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Son Volt

Son Volt

Photo: Ismael Quintanilla III

News
Jay Farrar On Son Volt's New LP 'Electro Melodier' jay-farrar-son-volt-new-album-electro-melodier-interview

Jay Farrar On Son Volt's New Album 'Electro Melodier' & The Lifelong Draw Of Electric Guitars, Words & Melodies

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During the pandemic, Jay Farrar had more time than ever to craft Son Volt's new album, 'Electro Melodier.' The result is among the 30-year-old band's most personal, oracular and muscular works to date
Morgan Enos
GRAMMYs
Jul 26, 2021 - 4:44 pm

When the Americana heroes Uncle Tupelo broke up during the Clinton administration, they left two unbelievably different rock institutions in their wake. While Wilco spent album after album racing to the brink of experimental chaos before pulling back in the 2000s, Son Volt remained staunchly devoted to the core components of rock 'n' roll storytelling — words, melodies and chord progressions.

Flash forward more than 30 years: The pandemic has given Son Volt’s leader, Jay Farrar, more time to write songs and check out vintage gear. "I had more time to be looking at equipment," the singer/songwriter tells GRAMMY.com. "I came across two amplifiers — one called Electro, the other one Melodier — and I felt like that was emblematic as a title for what I was going for with this record: An emphasis on electric, uptempo, melodic songs."

Farrar couldn't have found two words that better sum up Son Volt's latest, which arrives July 30 via Thirty Tigers. The album is a sequence of well-crafted, warmly-recorded tunes for fans of Tom Petty, the Replacements and Bruce Springsteen. And it's bound to be catnip for those who believe a guitar, a tube amp and a pen comprise the ultimate form of human expression.

GRAMMY.com caught up with Farrar to discuss the road to Electro Melodier, dive into every song on the record and discuss everything from COVID-19 to his 25-year marriage to the civil rights upheaval of 2020.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

You mentioned in the press release that the title comes from the names of two vintage amplifiers. Is an electric guitar through a cranked-up tube amp all one needs to genuinely express themselves?

It is if you had the background I had, yes. If you had the background I had, all you need is an acoustic guitar and a small amp and an electric guitar. It took me a while to realize what I would call the Keith Richards method of using small amps to record. You know, you get a bigger sound. On the very first Son Volt record, there's a small amp pictured on the cover.

This time around, with the pandemic, I had more time to be looking at equipment. I came across two amplifiers — one called Electro, the other one Melodier — and I felt like that was emblematic as a title for what I was going for with this record — an emphasis on electric, uptempo, melodic songs. 

What other gear have you been checking out lately?

On the new recording, I used a baritone acoustic guitar, which is an Alvarez. I've also adapted some new guitars to my live [performance] — when I get back to playing live. I recently had some rotator cuff shoulder surgery from playing too much guitar. Forty years of acoustic guitar took its toll, so like a pitcher in baseball, I got the rotator cuff repair. 

I was told to maybe find a thinner-bodied guitar, so I came across an old Kay Speed Demon guitar that I just put some acoustic pickups in and it sounds like an acoustic guitar. So, that's what I'll be going for whenever we start playing live.

Your debut album Trace just celebrated its 30th birthday. What feelings or memories about its making come to mind?

You know, I was living in New Orleans at the time and I had a lot of my equipment in St. Louis. Some of the other guys in the band were in Minneapolis, so I spent a lot of time driving north to south, up and down Highway 61. I used to take the 55 and the 35, just kind of soaking up those parts of the country. 

I also remember that I think I hooked up a U-Haul trailer to a Honda Civic — one of the hatchbacks — so I would fit all the equipment in there. Crazy things like that that I wouldn't do now, but I did it. [Chuckles]. I put the expenses for that record on my girlfriend's credit card and away we went.

When you mentioned Highway 61, I remembered that tune ["Afterglow 61"] from Okemah and the Melody of Riot. Is that a place you continually return to in your mind?

Yeah, it runs right along the Mississippi here, near St. Louis, as well as in New Orleans and all the way up from Minneapolis. It's a thread that follows the river and, usually, good music follows the river and the road.

To connect the timeline to Electro Melodier, where would you place this record on the arc of your overall development?

That's a good question. It's hard to put it in context, I guess. Since it was a pandemic record, it was a much more hybrid approach to recording. We started doing this Zoom, remote-type recording on the song "These Are the Times," and sort of realized that some of that synergy and chemistry was lost over recording through a computer in a remote location.

So, some of us got together with masks in the studio and brought that chemistry back. Yet, at the same time, it made sense for Mark Spencer, who's the multi-instrumentalist, to add his parts because he has his own studio in Brooklyn. It was kind of a hybrid approach that I felt worked on this recording. I think the pandemic made the ingredients for this record to sound and be different.

At the very least, remote recording means the bassist and drummer can't look each other in the eye. You lose the pocket.

Yeah, absolutely. There were myriad communication-type problems since everyone had a computer with speakers and you're in different studios with audio monitors. We were just trying to mute the feedback loops from the microphone to the speaker, whether it's a computer, headphones, microphone… It was just too much.

Son Volt

Son Volt. Photo: Auset Sarno

Think we could go track-by-track to see what each song kicks up in your mind?

Sure, we can give it a shot.

Let's start with "Reverie."

I think that song represents what the recording is about: Getting back to basics. It starts with a melody. The song itself is just an exercise with wordplay. There's a baritone electric guitar on that song kind of inspired by Glen Campbell's work on "Wichita Lineman."

What can you tell me about "Arkey Blue"?

There's a bar in Bandera, Texas, which is outside of San Antonio, that I visited once. Its claim to fame was that Hank Williams, Sr. played there and carved his name in a table. So, I had some time off, went there, took a photo of the place. I have a sign in my music room where I play music. So, when I was writing that song, I just sort of used that Arkey Blue bar name as a placeholder title for the song itself. 

A lot of lines from that song are directly from a speech Pope Francis gave, talking about turbulent rains never before seen, essentially saying that the pandemic is Earth's way of fighting back. That just sort of blew my mind, the Pope saying that, so that wound up in the song. Ultimately, I just sort of felt like the subject matter in the song has kind of a Noah's Ark vibe, so "Arkey Blue" stuck even though it has meanings that go off in different directions.

Did Hank really carve his name in the table, or was that a rumor?

Ah… well, it's there. It definitely looks the right part. The whole place is straight out of a time warp when you go in there, so it's totally believable that it was Hank, Sr.'s name carved in there. They do have it kind of roped off so people don't mess with it.

How about "The Globe"?

That song, I think, was written through a period of turmoil, both in this country — George Floyd's death protests, Black Lives Matter — and looking at news across the globe. People in Belarus or wherever getting clamped down and their freedoms being curtailed. I think the gist of that song just came out of "We're all in this together across the world." A nod of solidarity to those in this country and across the world.

And "Diamonds and Cigarettes"?

I guess that one could have been called "Ode to a Long-Term Relationship." The clock just turned 25 years of marriage for me. I think the pandemic also made one realize the people around you are incredibly important. So, that was one takeaway. Laura Cantrell sang backups on that one. I've known her since about 1995. She was interviewing when we were playing the first Son Volt shows back in 1995.

What do you appreciate about her approach to the tune, or just her voice in general?

It kind of blew me away. Again, Mark Spencer, who's the multi-instrumentalist in the band, also plays with Laura Cantrell as her guitar player, occasionally. They had a rapport. I know Laura and her husband, Jeremy, so it was an all-in-the-family type of experience. I felt that she really did a great job.

Where does "Lucky Ones" fit into the puzzle?

There were always cross-currents of R&B, soul and country music that I've always liked, whether it was Dan Penn, Charlie Rich or the Flying Burrito Brothers. That was my take, or my attempt at tapping into that aesthetic via rhythm and blues and country soul.

I remember the old cover of the Burritos' "Sin City," so obviously, that DNA runs deep.

[Shyly] Yeah, yeah. For sure.

And "War on Misery"?

A couple of years ago, some kids in town in St. Louis had put a manifesto in my mailbox called "War on Misery." It was kind of a self-published socialist manifesto. I could concur. I could relate. So, that title kind of stuck with me. I was trying to go with a Lightnin' Hopkins type sound. Lightnin' Hopkins would often perform with a regular guitar tuned way down, so he had this deep, baritone sound.

How about "Livin' in the USA"?

It didn't start out as an intentional thing, but in retrospect, I see it as a nod to songs like Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA" or Neil Young's "Rockin' in the Free World." Both of those songs have a similar thematic thing going on. I feel like those songs establish a thematic tradition, so I was just kind of taking it and running with it.

 But yeah, again, a lot of turmoil going on and looking around and seeing things that don't add up and putting them into the song.

Both songs are antimatter national anthems. Widely misunderstood, too.

Yeah, exactly. There could be some of that that happens with this one as well.

How about "Someday is Now"?

We started to veer off into prog-rock land a bit with that one, but we consciously kept in check. There were a few times in the recording when we had to pull it back from sounding too much like Rush but I think it ultimately sounded more like Zeppelin.

Has prog always been part of your creative stew?

Not so much for me, but it's in there somewhere, I suppose. Once it gets in there, you can't shake it out completely.

Tell me about "Sweet Refrain."

There are some COVID-19 references, I think, in there. "Looking out the window panes" — I spent a lot of time doing that in the last year and a half. Again, there's some references to relationships and that kind of thing, but there's also a line in there: "Another hero is gone," which references people that passed during COVID, like John Prine. 

That song is also an example of a stream-of-consciousness type, where it kind of goes from one verse to the next and jumps around. The final verse references some of the folks in Benton, Mississippi — [Jimmy] "Duck" Holmes and Skip James. I've used that tuning before and I felt like I wanted to tip a hat to that tuning.

And how about "The Levee On Down"? That symbolism weighs heavy in blues and country.

Yeah. I live close to the Mississippi River, so I've driven up and down the levees. They usually have roads on them. You can drive up and down. I was going to make a bad joke about a Chevy on the levee, but I'm not going to do that. 

I'm going to say that from driving up and down Highway 61 into Cape Girardeau, Missouri, when you go about an hour and a half south of St. Louis, there's the Trail of Tears crossing where the Cherokee Indians crossed. Many died on their way to Oklahoma due to the Trail of Tears forced march, and the person that was part of that was Andrew Jackson. He's on the $20 bill.

Then, we've got "These Are the Times."

That was very much a COVID reference. Changing times, and this is where we're at. Let's try to find our way through this.

We're almost through with the record. "Rebetika."

I came across that word in reference to a certain kind of Greek folk music that was described as being close to blues. It had maybe a similar impetus as blues. I just found that to be kind of fascinating. I took the title "Rebetika" and just kind of ran with it.

Then, after "The Globe / Prelude," we close out with "Like You."

Yeah, that was a stripped-down version—almost like a demo—of "The Globe." We were recording that very much in the [midst of the pandemic]; I think it was when the Black Lives Matter protests were going on. We actually released, I think, on Bandcamp during that time frame.

I always tend to forget about the very last song, but then it sticks in my mind. I guess the way I would summarize this whole project is that I had more time to work on the song structures and arrangements — the writing itself — and more time spent recording the vocals. Really, all of it. 

It spanned the course months where often, in the past, the recording would happen between the gigs. With that song, Jacob Detering, who did the engineering, played a sort of drone, a Mellotron-type instrument on that. More time, more team. I think those were elements that went into the making of this record.

Gary Louris Of The Jayhawks On Barely Listening To Roots Rock & His First Solo Album In 13 Years, 'Jump For Joy'

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Daughtry

Chris Daughtry

Photo courtesy of Daughtry

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The Salvation Of Chris Daughtry salvation-chris-daughtry-how-he-conquered-music-biz-fear-irrelevance-interview

The Salvation Of Chris Daughtry: How He Conquered Music-Biz Machinations & Fear Of Irrelevance For Triumphant New Album 'Dearly Beloved'

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On the surface, Chris Daughtry had the best possible outcome for a fourth-place "American Idol" winner: The first Daughtry album made massive sales. But it's only on his newest, 'Dearly Beloved,' that he has complete creative autonomy
Morgan Enos
GRAMMYs
Sep 15, 2021 - 12:38 pm

Chris Daughtry disliked a Dr. Luke and Max Martin song so much he screamed in the studio while recording it. It was late in the recording process for Daughtry, his namesake band's debut album. Despite being an adept songwriter, the people upstairs asked him to record the pop overlords' co-write "Feels Like Tonight" at the eleventh hour. He couldn't connect with slightly generic lyrics like "I was waiting for the day you'd come around / I was chasing, but nothing was all I found." It didn't feel like him.

"There are recordings of me in the vocal booth going 'F*** this song! I hate this f***ing song!" Daughtry tells GRAMMY.com. Despite coming in a respectable fourth place on "American Idol" in 2006, "It was written for me as if I won the show. If I won, this would have been that song that you sing at the end, where the f***ing confetti's falling on you and you're singing [Clenched voice] 'And it feeeeels like...' You know what I mean? That was going to be my celebratory win."

By any measure, Daughtry was a "celebratory win" for the band. It became the fastest-selling debut rock album in history at the time, doing numbers that some out-and-out "Idol" winners might envy. But what's he been up to since? Despite the impressive raw data, the singer's label bosses never quite let him off the leash. Plus, endless executive turnover left him adrift, grasping for and missing ephemeral radio trends. But while Daughtry remains his best-selling work, he's arguably just made the first of his own volition.

That album is Dearly Beloved, the band's first outside of RCA, which will release September 17. (These days, they're rounded out by guitarists Brian Craddock and Josh Steely, keyboardist Elvio Fernandes, bassist Josh Paul and drummer Brandon Maclin.) With vibrant highlights like "Desperation," "Heavy is the Crown" and "Break Into My Heart," it's a slick, atmospheric modern rock record with a dystopian-flick vibe. But, more importantly, every second of it is Daughtry's and Daughtry's alone.

What a difference a decade and a half makes: the once-tightly-goateed young man nervously belting the Box Tops' "The Letter" for a skeptical Simon Cowell has sprouted a Michael Stipe-style beard and procured tribal tattoos. Like a streetbound, malnourished Maine Coon rapidly regrowing its coat and gaining healthy weight upon adoption, he looks prosperous and healthy. For the former service manager at a car dealership who's been through hell and back in music, it's been a wild ride to artistic liberation.

If not for his doggedness drive for success, everything about Chris Daughtry's early life suggested anonymity. He worked said day job in North Carolina while obsessed with '90s rockers from Live to Stone Temple Pilots to Alice in Chains, he performed gigs locally.

After an audition for "Rock Star: INXS" in 2005 proved to be a nonstarter, Daughtry auditioned for "American Idol" with a bittersweet overture from Deanna. "This is his dream, and when he married me, he took on my two kids," she exclaimed on-camera through tears. "I'm so emotional because I know this is his chance." His yowling, pitch-perfect version of "The Letter" was his ticket into the show—despite Cowell's rejection due to perceived "rushing" and lack of charisma.

Throughout Season 5, Daughtry climbed and climbed as the show's resident "rock guy" in the stead of Season 4's Bo Bice, who lost only to Carrie Underwood. But where Bice was a shaggy Southern boy, Daughtry looked chiseled, streamlined and severe, a quintessential modern rocker rather than a throwback. While he wound up eliminated in fourth place, he had clear marketability outside of the show. Sure enough, his looks, voice and vibe carved his path into the majors.

Despite the occasional critical jeers and sheer number of chefs in the kitchen on Daughtry—plus, "I hate the way I sound" on that record, he says today—Daughtry felt validated by the response. Later, he said he harbored no fantasies of winning the show. "I don't know how it could have got any better," he expressed in a 2009 interview. "We've sold almost six million records. So I'm not sure where the title [of "Idol" winner] makes that any better."

"We have these conversations with the band all the time: They're like, 'Man, it obviously worked, whatever you were doing.'" Daughtry says today. "I'm my own worst enemy when it comes to critiquing myself. I'm very happy, obviously. I'm super pumped for what it did. And if that meant not knowing what I was doing and just going in there green and riding the wave of excitement, then so be it."

The band's second album, 2009's Leave This Town, was mostly in the aesthetic mold of its predecessor and landed in the ballpark of its sales. Still, getting there wasn't a given: There was every chance of it flopping. "Leave This Town was a very stressful record because we were right off the heels of major success with the first album," Daughtry recalls. "You can't help but feel this unspoken tension and pressure to do that again."

And in the end, "It did okay," he says. "It did one and a half million or so, but I felt like I got the record that I wanted. There was no songs thrown in last minute that I didn't write or something like that. Then I think it progressively got a little more trickier to navigate that balance of digging my heels and playing ball.

"There was a part of me that was also seeing a huge decline in record sales, and correlating that with my own creative relevance or abilities," he continues. "And me going, 'Well, maybe there is something to this. Maybe I do need to be paying attention to what other people are doing, and maybe I do need to be changing with the times.'"

When Daughtry listens to Leave This Town these days, he hears a guy beholden to his influences, yet inching toward his own style. "With a lot of artists that I can go back and listen to, you can hear their influences on their first record a lot more than records that proceed it," he says. "To me, I instantly hear who I was listening to at the time, as opposed to like, 'Oh yeah, that's just me.' But that's just me nitpicking. And I don't know if anybody else would hear it, but I definitely do."

His internal editor and nitpicker might make hay with Daughtry and Leave This Town, but Daughtry has special affection for the band's third record, 2011's Break The Spell. "I love that record," he says. "I had a blast making that one. I think that was one of the records that didn't have any real outside influence, but at the same time, didn't really... Well, it showed in the record sales. I didn't really have a lot of backing from the label either."

It's worth noting that Daughtry's career to date had been haunted by an endless parade of new A&R reps, all subjecting him to a new and confusing vision of the band before dematerializing and being replaced just as quickly—rinse and repeat. 

"With different A&R people, you have different versions of who they think you are," he says, still sounding pained. "This person, they may think you're this kind of band. Nobody really got where to put us. Nobody understood it after our first two records. There was a lot of turnover at RCA and I think we had a different A&R person for every record."

"It was always trying to get to know the next person and trying to explain the type of record you wanted to make, he continues. "Then, in the middle of making one, you find yourself being like, "I don't know if this is what we were going after, but hey! We're playing ball here and everybody wants to make money and be successful.' So I definitely played my part just from being surrounded by peers saying 'Nobody's playing guitars on the radio now. You got to do this to stay relevant.'"

That Chicken Little-style harbinger of the "end of guitars" brought about Break The Spell's 2013 follow-up Baptized, an extremely commercial detour that remains the biggest sticking point for the singer. He's still audibly frustrated about that experience. "Looking back, there were moments where I'm like, 'Yeah, that missed the mark,'" he admits with a wince. "I can see why maybe we got a lot of flak from the fans on, especially, Baptized. That record was an... experiment, for sure."

Read More: Daughtry Is Reborn On Baptized

The band put most of their chips on the electro-pop single "Waiting for Superman," which seemed like a surefire slam dunk. "A&R at the time got more excited than I've ever seen an A&R person yet over a song," he says. "And you start to go, 'Oh. Well! if they're that excited, that must mean something good. It felt a little over-the-top pop for me, but I was playing ball. I was mesmerized by the hype that was going on around me."

That hype didn't translate into the marketplace, though: "Waiting for Superman" stalled out at No. 66 on Billboard's Hot 100. At this point, Daughtry's frustration reached its boiling point; the back-of-the-envelope calculus for success made no sense to him. "Wait a minute. I'm doing all the things they're saying to do to get this result, but A. they're not pushing it, B. we're not getting the results," he remembers thinking. "Why am I doing something that I don't fully believe in?"

The relative failure of the single catalyzed a period of depression for the singer. Why had he been signed in the first place if they didn't want him to be him? "I started going downward mentally," he says. "I started second-guessing myself as a writer and performer, and my relevance in this new world of music that I didn't quite understand from the time I started in 2006 to now. It just felt so foreign and different to me, and I wasn't doing what I naturally did, which was rock."

Daughtry fulfilled the band's RCA contract with 2018's Cage To Rattle, which the latest suit pitched to him as a return-to-form rock album. "He's like, 'We're going to f***ing make a rock record,' I'm like, 'Yes!' He's like, "Get [Kings of Leon producer] Jacquire King." I'm like, 'Yes!'" he remembers. "Then, a new A&R person comes in and trumps his say." At that deflating moment where he realized this record would be like the rest, Cage To Rattle began to float away from what Daughtry envisioned.

"They're saying, 'Oh man, you do this song, we're going to have a big hit,'" he says. "I'm like, 'I don't know.' I argued with them. I argued, I argued, I argued. I finally caved. The song did nothing and I was like, 'This is it. Once we're done, we're done. We're parting ways. If they don't take me up, I'm not going to be mad at this.'" In the end, Daughtry "parted ways mutually" with his label and management.

Fast-forward to 2020: As the COVID-19 pandemic became entangled with global racial protests, Daughtry looked at the world, examined his feelings and began to write. "I've never really been one to write about current events, never been a political person, never been anyone to be kind of moved by the things going on around me," he says. "This is the first time that I felt compelled to write how these things made me feel."

Such was the batch of songs that eventually comprised the liberated Dearly Beloved, which Daughtry calls "100 percent, hands down" his favorite record he's made. The single "World on Fire" especially carries the weight of his newfound introspection and world-weariness.

"Right before the s*** hit the fan, Australia was on fire," Daughtry says. And I remember being in the studio and we were just scrolling through Instagram as we do right before a session—we're having our coffee just looking through the news or whatever—and I just remember going, 'Dude, literally, the world is on fire. No matter where you turn, something is totally f***ed.'" And I think [producer] Marti [Frederiksen] was like, "'World on Fire,' man. That's a good song title."

Daughtry

Daughtry. Photo: Sara Fish

Whether or not the glitchy, stadium-scaled rock on Dearly Beloved is your cup of tea, there's a poignant thrill to hearing an artist break out of his industry fetters and do exactly what they want to do. In the videos for both "World On Fire" and "Heavy Is The Crown," Daughtry is cast as a Jack Reacher-style action hero fending off a cabal of shadowy, suited baddies with choreographed moves, which seems pretty biographical. Semi-inscrutably, both end with the same disclaimer: "To be continued."

But those three words seem to sum up Daughtry, who despite commanding millions of fans worldwide, has spent 15 years in the business clearing his throat so he can finally do what he wants to do: Be a rock 'n' roll singer, full stop. Given a crystal ball, is there anything he would tell his 25-year-old self, who, for better or worse, was about to be fed into the thresher of the music business?

"I would say have a clear vision," he concludes. "Because if you don't, someone's going to give you one."

Train's Pat Monahan Revisits Every Song On 'Drops Of Jupiter' 20 Years Later: "I'm A Lot Happier Than I Was Back Then"

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Joni Mitchell

Joni Mitchell

Photo: Martin Mills/Getty Images

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Listen: 50 Essential Joni Mitchell Tracks joni-mitchell-2022-musicares-person-of-the-year-50-essential-tracks-playlist

Listen: 50 Essential Tracks By Joni Mitchell, Revolutionary Singer/Songwriter & 2022 MusiCares Person Of The Year

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Joni Mitchell was just crowned MusiCares' 2022 Person of the Year, which represents a feather in the legendary singer/songwriter's cap during her 77th trip around the sun. A career-spanning playlist shows her mastery in folk, jazz, blues and beyond
Morgan Enos
MusiCares
Sep 8, 2021 - 2:14 pm

Joni Mitchell is coming off a campaign of clamorous applause on the 50th anniversary of her 1971 masterpiece Blue, with adulatory features in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, NPR and other mainstream outlets. But when the popular YouTuber Rick Beato pondered what future musicologists would say about Mitchell hundreds of years in the future, he had a different answer.

"When music historians look at Joni Mitchell's catalog, they're going to see records like Mingus, he proclaimed in a clipposted last April, noting her collaboration with the irascible bassist and composer Charles Mingus shortly before his death. "They're going to see Hejira," he added, citing her immersive 1976 record backed by fusion masters.

"They're going to see that she played with all the greatest jazz musicians, like Jaco Pastorius, Pat Metheny, Michael Brecker and Larry Carlton," Beato continued. "The greatest musicians of the 20th century played in her band. Herbie Hancock. She was revered by the greatest jazz musicians."

https://twitter.com/MusiCares/status/1430606196705316866

We are excited to announce that @JoniMitchell, eight-time GRAMMY Award winner and 16-time GRAMMY Award nominee, has been chosen as the 2022 @MusiCares Person of the Year.

Joni Mitchell is the honoree of the 31st annual benefit gala happening on Jan. 29, 2022.

📷 Joel Bernstein pic.twitter.com/KkuV0gGRoN

— MusiCares (@MusiCares) August 25, 2021

Unlike almost any other singer/songwriter in her league—perhaps with the exception of Bob Dylan—Mitchell's legacy has a clear faultline in the middle, Beatles-style. First, she became the archetypal singer/songwriter, singing about female empowerment as a self-evident reality with a mastery of guitar and dulcimer and a composer's command of harmony. 

Then, she showed she could do the same in the jazz sphere, with those aforementioned records. And then, she made otherworldly space-folk albums in the '90s like Night Ride Home and Taming the Tiger, which stand among her most intoxicating works.

Mitchell was recently crowned MusiCares' 2022 Person of the Year (the event in her honor will take place Jan. 29, 2022). This marks yet another milestone for the legend, who was already having a big year with the love for Blue. 

Here's a playlist featuring her 50 most essential songs from across the decades.

Tables for the 2022 MusiCares Person of the Year event will be available for purchase starting Sept. 8, 2021, at 10 a.m. PT at www.musicares.org/person-year. For more information about MusiCares Person of the Year, please visit www.musicares.org or email personoftheyear@musicares.org.

For The Record: Joni Mitchell's Emotive 1971 Masterpiece, Blue

David Crosby

David Crosby

Photo: Anna Webber

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David Crosby On His New Album 'For Free' david-crosby-new-album-for-free-twitter-csny-interview

David Crosby On His New Album 'For Free' & Why His Twitter Account Is Actually Joyful

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David Crosby has had a rough go of it recently, losing his income, a child and nearly his house. So why does his new album, 'For Free,' sound so springy, joyful and enamored with the gift of human existence?
Morgan Enos
GRAMMYs
Jul 22, 2021 - 1:23 pm

The music community murmurs about David Crosby's Twitter account like it's a mythical sea monster. To many people online, he's the consummate curmudgeon, an octogenarian sourpuss who shares his dislike for hip-hop and shared his disapproval of the Phoebe Bridgers guitar smash on TV. (Bridgers' retort: "Little b****.") While that vibe is certainly present, a cursory look at Twitter reveals the opposite: An 80-year-old rolling around with his dogs, digging into tacos by the pool and giving thanks for the gift of life.

"It's a game I'm playing, really," Crosby tells GRAMMY.com from his Santa Ynez, California, home on a "stunning" day. "I love my friends and my family and I'm trying to be a decent member of society. I've got no problem with me right now. Since I am here today, all I want to do is use today to do whatever I can to make stuff better." Despite a series of recent, brutal tests, he sounds lighter than ever over the phone — and his new music is his bounciest and most galvanized to date.

We're talking about For Free, his new album which arrives July 23 and represents the brightest star in his recent constellation of albums. (In the 2010s, he put out the good-to-excellent Croz, Lighthouse, Sky Trails and Here If You Listen.) Aside from the elegiac closer, "I Won't Stay For Long," the mood is inexhaustibly upbeat, whether he's covering his beloved Joni Mitchell on the title track or teaming up with his hero Donald Fagen on "Rodriguez for a Night."

Ahead of his performance at the GRAMMY Museum, GRAMMY.com spoke with Crosby about what Twitter teaches him, why he recently sold his catalog and why he's not really a grumpy contrarian, but a man enamored with music and human beings.

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GRAMMYs

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This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

How are you, David?

Elderly and confused! No, I'm fine, man. I'm sitting up here in central California and it's a stunning day. I'm a very happy guy. How are you?

I'm good. I'm originally from around your area. Is the heatwave still happening?

No, it's not real drastic, no. It's OK. It's in the 70s someplace.

Some people tend to paint your Twitter account as being cantankerous, but I find it to be the opposite. It's all about appreciating life as you just described it. It's a very joyful account to me.

To me, it is too, man. Every once in a while, I take a shot at somebody I don't like when they get really pretentious and blown-up. The Kanye Wests of this world, I'll occasionally stick a pin in their balloon. But mostly, I'm not trying to be Howard Stern. I'm really trying to just have fun here. I like people. I think they're fascinating. I like communicating with people.

The other thing about Twitter is that if someone tries to pick a fight, you just delete them. You don't have to deal with it. I don't have to engage in a fisticuffs battle with someone who thinks QAnon is real, for God's sake. If you're that dumb, I don't have to waste my time with you! I like that a lot. It makes it more fun.

It's interesting that you willfully open yourself up to both good people and the lowest common denominator of your fanbase.

Well, some of them are fascinating. You've got to remember: There are both kinds on here. There are Trumpers and other kinds of people who just don't understand what's going on. But there are a ton of fascinating people there too, man. People I've found up being friends with. That's where I met Steve Silberman, my friend from San Francisco. I met him on the Net.

https://twitter.com/stevesilberman/status/1408125385556959235

At last, here's the title track of @thedavidcrosby's upcoming album, "For Free" - a cover of the Joni Mitchell song, in a spare, gorgeous piano arrangement by @jamjora and utterly spine-tingling harmonies by @SarahJarosz. This will heal your ills. https://t.co/KV9RDIWZNr

— Steve Silberman (@stevesilberman) June 24, 2021

You do meet people. It takes a while. You have to watch what they say and then you get a glimpse of who they are. Then, you test them out. You send something, they respond to it and you eventually suss out who's who. I have actually found some very fascinating people there, and I enjoy it. I like it.

I've seen Steve's tweets. He seems like a sweet guy.

He's a really bright guy. He used to write for Wired. He wrote the best book that anyone's ever written on autism. It's called NeuroTribes. It's a very scientific book, but it's written so well. It reads like a mystery novel. He won some awards with it and stuff. If you're interested in autism, I highly recommend it.

You recently sold your catalog to Irving Azoff. I've seen a lot of opinions out there as to why artists are doing this in droves, much of it misguided. Beyond the financial reality of it, what do you think this deal might do for your catalog and legacy?

It doesn't enrich my catalog or my legacy. I didn't want to do it. I did it because I had to. Here's what happened: We had two ways of making money: Touring, records. Streaming came along; streaming doesn't pay us. It's like you did your job for a month and they paid you a nickel. You'd be pissed. We're pissed. It's a wrong thing.

They threw half of our income away. Half. Gone. So then, we're trying to keep our heads up and we say, "OK, we'll be grateful we can still play live because we're paying the rent and taking care of our families. It's all good." And then, here comes COVID-19, and we can't play live!

What the hell was I supposed to do? I've got a family. I've got a home. I didn't want to lose my house. I don't want them to throw me out in the street. Are you kidding? I take this responsibility seriously. I love these people. I'm trying to do my job. So I did the one thing I could do: I sold my publishing.

Now, the reason everybody did it at the same time is a little more prosaic. A little more grubby. Everybody did it when they did it not because they were out of money like me, but because they know their taxes are all going to be different next year. In the case where you're doing a deal like $300 million, well, you're talking a $10, $20 million difference in taxes. So of course, they did it when they could get that advantage.

Regarding streaming, do you think the other shoe will drop?

I do not. I do not think it will change. I think all content — audio and video — will be streaming.

What happened, man, is they thought the technology up. They went to the record companies and they said, "Imagine no physical object." The record companies, who are not stupid, said "That'd be wonderful! No packaging? No pressing plants? No shipping! No returns! Nothing! We just send a signal and collect the money?"

They said, "What do we have to do to do that?" The streamers said, "You have to change the pay structure. You're paying all that money to these rich rock stars. You have to pay it to us instead." The record companies said, "We can do that! All you'd have to do to get us to do that is give us a piece of your company!" And they did. 

The reason the record business is doing just fine on paper is they're making a f***ing ton of money. Except they're not sharing it with the people who make the music. So, that's why we did it. I didn't want to. That's the one thing that I own. I didn't want to sell it. Of course, I didn't.

The Cameron Crowe documentary Remember My Name showed how you live modestly in a comfortable home. You don't live in the lap of luxury.

Yeah. It is comfortable, and you're right, it's not grandiose. I live in a little adobe house in the middle of a cow pasture, in the middle of a clump of trees. But it's really pretty and really peaceful and really sweet. We've been planting these plants and trees for 25 years and we love it a whole lot. So, yeah, we didn't want to lose it.

Clearly, having to sell your sailboat was heartbreaking.

Yeah, that hurt. I've had a lot of painful stuff in the last couple of years. Things couldn't go right.

Leaving CSN, I feel, was a very good thing, but very hard. I didn't like the guys. Nash and I were really not getting along at all. 

So, I'm kind of glad I did it, but the following couple of years have been hard. Financially hard, physically hard — a lot of physical stuff going on. I lost a son, which was just painful to a level that's hard to describe. And I, frankly, am very worried about my country. I think we're in a lot of trouble. I think it's better than it was, but I think we've got some real problems.

But, you know, I'm not whining and sniveling here, man. I'm lucky that I'm alive. Let's start there. There's a very good chance I wouldn't be. And I am, and I'm grateful for it. I'm lucky that I get a family that's wonderful, and I love them. 

I'm lucky that I can still sing. That's sheer luck. I did everything wrong. There's no excuse. And yet, here I am and I can sing. What do I do? I don't know if I've got two weeks or 10 years. I do know that I'm here right now. And if I concentrate on that, I can still have a lot of fun right now, today, making art that's good.

Frankly, man, the world is in kind of s*** shape. There's a lot of stuff wrong. Music's a lifting force. It makes things better.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CRRnuIwn5ZO/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

GRAMMYs

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That's what I feel when I listen to For Free. The music is so bouncy and galvanized. It seems like a tribute to the way music can be a counterweight to boredom and suffering.

Yeah, that's the idea. Yes, the record does feel like that, mostly. We didn't have a plan, man, but we certainly like it. That's what we certainly want to do: Be as joyful as we possibly can.

The best song on the record isn't joyful. It's thoughtful and sad and spooky and beautiful: "I Won't Stay For Long." There's a joy to that, too: That's how good [my son and collaborator] James [Raymond] has grown up to be.

And that seems like another part of the record's essence: Your love and admiration for your family, friends and fellow musicians.

It's a thing that happens to me, man. I wrote "Wooden Ships" with Stephen Stills and Paul Kantner. At the time, it just sort of happened. But in retrospect, I realize that's really a good thing. The other guy always thinks of something you didn't. It widens your palette of colors. It widens the possible reality that you're addressing. It's an excellent idea.

Most people take all the credit and all the money and they play it that way. [affects smarmy tone] "I'm the one who did it. Just me." I think my willingness, my joy at writing with these other people have extended my useful life as a writer for about 10 years, 20 years. And that's really a good thing, because here I am. I'm 80 years old, I've got a really good record ready to drop and I'm working on two more.

How has James developed as a songwriter and musician over the years?

He's written a ton of good songs with me. Frankly, a lot of the best stuff I've done in the last 20 years — Crosby & Nash; Crosby, Stills & Nash; the Croz record; the Sky Trails record; and now this record. He's matured as a writer. That's the best song on the record, "I Won't Stay For Long." No question.

It gave me shivers earlier.

Oh, my god. It's a beautiful song. He nailed it. Am I proud of him? Yes, I am. Am I grateful that he's still my joyful pal? Yes, I am. I just got off the phone with him. We're a really good match. The only weird thing about the relationship with James is that he's the adult and I'm the kid.

How's that?

Well, there's a rumor that I was going to grow up, but it just didn't really pan out. I'm not really a very adult person. I'm sort of like the nine-year-old in the relationship and he's the 30-year-old. He's the designated driver. He's a much more serious person than I am and definitely smarter.

David Crosby

David Crosby performing with the Byrds in 1965. Photo: CBS via Getty Images

On the topic of your family — and feel free to not broach this at all — I was thinking about Beckett and the saddening news about him. Losing a child is tragic on any level, but I was thinking that it must have kicked up extra-complicated emotions since another couple raised him.

Yeah, very tough. He was a nice kid. If you'd have known him, you would have been devastated, because he was a shiny, brainy, funny, laughing, curious, sweet, extremely bright kid. He and his sister, that was me and [my wife] Jan [Dance] trying to be good human beings and share the joy that we had.

We had Django; that was a stunning kid. Melissa [Etheridge] and Julie [Cypher] came to visit us and said "Oh my god, how do you get one of those?" Jan pointed at me, and they said "Wha… you kidding?" And she said, "No, he'll do it." I thought it over and I said "Yeah." We liked them a lot. They had been together for nine years or something. They looked stable and good. It seemed to us that lesbians have just the right to have kids as anybody else.

So, we volunteered to do that and the kids were stunners. Bailey [Jean Cypher] is just an absolutely brilliant girl, and beautiful. Beckett was the same. Bright and beautiful. Well, it didn't go well for that family. They wound up fighting each other, Melissa and Julie. That's not good, and he wound up being unhappy and he went out in the world and ran into some fentanyl that killed him.

It's a bitter pill, man. There's nothing you can do to make it light or funny or good. It's just awful.

Well, the joyful thing I can think of is in Beckett's life. You mentioned your insatiable curiosity about the human condition, which stretches through your work. I imagine the apple didn't fall from the tree with those kids, since you describe them as so brilliant.

Mm-hmm. Yep. The visits here were a lot of fun. They got along very well with Django and we were a joyous bunch together. 

From Croz to Lighthouse to Sky Trails to Here if You Listen to For Free, the throughline, to me, is you holding onto life kicking and screaming: "Please give me more years on the planet. Don't take music away from me. I love my house and family and dogs and horses. The world is largely a beautiful place."

That's a really clear read on it, man. That's good. You can do my eulogy. It is like that. It's just like that. I'm very grateful and I'm going to keep working until I drop. It's more fun than sitting around waiting to drop.

All these people are like, "Crosby's such a bitter old man!" and I'm like, "What are you talking about? He's more positive than anybody my age!"

I try to be, man. There's a certain curmudgeon thing that's fun to do. To be a crabby old man. [affects geriatric voice] "You kids don't know nothin'!" That kind of thing. It's fun and I'll do it to a degree, but it's a game I'm playing, really. 

I feel good. I feel good about the choices that I make and I feel good about my life. I feel good about what I think is valuable. I'm behaving relatively sanely. I have a good time. I smoke a little pot; it doesn't seem to hurt anything. I love my friends and my family and I'm trying to be a decent member of society. I've got no problem with me right now. Since I am here today, all I want to do is use today to do whatever I can to make stuff better.

We're arguably living through the most turbulent era since the '60s, but back then, someone like CSNY would write "Ohio" and it'd be on the radio within days. It doesn't seem like culture is stepping up to produce work that reflects or shapes the times. Do you feel that way, and if so, is it frustrating to watch?

Yeah, to a degree, I do feel that way. I wish the art were addressing the situation more. You see people being very brave. This Greta Thunberg girl is so brave out there telling the truth. 

You think, "Geez, why aren't the adults going along?" Well, we've got a whole bunch of people in our government who don't even believe global warming's real and couldn't care less anyway. They want power, and they're going to try to stop everything Joe Biden and the Democrats want to do to address it. Not because it's wrong, but because they want to stop everything the Democrats want to do. It's about power. It's not about the subject at all. 

And in so doing, they're ruining us and the rest of the world, many of whom are trying to do the right thing. It's a tough situation. Tough. I don't know how it's going to play out. The point is, if you can read and think, you'd better get down to your voting office and vote as often and as responsibly as humanly possible.

Jackson Browne On New Album 'Downhill From Everywhere,' Balancing Music & Messaging

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Guided by Voices

Guided By Voices

Photo: Tony Nelson

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How Guided By Voices Made Their New Album Remotely 2021-guided-by-voices-earth-man-blues-premiere-remote-recording

The Connected Citizens: How Guided By Voices Recorded 'Earth Man Blues' Remotely During A Pandemic

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The long-running rock band Guided by Voices recorded their astonishing new album, 'Earth Man Blues,' while quarantined hundreds of miles apart. Here's how they pulled it off—along with an exclusive premiere of the full album via GRAMMY.com
Morgan Enos
GRAMMYs
Apr 28, 2021 - 10:51 am

Back in the mid-'90s, Robert Pollard and a loose affiliation of drinking buddies made their most celebrated albums in basements and garages. A quarter-century later, separated by hundreds of miles, there were no walls at all.

Last year, drummer Kevin March and engineer Travis Harrison snaked cables and lugged drum gear into a Montclair, New Jersey, parking lot. They were recording Earth Man Blues, the new album by the long-running rock band Guided by Voices. March has been in the band on and off for years; Harrison has been their unofficial sixth member for almost a decade.

Video courtesy of Renée LoBue​.

Imagining a uniquely splashy sound from the surrounding concrete, March and Harrison had been pondering recording outside since before the COVID-19 pandemic hit. That idle notion became the only safe option. As viral spread goes, heavy breathing in an enclosed space would be tantamount to working out in a gym. Under a blue sky, with the rest of the band in different U.S. states, March laid into a 4/4 beat for the song "Child's Play" outside the Magic Door Recording studio.

How will "pandemic albums" hold up after our masks come off for good? It's too soon to say. But if you're prejudging Earth Man Blues as a tatty and Zoomed-in affair, this music might drop your jaw. Rather than being a thin approximation of what GBV could do in normal times, Earth Man Blues, which arrives Friday, April 30, could be their most adventurous, cohesive album yet. Below, it exclusively premieres via GRAMMY.com.

Pollard, March, guitarists Doug Gillard and Bobby Bare Jr. and bassist Mark Shue never physically met up while making the album; in fact, they haven't recorded in the studio as a complete unit for years. So, how do tracks like "The Disconnected Citizen," "The Batman Sees the Ball" and "Free Agents" feel so complete, hanging together like a Who-style rock opera? The answer lies in their senses of communication, organization, malleability and perseverance. To that end, the veterans can teach young musicians discouraged by lockdown a thing or two.

"Use the technology at your disposal and try to make it as much of a collective effort as possible," Pollard tells GRAMMY.com, speaking to youngsters. "Concentrate on making records and don't be so discouraged that you can't get together or play live. Write songs and create art. Nothing beats artistic satisfaction. Be patient and stay creative." Without being physically together, here's how Guided by Voices pulled off Earth Man Blues.

Robert Pollard

Robert Pollard. Photo courtesy of Guided by Voices.

Demoing Informatively 

Guided by Voices operate by a self-contained business strategy uniquely suited to a pandemic. That said, Pollard's remote-recording strategy isn't exclusive to the pandemic; by now, it's old enough to drink on its own.

Between 2001 and 2011, Pollard has recorded remotely numerous times for collaborative projects with Tommy Keene (as The Keene Brothers), his old songwriting foil Tobin Sprout (as Airport 5) and others. But whether recorded remotely in person, a Guided by Voices album always begins life via a humble, quotidian tool. 

"It all starts from the boombox," Harrison tells GRAMMY.com. "Bob's use of this tool is legendary. It has a great, crunchy, compressed, mid-rangy sound. Bob works quickly. When he chooses a time to write, he uses the boombox to capture the songs. Sometimes he sings songs straight through, and sometimes he records the songs in parts, assembling and arranging them later."

"The demos are already sequenced into how I think the final album should be," Pollard adds. "Sometimes, that changes after I hear the instrumentals or add the vocals. Other times, it remains in exactly the same sequence as the original demos." 

After Pollard completes an album's worth of demos, he sends them to Gillard, Bare, Shue and March. "I love getting the demos. It's like Christmas," Shue marvels to GRAMMY.com. "I really enjoy diving in and unpacking a particular batch of songs. Through that listening process, you begin to hear what a particular song might call for, and where things could go."

Despite consisting of staticky acoustic guitar and a mumbled vocal, "There is a lot of information embedded in these demos," Harrison says, "Melodies, lyrics, chords with specific voicings, rhythmic patterns and grooves, instrumental lines and structural choices are all there. The whole album is mapped out. The album's shape is very clear even at this early stage."

This is due in part to Pollard's written annotations. "Bob gives us song-by-song written production notes for each album," Gillard says. "For some songs they're sparse, indicating just a general feel, and some are specific, such as 'synth here,' 'no drums in this section,' etc."

"I'm the acoustic-guitar-and-boombox guy," Pollard says. "I leave recording, for the most part, to the guys with the prowess."

Mark Shue

Mark Shue. Photo courtesy of Guided by Voices.

Staying Connected

If COVID-19 hit 20 years ago, Guided by Voices might only have a landline and dial-up internet. But one silver lining of the pandemic happening now is that there are nearly endless digital tools for organization and quick communication.

Guided by Voices use Dropbox and a dedicated Slack channel. "We've found Slack to be a really helpful tool for us to stay organized with ideas and progress on various projects," Shue says. "In addition to keeping notebooks at home with charts and notes, I have a big whiteboard in my room where I can make charts and keep track of everything on the deck that we're currently working on."

Separately, the members of the band use Logic Pro X, Ableton, Pro Tools and any number of other DAWs, or digital audio workstations. The Focusrite Scarlett, an affordable M-box, is a favorite. "External hard drives are necessary to keep all recent sessions and tracks organized and free up space to do more," Gillard adds.

Doug Gillard

Doug Gillard. Photo courtesy of Guided by Voices.

By dutifully following Pollard's notes and staying in constant communication, the four musicians successfully execute his vision far more often than not.

"The demos are a constant guide," Harrison says. "I put the demos through an editing process that I call 'laundering.' It allows the band to play along naturally with Bob's vocals and the rhythmic feel of his guitar, even when he isn't in the room physically. Bob will usually send notes on the laundered demos."

"After I hear the finished instrumentals, I communicate with Travis as to what alterations or additions I think the songs need," Pollard says.

Because Guided by Voices stay on top of their progress via their digital tools, they’re able to complete a litany of overlapping projects. But creating distinct and vibrant art relies on exploding the rulebook as much as following it.

Travis Harrison

Remaining Receptive

"While we all love the electricity of being in the same room together, technology has also allowed us the ability to work fluidly and consistently together in any number of scenarios," Shue says. And the portability of the M-box means the band has recorded during soundchecks, in bathrooms and even in their tour van.

Plus, the band aren't strictly beholden to Pollard's instructions if they have an idea that could enhance a song. "I give them a lot of room for input," Pollard says. "There's a lot of trust and experience. Similar likes and dislikes as far as music is concerned."

For Earth Man Blues, the band used Pollard's notes as a launchpad and pulled out all the stops. Gillard used digital tools to create enveloping orchestral lines, as heard on tunes like "The Disconnected Citizen." 

"He sent in some tracks that made my jaw drop to the floor," Harrison says. "I think to myself, 'Did you hire the New York Philharmonic? How did you even do that?'" For the ambitious psychedelic throwback, "Sunshine Girl Hello," Shue laid down a percolating bass part worthy of Carol Kaye on Pet Sounds.

Bobby Bare, Jr.

Bobby Bare, Jr. Photo courtesy of Guided by Voices.

"He puts a lot of trust in us, knowing we'll come out with something close to his vision, if not spot on," Gillard adds. "We welcome specific directions. He enjoys getting the finished music and tends to like the results upon first listen." "There is not usually any re-recording that happens, in my experience," Shue says.

When the music is complete, Harrison travels to Pollard's residence in Dayton to record the big guy himself. "Bob's vocal sessions are not long, tedious endeavors, but rather quick-moving, joyful unveilings of the vocals for the album," Harrison says. Pollard always sings the album in order; Harrison makes sure he's comfortable in the process.

"Bob is always very well prepared," Harrison adds. "His lyrics and melodies always blow my mind. The sessions are quasi-sacred events. We hear the new Guided by Voices album for the first time."

Kevin March

Kevin March. Photo by Ray Ketchem.

Never Giving Up

There are arguably better Guided by Voices songs than "Don't Stop Now," from their 1996 album Under the Bushes Under the Stars. But given that its title reflects both their message of resilience and uncontrollable creative output, it may be their ultimate song. (They didn't nickname it "The Ballad of Guided by Voices" for nothing.)

And with the prevalence of affordable, high-quality recording equipment in 2021, any musician with sufficient imagination doesn't have to stop either.

"Almost every person who owns a laptop or a tablet has pretty decent recording software built into their device for free," Harrison points out. "You don't even need to buy blank tapes. The technology is ubiquitous. You just need ears and skills. That's the tricky part."

"With the technology available today for audio recording, there is nothing to hold a band back from creating and releasing music," March tells GRAMMY.com. "Even when you are not able to get together as a whole band. In a way, if looked at with an open mind, it can be even better because each band member has the time to really work on and hone their parts."

"Our priority has always been to keep moving forward, to keep creating and elevating," Shue says. "We are always pushing ourselves with each project, and looking for new ways to make the creative process as seamless and streamlined as possible."

"Don't stop now," he adds, citing a GBV calling-card.

Guided by Voices

Photo courtesy of Guided by Voices.

Back to Pollard in his Dayton basement, making off-kilter classics like 1994's Bee Thousand and 1995's Alien Lanesyears before anyone carried around a recording studio in their pocket. There's a direct link between what he did then and now.

"The tools we use are not exotic," Harrison says. "The spirit of Guided By Voices has always pointed toward using whichever tools were available to animate the larger-than-life ideas that come from Bob's imagination. Technology has come a really long way since the band's early days.

"Bob embraced lo-fi because they were able to find a satisfying vocal sound from the 4-track in the basement," he continues. "Not because wearing the 'lo-fi' label brought any bona-fides. His brilliant songs always make him the most credible artist in the room. Nowadays, he still has the brilliant songs. He is a fountain of brilliant songs. I can guarantee you."

"Even knowing their entire career output intimately," their manager, David Newgarden, tells GRAMMY.com, "I would not have been able to guess that these albums were recorded separately in five locations and not as a band in one studio. Maybe the article will inspire others."

At the end of “Child’s Play,” the music gives way to traffic sounds, briefly revealing its unconventional, outdoor recording session. Together or apart; in a basement, bathroom, or parking lot; Guided by Voices will continue to push forward. 

And with the means available to virtually everyone on the planet, there are few excuses left not to create. No boundaries to be beholden to. No walls.

Remote (Controlled): The Recording Academy's Guide To Recording Music Remotely With A Producer & Engineer

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