just kind of have a running list of ideas.
03:26Some of them are total garbage and I look back and I'm like, what was I thinking?
03:29But if I don't write them down, I'm never going to remember the good ones.
03:33And then other times I just sit down and like write something from scratch.
03:36And that always takes a long time and sometimes I'll work on it over multiple days.
03:41But it's always really satisfying when it's finally finished.
03:45Once I start a song, I don't like to halfway finish it and then like come back to it later.
03:50So I'll usually try to get like a whole draft of a completed song over a few days.
03:56And then maybe even some songs I'll have that are in like the first draft in like a year or
04:02even two years later, I'll come back and totally rework them.
04:06There's songs on the new record like that that were just kind of sitting there and I came back and
04:11rewrote entire sections of them.
04:13Um, so sometimes songs will go through like five different iterations.
04:17Do you, do you sometimes find that a song will kind of deliver itself to you just ready?
04:23Occasionally.
04:24Yeah.
04:26Yeah.
04:26There are certain songs like that.
04:28Like I think on this new record, um, the song where the title track came from, Old Me, that song
04:34happened.
04:34And that was like really fast.
04:36Um, and it just kind of came out of nowhere.
04:38I was like, wow, that's cool.
04:39I like this song.
04:41Um, but we, that was like pretty much in one sitting and didn't really go back and change too much
04:47about it.
04:47It was kind of like this complete thing that just popped out of nowhere, basically.
04:52And new record, new band, I understand as well.
04:55Yeah, I have a new band.
04:55So tell us about that.
04:58Um, yeah, it's going to be super fun.
05:00I, the musicians are Mare who plays a bunch of music.
05:05Her name's Mary Meyer, but she goes by Mare as her stage name.
05:09Um, she plays, well, I first met her through the bluegrass scene.
05:12She plays mandolin.
05:13She grew up in a family bluegrass band and she played for a little bit with a band that I
05:18really like called Sister Sadie.
05:19Played mandolin with them.
05:21Um, she also plays basically every other instrument.
05:24But with me, she's going to be playing fiddle.
05:26She might play some banjo.
05:28We had our first rehearsals about a week ago and she was playing fiddle, mandolin, and keys.
05:33And it's kind of fun because she'll be like switching instruments mid-song.
05:37She'll be like playing some stuff on keys and then pick up a fiddle and play a fiddle solo.
05:40And she sings as well.
05:43Um, and Ellen Angelico is playing with me and she plays electric guitar, but she also plays dobro and banjo
05:51and pedal steel.
05:52So there's a ton of options there.
05:54Um, she's been playing a lot of dobro on some of the more bluegrass-y stuff.
05:57So we're still playing songs from all my different records and playing a lot of, like, the bluegrass songs in
06:04the set as well.
06:05So a lot of times she'll be on the dobro for those.
06:07Um, Megan Jane is playing drums and percussion and she's someone I actually was playing with.
06:13I did tours with her, um, back in 2021.
06:18And even the winter of the pandemic, we did these live streams together.
06:22We did three different ones that each had different themes.
06:24Um, there was, like, one of, we did covers from Bay Area bands.
06:29We did, like, White Rabbit and a bunch of other fun songs on that one.
06:32And then we did, like, a protest song one.
06:35Then we did one of just bluegrass songs.
06:38And, um, she's really great.
06:40She can strip down to, like, a washboard for the more rootsy stuff or play full kit.
06:44She even, like, has made a little drum, kick drum out of an old suitcase with, like, just one hi
06:50-hat on it.
06:50So we're kind of experimenting with different ways to still, you know, break down and play, like, a little bluegrass
06:56set in the middle of the show.
06:57And then go back and kind of rock out a bit more with her on the full kit.
07:01Um, and then finally, Vanessa McGowan is an amazing bass player.
07:04She's going to be playing, um, upright and electric, just kind of depending on what the song wants.
07:11And she's a great singer as well.
07:12She'll be singing harmonies.
07:13And she was the first person who kind of, who I approached.
07:17And then she helped me put together the rest of the band.
07:20And we had no intention of making an all-female band.
07:23It was literally just the best people for each possible position in the band and the instrumentation that I needed.
07:29And then when we, when all was said and done, we're like, wow, we got an all-female band.
07:33That's pretty cool.
07:34It's, like, an added perk.
07:35But it wasn't really our intention, which I kind of like that it happened that way.
07:40Was this band sort of in your mind when you were making the album?
07:44I mean, how much was the material aimed at that kind of instrumentation and things like that?
07:50It was, I couldn't possibly fathom what band I was going to have because when I went into the, to
07:56making the album, I had no idea what it was going to sound like.
07:58All I had was these demos of me playing the songs on guitar.
08:03And so I was a little, I was getting kind of nervous because I was like, I don't know what
08:08I'm going to tour with.
08:08I don't even know, like, how to start planning to tour this record because we worked so slowly through the
08:16pre-production process.
08:17We'd slowly add and take away pieces.
08:20And we talked a lot about, like, how much do we want to lean into, like, the rootsy side of
08:24things versus, like, push it into this new territory.
08:27And we tried to find a balance there where we're not totally shutting the door on any, like, bluegrass element.
08:31So we still wanted to incorporate the banjo and the fiddle and the harmonica and mandolin and stuff like that
08:37in addition to having, you know, synth and drums and organ sounds.
08:42So it was, like, basically up until we finally had recorded everything and I heard the mixes, then I was
08:48like, okay, I can kind of sort of start to envision this.
08:51But I was also like, how am I going to find a band who can play this many instruments and
08:55do all these things?
08:56And I magically found, I feel like, the perfect people to kind of recreate this live and still be able
09:01to play a lot of my past material.
09:05And I would imagine you've got a busy schedule planned now to tour the album.
09:10Yep, we have, I think, 78 shows this year.
09:15I've already played almost, I think I've played 18 shows so far.
09:19So getting into that, almost hitting 100 shows for the year.
09:24But with the new band, we'll be doing, I think, 78 shows.
