Interviews
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You Can Go Home Again: An Interview with Natalie Hemby
Five years ago, award-winning country songwriter Natalie Hemby — whose had hits by Miranda Lambert, Little Big Town, Blake Shelton, and others — embarked on an entirely different mission: to make a documentary about her grandfather\’s hometown of Puxico, Missouri. So she, along with Ryan Silver and Scott Murphy, drove over from Nashville to capture the small town\’s…
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Intentionally Simpler: An Interview with Tracy Bonham
For music fans of a certain age, hearing the name Tracy Bonham likely conjures up “Mother Mother,” an alt-rock MTV hit from the mid-90s that found Bonham in a full-throated wail backed by a wall of shredding guitars. But that was then. And this is now. Over the two decades since, the singer/songwriter has chased…
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Suffer No Fools: An Interview with Sarah Bettens
As both a solo artist and the front woman for K\’s Choice, Belgian rocker Sarah Bettens has long been a staple in the LGBTQ music community, even before she officially came out more than a dozen years ago. Around that same time, Bettens put K\’s Choice on hold and settled into a domestic life with…
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Squared Roots: Brandi Carlile x Elton John
The classically trained Sir Elton John wasn\’t always just so. In his early days, Reginald Dwight was so hooked on the American sounds of Elvis Presley, Ray Charles, Jim Reeves, Bill Haley, and Jerry Lee Lewis that the band he formed in 1962 was called Bluesology. Then, in 1967, John met lyricist Bernie Taupin and…
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Five Questions: Langhorne Slim
After six critically acclaimed releases over the course of 10 years, the unbridled Americana force that is Langhorne Slim recently issued his seventh project, The Spirit Moves. Slim got sober two years ago and became a meditator in order to harness his energy in a whole new way. The resulting songs speak for themselves, reflecting…
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Undercover Angel: An Interview with Shawn Colvin
Perhaps inspired by “Tiny Dancer,” Shawn Colvin originally wanted to be the seamstress for the band … not the leader of it. But she eventually got out front and sang a bunch of cover tunes until she found her own voice as a songwriter. Several decades later — and amidst six albums of originals —…
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Getting Better with Age: An Interview with Leigh Nash
Singer/songwriter Leigh Nash grew up in rural Texas with country music and mariachi bands filling her ears and her heart. Though those influences are hardly evident in her pop work with Sixpence None the Richer, Nash\’s new album, The State I\’m In, puts them center stage. The set is a mix-and-match collection of original tunes…
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The Artist's Way: An Interview with Rayland Baxter
If Wendell Berry and Paul Simon were to somehow have an offspring, odds are he would be a lot like Rayland Baxter. An easy-going and contemplative musical poet, Baxter brings a light touch to his life and his art. He grew up in and around music — his father being multi-instrumentalist Bucky Baxter, who has…
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Still Truckin': Patterson Hood Looks Back on Over a Decade of Drive-By Truckers
**Editor\’s note: This past spring, Kelly McCartney sat down with Patterson Hood to talk about his buddy and former bandmate Jason Isbell. She wanted to dig into Isbell\’s time in the Drive-By Truckers, for a long feature that appears in the 2015 issue of No Depression in print. She got some great info for that, but also wound up…
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Squared Roots: Ruby Amanfu x Bill Withers
To escape the wilds of West Virginia, a young Bill Withers joined the Navy, where he worked as an aircraft mechanic. After his service, he landed a job in an airplane parts factory, but soon realized he could get girls by singing, so he decided to give it a shot. He taught himself guitar, wrote some…