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In late 1996, when John Denver and his band visited a Nashville studio to re-record signature hits like “Sunshine On My Shoulders” and “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” he was not exactly compatible with RCA Records, the label that helped the soft-spoken singer-songwriter sell 33 million albums over his career.
Two years earlier, in his autobiography, he’d called RCA “an organization of pure opportunists” and declared it “not only lacked interest in promoting my albums, they were no longer interested in releasing them.”
So he pulled a Taylor Swift — when 7-year-old Taylor probably had no idea what a master recording even was.
With regulars such as bassist Alan Deremo and the late guitarist Pete Huttlinger, Denver created new masters for the old songs, to be owned exclusively by his indie label, Windstar Records. He was considering releasing the tracks when he died at 53 in a plane crash in late 1997. After that, Windstar put them out as a limited-edition European album, but they never came out officially in the United States — until Friday (Nov. 17), when his estate releases The Last Recordings.
“It’s always a good time to release what we have,” says Amy Abrams, who co-manages Denver’s estate with Brian Schwartz of 7S Management in Denver. “John would have been 80 this year. We recently passed 25 years since he passed away. We want to make sure fans have access to those recordings.”
Abrams says Denver’s estate, which includes his children Zak Deutschendorf, Anna Kate Hutter and Jesse Belle Denver, has a “fine working relationship” these days with RCA and its parent company, Sony, which has put out box sets such as 2011’s 25-disc The RCA Albums Collection. (A Sony representative declined to comment, as did Denver’s children.)
But in 1996, the activist and singer-songwriter was angry with RCA, which, in Take Me Home: An Autobiography, he had accused of turning down his Perhaps Love album and pushing him to record an “ersatz” country album called Some Days Are Diamonds instead. He was relishing his time as an independent artist. “The mood was laid back,” recalls Chris Nole, who played piano and keyboards on the re-recording session. “It was always relaxed, because we didn’t have a record label or manager breathing down our necks. It was just making John happy.”
The 1996 sessions took less than a week to record, and “let me tell you, they went fast.” Nole adds: “John was not an overdub king, punching one word five or six times. We would get them in one or two takes.” Deremo says Denver’s band had worked out the new arrangements in concert over the previous few years, and basically played them live in the Nashville studio: “If there was any conversation about how to approach the songs, it was just that we would execute them the way we were playing them live at the time.”
The most striking thing about The Last Recordings is Denver’s voice — deeper and a touch more gravely than the one on his ’70s hits. “He lost a lot of the boyish quality that his voice had early on,” Deremo says. “It ripened into a really full, beautiful-sounding instrument.”
Denver returned to the studio in 1997 to make his final RCA album, All Aboard!, a collection of train-song covers that came out shortly before his death in October. The songs on The Last Recordings have since trickled out over the years, titled A Celebration of Life, among other things. “His motivation was likely to have creative control,” Abrams says. “He wanted to give his fans ‘John’s Version,’ with more lived experience and musical development behind it.”
Noah Kahan has had quite the year. Last October, the singer-songwriter released his third album Stick Season, a project that ushered in a sonic shift for the artist away from pop and into folk music — and set him on the fast-track to global acclaim.
The album debuted at No. 14 on the Billboard 200; In June, Kahan released its deluxe edition, Stick Season (We’ll All Be Here Forever), which shot the album up to a No. 3 peak on the chart. The deluxe also topped a handful of genre-based charts, including Top Rock Albums, Top Alternative Albums and Americana/Folk Albums.
“It’s been an unbelievable year-and-a-half now … a whirlwind of attention and wonderful outpouring of love from fans,” says Kahan. He recalls making Stick Season through the pandemic, saying, “There was a feeling in the studio of like, ‘Woah, this is something special.’ I felt so creatively in control … and I think, at the time, I couldn’t see that as a sign of success or relatability, it just felt so right for me that I was fine with whatever happened.”
In July, Kahan delivered yet another gift to fans with his Post Malone collaboration on standout single “Dial Drunk.” And while Kahan says he didn’t get a chance to play beer pong with the champ (“I got to watch him play, there was a big line … I was a little starstruck”) he says their first meeting was “exactly what I wanted an experience with Post Malone to be; he was sitting crossed-legged, drinking Bud Lights [and] smoking cigarettes.”
The pair bonded over their love of the comedy Walk Hard and Kahan confirms “the hang is not over.” As he says, “I would love to get in the room and write music with him [together from scratch]. What I love about [him] is he is so untethered by genre…I would love to make some weird shit.”
Looking ahead, Kahan has already completed his two biggest goals: be verified on Instagram and have a Wikipedia page. Still, he has one other major project in the works. His nonprofit the Busyhead Project, which he founded with his managers in May and is named after his 2019 debut album Busyhead, is on track to raise $1 million for mental health organizations across country and in Canada. “That is definitely a goal,” he says.
Watch the full Billboard News interview above.
Gordon Lightfoot, who died on May 1, and John Prine, who died in 2020, are among the artists in the Folk Americana Roots Hall of Fame’s (FARHOF) inaugural class of inductees. The first induction ceremony for recipients and their families will take place in April 2024. Living and deceased artists, songwriters, record executives, managers and concert promoters tied to elevating folk, Americana and roots music were all eligible.
The inaugural class of 29 was selected by a designated nomination committee that includes industry experts as well as FARHOF’s board of directors. The class consists of 10 solo living artists, 11 solo legacy artists (all of whom are deceased, though the rules don’t stipulate that), four groups or duos, three non-performers and one recipient of the Paul Robeson Artist/Activist Award.
“When we created the Folk Americana Roots Hall of Fame, identifying the inaugural class and those after was going to be a big part of our initiative with focus on preserving these important genres and the history they created,” Joe Spaulding, president and CEO of the Boch Center and founder of FARHOF, said in a statement. “The diverse inaugural class reflects activism and social justice that shaped our world today, and we look forward to inducting these national treasures into the Folk Americana Roots Hall of Fame.”
The Weavers were inducted, while two members of that legendary group were also honored on their own. Pete Seeger, who left the group in 1957 and died in 2014, was inducted as a solo legacy artist. Frank Hamilton, who joined the group after Seeger’s departure and remained with it until it disbanded in 1964, received the Paul Robeson Artist/Activist Award. Hamilton is still living at 89.
The Folk America Roots Hall of Fame, which launched in 2019, is a cultural and education initiative of the Boch Center, which is located inside the Wang Theatre in Boston. For updates, information about tours and upcoming events and exhibits, visit the website at FARHOF.org.
Here are the 29 inductees in the inaugural class, by category.
Solo Living Artist
A contemporary performer whose initial impact on the genre was at least 25 years prior to the year of induction.
Joni Mitchell
Bob Dylan
Joan Baez
Mavis Staples
Willie Nelson
Emmylou Harris
James Taylor
Taj Mahal
Bonnie Raitt
Ramblin’ Jack Elliot
Solo Legacy Artist
A performer whose initial impact on the genre was at least 45 years prior to the year of induction.
Odetta
Pete Seeger
Woody Guthrie
Lead Belly
Richie Havens
Josh White
Oscar Brand
Johnny Cash
John Prine
Jean Ritchie
Gordon Lightfoot
Duo or Group of Musicians
Duos or groups whose initial impact on the genre was at least 25 years prior to the year of induction.
Peter, Paul & Mary
The Band
The Byrds
The Weavers
Non-Performer
This category includes supporting musicians, songwriters, managers, publishers, historians and producers.
Albert Grossman (former manager to many musicians in the folk music scene)
George Wein (jazz promoter, pianist and producer as well as founder of Newport Jazz Festival and co-founder of the Newport Folk Festival. Also instrumental in the founding of the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival.)
Betsy Siggins (founding member of the Club 47 venue now Passin in Boston; assisted in creating the Festival of American Folklife and founder of the New England Folk Music Archives/Folk New England.)
Paul Robeson Artist/Activist Award
Non-performing industry professionals who have had a major influence on the social justice that has impacted culture.
Frank Hamilton – (American folk musician, member of The Weavers and co-founder of Old Town School of Folk Music)
During the week of the winter solstice last December, Allison Russell stood in a large circle of “goddesses,” chanting and singing together to conjure communal joy out of thin air. Drums, guitars and strings joined her and her circle of “chosen sisters” as they celebrated “being back in our bodies.”
If that sounds more like a new-age spiritual exercise than a recording session, Russell will be the first one to tell you that two things can be true at the same time. “It ended up being very witchy and woo-woo and wonderful,” she tells Billboard. “We just got to be so present and say ‘F–k oppressors telling us we’re not gorgeous and perfect as we are.’”
That sentiment was the leading ethos behind the creation of The Returner, Russell’s spellbinding sophomore LP (out Friday, Sept. 8 via Fantasy Records). The folk star wanted to create an album that didn’t look back on the pain of the past — she had already done that on her outstanding 2021 debut album Outside Child — but rather firmly planted itself in the present and called for a much-needed celebration. Or, as she more poetically puts it, The Returner is about “stealing joy from the teeth of turmoil.”
To accomplish that goal, Russell ventured outside of the world of Americana music that made her one of the fastest-rising folk stars of the last few years. Taking a “rhythm-first” approach to creating the new sound, the singer-songwriter and Dim Star — the production duo of Russell’s partner JT Nero and Drew Lindsay — employed elements of funk, rock, disco and pop to further bolster her folk roots and give The Returner a fresh new sound.
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Russell says that this approach came about in part because she spent the last few years getting to tour internationally for the first time. “We toured in a lot of places where English isn’t the first language,” she said. “We realized that there’s a transcendence that comes when you allow yourself to feel music with your whole body. A lot of the demos started with us hearing the polyrhythmic layers of groove within some of the things that JT [Nero] and I were writing. That informs melody, that informs even the syllables, the words that are chosen.”
After spending three months working with Dim Star to create demos that achieved something close to the sound they were looking for, Russell recounts being contacted by her label in late 2022 and told that, in order to release an album in 2023, they would need her master by the end of the year thanks to ongoing delays in vinyl production.
Where most artists would panic, Russell felt relief — booking six days at L.A.’s Henson Recording Studios (a space “presided over by my hero, Kermit the Frog,” Russell quips), the multi-hyphenate embraced the do-or-die nature of the sessions. “We recorded Outside Child in four days, so we were like, ‘Oh, we have six whole days in the studio? That’s great,’” she recalls. “It actually felt magical — Joni [Mitchell] recorded Blue there, Joni recorded Court and Spark there, Carole King recorded Tapestry there, Tina Turner and Cyndi Lauper blew everything off the top of ‘We Are the World’ there. There were all of these good ghosts in the walls.”
In order to bring the expansive new sound of The Returner to life, Russell brought together a 16-person band of women to the week-long studio session. Featuring artists like SistaStrings, Joy Clark, Elenna Canlas, Elizabeth Pupo-Walker and a dozen others, the group became the engine through which Russell and Dim Star engineered their creative vision.
“The magic of this circle is that everybody is such a high-level, multifaceted artist; everybody’s a lead singer, everybody’s a writer, everybody’s a composer, everybody’s a multi-instrumentalist,” she said. “So when we go in the studio, it’s with this level of trust — and because of that, the album ends up being a musical conversation in real time with these brilliant artists that I feel so privileged to be working with.”
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Throughout her conversation with Billboard, Russell refers to the femme-focused troupe as the “Rainbow Coalition,” a name she also interchangeably uses for the community of artists she surrounds herself with and her fans. While the name may evoke a sense of LGBTQ-centric idealism that Russell shares with those she accepts as her chosen family, the singer points to the term’s long history for context.
Before the name was adopted into a larger cultural context, the original Rainbow Coalition was formed in 1969 Chicago by Fred Hampton, the deputy chairman of the Black Panther Party. Hampton helped bring together the Young Patriots (made up of poor Southern whites), the Young Lords (made up of Puerto Rican migrants) and street gangs throughout the city to work together towards social change.
While the original coalition fell apart after Hampton’s assassination in December 1969, Russell says that the core organizing principle of the original Rainbow Coalition remains a cornerstone of her own worldview today. “Any of us, globally, who are interested in the business of harm reduction, and of pushing for equality versus inequality — that’s the Rainbow Coalition,” she says. “There’s so few places where we can gather people from all different kinds of beliefs, histories, ethnicities and heritages in joyful assembly — but we have that in playing and listening to live music together.”
It certainly helps Russell’s righteous cause that she finds herself in storied company — in the years since she began working as a solo artist, the Montreal-born artist has become a contemporary of superstars like Brandi Carlile, Annie Lennox, Chaka Khan, and even Joni Mitchell, who brought her onstage earlier this year for her Joni Jam concert at The Gorge.
“Community is vital [in the music industry], both in terms of sharing resources and also just artistically,” Russell offers. “Getting to be a part of that event, where we were all there in service of Joni and in reverence and celebration of our elder was the most inspiring, transcendent, beautiful thing to get to witness and to be a part of.”
After being welcomed with open arms by artists like Carlile and Mitchell into the industry, Russell is now laser-focused on doing her part to leave the world a better place than she found it. One way she intends to do that is by fighting back against the ongoing wave of anti-LGBTQ legislation sweeping through the U.S., targeting healthcare and privacy rights for the transgender community, as well as First Amendment rights for drag performers.
Even broaching the subject of anti-LGBTQ legislation immediately prompts Russell’s indignant fury. “It is domestic legislative terrorism,” she says, her friendly smile dropping into a grimace. “It’s so serious, and we sleepwalk through it at our peril, right? This is some Third Reich s–t, and we cannot allow it to continue; we must fight back. And that’s what I’m talking about when it comes to the Rainbow Coalition — it’s all of us who stand at any intersections of the margin, anyone who loves us, and anyone who stands with us.”
Russell, believing in the power of live music to bring people together, decided to channel her anger into action. Teaming up with Jason Isbell and number of LGBTQ non-profit organizations in Tennessee, Russell co-organized Love Rising, the star-studded benefit concert that took place just weeks after the state passed laws banning gender-affirming care for minors and banning drag shows in public spaces. Featuring performances from superstars like Maren Morris, Sheryl Crow, the Brothers Osborne, Hozier and plenty more, the event was a runaway success — especially considering they raised over $500,000 for LGBTQ charities in the area.
Looking at all the artists who came out to support Love Rising — especially many of the straight artists who chose to speak up for the LGBTQ community — gives Russell a sense of hope for the future. “It’s exactly what we need,” she says. “It’s people like Hayley [Williams] taking a red eye flight to come back from opening for Taylor Swift, because she said she’d rather die than not be there to support the trans and drag community in Tennessee. These incredible allies are so important.”
But the work is far from over — Russell says she plans to use her upcoming tour for The Returner as on opportunity to work with organizations like the Human Rights Campaign and Headcount to register concert-goers to vote in the 2024 election and learn more about the attacks against the LGBTQ community. “It’s all hands on deck,” she resolves.
She’s also not taking her eyes off the music industry at large — amid the rising tide of harmful rhetoric, Russell says that a number of fellow artists in the industry have remained “deafeningly silent” on the topic, specifically in the mainstream country space. Russell doesn’t name anyone in particular, in part because she doesn’t want to add to “the algorithm of problematic artists,” but also because, as she says, she’s not trying to rehabilitate the “empathy deficit” she sees in the genre.
“I’m not interested in fixing the toxic white supremacy and masculinity of the mainstream. I think it’s a waste of energy,” she says. “I’m much more interested in building the beloved community of people that are ready to show up and do this work together, that believe in equality. The others will come along eventually.”
In large part, that is the message of The Returner — it takes a village to make deep, meaningful change in the world around you, and Russell is ready to build that village from the ground up.
This fall, Irish singer-songwriter Hozier is hitting the road for a full U.S. tour — his first outing post-pandemic. Following a handful of warmup dates at smaller venues stateside and overseas, his Unreal Unearth tour (in support of his long-awaited third album, of the same name, released Aug. 18) will bring him and his new backing […]
Barack Obama may not be the president anymore, but he’ll always be the commander-in-chief of summer music recommendations.
The former POTUS shared his annual summer playlist Thursday (July 20), with everyone from Ice Spice to Leonard Cohen making the 2023 roundup. “Like I do every year, here are some songs I’ve been listening to this summer — a mix of old and new,” Obama tweeted. “Look forward to hearing what I’ve missed.”
Among the songs featured: SZA’s “Snooze,” J Hus and Drake’s “Who Told You,” Rosalía and Rauw Alejandro’s “Vampiros,” Ice Spice and Nicki Minaj’s “Princess Diana” and Janelle Monáe’s spicy ode to threesomes, “Only Have Eyes 42.” Obama also included a taste of country with Luke Combs’ chart-topping take on Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car,” along with a splash of indie rock via Phoebe Bridgers, Lucy Dacus and Julien Baker’s Boygenius single “Not Strong Enough.”
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Classics from Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, Bob Dylan, Otis Redding and Ella Fitzgerald also made the cut.
The A Promised Land author is no novice when it comes to curating seasonal song recommendations, spending the past few years treating followers to at least two playlists — one in the summer and one at the end of each year — every year. At the end of 2022, Kendrick Lamar, Beyoncé, Rema, Lizzo, Ari Lennox, Omar Appollo and more were honored with Obama’s stamp of approval.
Last summer, Obama was bumping to Harry Styles, Lil Yachty, Maggie Rogers, Burna Boy, Wet Leg, Jack White and Maren Morris, amongst others.
See Obama’s full 2023 summer playlist below:
Like I do every year, here are some songs I’ve been listening to this summer — a mix of old and new. Look forward to hearing what I’ve missed. pic.twitter.com/H2Do2iaD1p— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) July 20, 2023
It’s been 25 years since the world was introduced to Rufus Wainwright with his debut self-titled album, which featured songs like “April Fools,” “In My Arms” and many more. To celebrate, the singer-songwriter sat down with Billboard‘s Tetris Kelly to reflect on his career. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, […]
Country music in 2023 means the stadium-filling sound of Luke Combs, the lonesome midtempos of Morgan Wallen and the vulnerable twang of Lainey Wilson.
But country also means stories. When non-country acts, such as Lionel Richie or John Legend, reference the genre on TV’s music competitions, they frequently cite the life narratives that are prominent in country as the primary element that separates it from other formats. That foundational storytelling thread is a direct result of country’s overlapping folk roots, still evident in the sound of at least two current singles: Jordan Davis‘ “Next Thing You Know,” at No. 15 on Country Airplay, and Ashley McBryde‘s “Light on in the Kitchen,” No. 37.
“They’re so reflective,” says singer-songwriter Lori McKenna. “They give you space to find yourself in them.”
McKenna, whose composition “Humble and Kind” likewise belongs to both folk and country, is one of the talents performing at the 35th annual MerleFest, a three-day event set for April 28-30 in Wilkesboro, N.C., with historic overtones. March 3 marked 100 years since the birth of the festival’s co-founder, singer-guitarist Doc Watson, who was one of the key figures in the folk boom of the 1960s.
The interplay between folk and country is a subtle part of both MerleFest — which features Maren Morris and Tanya Tucker among its multigenre participants -— and a tribute album, I Am a Pilgrim: Doc Watson at 100, arriving April 28 on FLi Records/Budde Music. Pilgrim enlists Dolly Parton, Rosanne Cash and Steve Earle, artists who have all mixed folk and country in some manner during their careers.
“They’re sisters of one another, or family members,” McKenna says of the genres. “It’s like Maren’s song ‘Good Friends,’ and Kelsea Ballerini has a new song now, ‘If You Go Down (I’m Going Down Too).’ Those sound like John Prine songs to me, just great songs that anybody can sing along to and anybody can [appreciate] the normalness, the ordinariness, in this well-crafted song.”
Watson, who resisted attempts to lure him into mainstream country, is likely unknown to most country fans, though his core talents and persona are a good road map for the elements of folk that have historically informed the genre. He played guitar with a fluid simplicity, sang with a natural — almost spoken — tone and viewed his public personality with extraordinary humility. He was also not a traditionalist.
Watson defined his repertoire as “Appalachian-plus,” a phrase that pinpointed its origins but left it room to grow.
“His music was mountain music, Appalachian Mountain region from Deep Gap, North Carolina,” says B Townes, the now retired co-founder of MerleFest, named after Watson’s son when it was established as a fundraiser for the Wilkes Community College Foundation. “The primary influences there, of course, were the fiddle, square dances and that type of thing.”
But the “plus” was quite expansive. It meant “anything I want to add to it,” Townes recalls Watson saying.
The 2023 MerleFest lineup reflects that wide-ranging ideal, boasting Americana acts Jim Lauderdale and Nickel Creek, bluegrass figures Jerry Douglas and Sam Bush, guitar virtuoso Tommy Emmanuel, banjoists Alison Brown and Don Flemons, and country artists Morris and Tucker.
Country is equally wide-ranging, though there’s almost always one or more songs or artists keeping the folk flame lit. Songwriter Bob McDill, named alongside Tucker on April 3 as a 2023 Country Music Hall of Fame inductee, originally moved to Nashville to become a folk artist. That interest influenced the sound of country in the 1980s as he contributed such folk-tinged stories as Don Williams‘ “Good Ole Boys Like Me” and Alabama‘s “Song of the South.”
Miranda Lambert‘s “The House That Built Me” and Kathy Mattea‘s “Eighteen Wheels and a Dozen Roses” followed in the same tradition, while folk played a heavy role in shaping the music of Emmylou Harris, John Denver, The Carter Family, Mary Chapin Carpenter, The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Suzy Bogguss, Bobby Bare and Tom T. Hall, whose elaborate tales earned him the nickname “The Storyteller.”
Davis’ “Next Thing You Know,” in fact, unfolds much like one of Hall’s compositions.
“There’s definitely some Tom T. Hall in there,” Davis allows. “Not that I’m anywhere near Tom T. Hall, but I can see the comparison.”
One of the features common to both Davis’ and Hall’s work is a focus on blue-collar people. “Next Thing You Know” recounts a successful relationship with working-class familiarity. Hall invariably wrote about the same kinds of individuals: bartenders, dry cleaners, parents, soldiers and Sunday school teachers.
“Somebody said that folk music is just songs about folks,” McKenna notes. “It’s just story songs. It’s people’s lives. And that’s what I love most about songs is just these ordinary lives that we get to write about.”
Folk music doesn’t require its artists to become social activists, but that embrace of the middle and lower class makes the music and politics compatible. Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, Earle, Prine and Joan Baez are all examples of folky acts who used their music to take a stance on specific issues or defend embattled populations.
That spirit was evident when two Tennessee state legislators -— Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, ousted from the statehouse floor for protesting inaction on guns — were reinstated April 11 in Downtown Nashville. Outside the capitol, Harris, Bush and Margo Price led a contingent of singers in a cover of Dylan’s “I Shall Be Released.” Subsequently, Old Crow Medicine Show issued a song, “Louder Than Guns,” on April 27 that echoes the fight for public safety.
The artists were all doing what folk singers have done historically: stand up for the underdog. Country singers have done that, too, be it Johnny Cash supporting anti-war demonstrators in “What Is Truth” or Brad Paisley flying to Ukraine to sing for an embattled nation.
“It’s about the people and their problems,” says John Lomax III, a music entrepreneur-manager-journalist who, deep in his career, has begun performing historic, rough-edged folk songs. “Pete Seeger, he made his whole career out of that sort of thing. And I guess, to a lesser extent, Woody and Dylan, they kind of blazed a trail, so to speak, that others follow.”
One of folk’s original missions was to pass music and information from generation to generation, and the Lomax family embodies that character. Lomax is a third-generation descendent of a prominent folk family. His father, John Lomax Jr., managed Lightnin’ Hopkins and founded the Houston Folklore Society, which provided a forum for the likes of Townes Van Zandt, Guy Clark and Lucinda Williams, all of whom would see some of their folk/Americana works covered as country hits.
Lomax III’s grandfather, John A. Lomax, and uncle, Alan Lomax, discovered Black folk/blues singer Lead Belly and worked with the Library of Congress. The senior Lomax collected Western songs, publishing his first book of folk lyrics, Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads, in 1910.
“It originated with him as he lay in bed at night and heard the cowboys singing to soothe the cattle,” Lomax III notes. “When he was about 8 or 9 years old — 1875 or 1876, somewhere along in there — he started writing the words down because the Chisholm Trail practically ran through the back yard.”
The trail from those early folk songs continues to modern folk and country, even if the roots are a little less obvious. That idea of heritage is key to both Davis’ “Next Thing You Know” and McBryde’s “Light on in the Kitchen,” as each of them embraces the passing of a torch to the next generation.
“I thought of my daughter,” “Kitchen” co-writer Jessi Alexander says. “If you could give your daughter an instruction manual of any kind, what would you want to say in a song?”
Even now that country is a stadium-level attraction, folk developments in the genre are increasingly essential, if for no other reason than to remind the artists and decision-makers of its primary base.
“This is what country music is supposed to be about,” Lomax III says. “Telling about the lives of normal people.”
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Kelly Clarkson kicked off the Wednesday (April 5) episode of her talk show with a lovely, lilting cover of Joni Mitchell‘s “A Case of You.”
Accompanied by a lone Appalachian dulcimer, much like the original recording, the American Idol winner rolled out the story Mitchell first told on her landmark 1971 album Blue, singing, “Just before our love got lost you said/ ‘I am as constant as a northern star’/ And I said, ‘Constantly in the darkness/ Where’s that at?/ If you want me I’ll be in the bar’/ On the back of a cartoon coaster/ In the blue TV screen light/ I drew a map of Canada/ Oh, Canada/ With your face sketched on it twice.”
The ballad was originally released as the B-side to Blue‘s sophomore single “California,” which failed to chart on the Billboard Hot 100 following the modest success of lead single “Carey.” Mitchell later re-recorded “A Case of You” for her 1974 live album Miles of Aisles and another version of the song also reappeared on her 2000 orchestral full-length Both Sides Now.
Other tracks Clarkson has selected for a Kellyoke spin as of late include Lenny Kravitz’s cover of “American Woman,” GAYLE’s Grammy-nominated breakout “abcdefu” — complete with tweaked lyrics to allude to her divorce from Brandon Blackstock — and Janet Jackson’s “When I Think of You.”
Meanwhile, the talk show host is also prepping the long-awaited release of Chemistry, her first new album of original, non-holiday music since 2017’s Meaning of Life. The studio set’s lead single “Mine” is set to arrive April 14 via Atlantic Records.
Watch Clarkson pay homage to Mitchell with her take on “A Case of You” below.
The tribute concert for the Gershwin Prize, designated each year by the Library of Congress to fete an artist’s lifetime contribution to popular music, is by its very nature a love fest. The fact that this year’s event ratcheted up the heartstrings even more than usual is a testament to its 2023 honoree, Joni Mitchell.
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The show, which took place earlier this month in Washington, D.C., and airs Friday (March 31) on PBS, brought out a cavalcade of well-wishers, musical talent and friends. That included Brandi Carlile (who, besides performing, acted as an intermittent MC), James Taylor, Annie Lennox, Cyndi Lauper, Marcus Mumford, Graham Nash, Angélique Kidjo, Ledisi, Diana Krall and Herbie Hancock.
Mitchell, 79, was an obvious choice for this year’s Gershwin. She’s received a host of recent accolades since she made a remarkable recovery after suffering a brain aneurysm in 2015 that left her hospitalized. She received the Kennedy Center Honor in 2021, was celebrated as MusiCares’ 2022 Person of the Year and received an honorary doctorate from Berklee College of Music the same year.
Seated front and center in DAR Constitution Hall, which added rows of chairs in front of the stage to accommodate a full house of invitation-only fans and Capitol Hill luminaries, Mitchell swayed and smiled throughout the night, clearly relishing the celebration.
Carlile, who performed her professed favorite Mitchell song, the title track from her 2007 album Shine, sprinkled in stories of spending time with Mitchell during her convalescence and Mitchell’s triumphant return to the Newport Folk Festival last year, where she performed 13 songs.
“The songs of Joni Mitchell, like the woman, speak to innocence and experience, success and failure, overcoming odds, falling short,” Carlile told the crowd. “[Last summer] she showed the world that it was not done with Joni Mitchell, and she showed the world that she was not done with us. All of us on stage here tonight just couldn’t let anything pass without recognition of Joni’s courage, her determination, her spirit, will and grit.”
The performances were strong across the board, all delivered with reverence on a stage that was adorned with images of some of Mitchell’s paintings. And the band comprised musicians who are longtime collaborators and friends of Mitchell, including music director Greg Phillinganes.
Mumford got things started with “Carey,” from Mitchell’s cherished 1971 album Blue. Lennox soared with power and passion on the timeless “Both Sides Now.” Kidjo got creative with her time in the spotlight: while performing Mitchell’s Billboard Adult Contemporary No. 1 “Help Me,” she hopped off the stage and delivered a portion of the song directly to Mitchell, who obliged by dancing along in her seat.
Describing her contribution “Big Yellow Taxi,” Ledisi said Mitchell wanted listeners to understand the importance of maintaining the balance of the natural world, “but she did it in an almost subversive way, wrapping the message in a universally easy-to-sing chorus that sneaks up on you and then hits you in the face with the importance of taking action.”
Nash, who shared a long-resonating love affair with Mitchell between 1968-70, recalled meeting her in 1967. “She took me to her room and played me probably over a dozen of the most incredible songs I’ve ever heard in my life,” he said, before launching into “A Case of You,” which was highlighted by photos of the two in their younger years.
Lauper gave a lilting performance of title track to Blue, though she immediately had to do a second take when Ken Ehrlich of Ken Ehrlich Productions made one of a few mid-show appearances to make sure the event would be ready for its primetime debut. (When Ehrlich came out, halted Taylor’s silky, buttery performance of “California” and asked him to start over, Taylor quipped, “Is this the part where you come in?”)
Excitement was palpable leading to the finale, when a beaming Mitchell rose from her seat and took the stage.
“This is such a great honor; it’s so exciting to see all of these musicians I admire preforming my music. And I wanted to express my gratitude by singing a Gershwin song,” she said, before launching into a jaunty rendition of “Summertime,” which she followed up with her own iconic “The Circle Game,” joined by the cast of performers.