Category: Americana

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Haylie Davis Shares Shimmering and Introspective “Country Boy”

Raised in Northern California and currently based in Los Angeles, Haylie Davis is a rising artist, who has received attention global attention for her passionate reimagining of classic Laurel Canyon folk pop, anchored by her gorgeous, remarkable vocal range and her knack for intricate storytelling.

After collaborating with a series of like-minded artists including Drugdealer, Sylvie, Alex Amen and Sam Burton, Davis steps out into her own path, meshing gorgeous melodies and strikingly original songcraft its a new band of cosmic Americana.

“Young Man” is latest single off the Los Angeles-based artist’s highly-anticipated debut album, which will feature the previously released “Country Boy” and “Golden Age,” and is slated for release later this year through Fire Records. “Young Man” is an introspective lived-in lament on the breakup of a misplaced, perhaps even unearned affection and its aftermath. And as a result, the song’s narrator expresses a mix of relief, exhaustion, despair and bit of “wait, what the fuck was that?” while nursing a bruised heart.

Fittingly, the song features some heartbreakingly gorgeous steel guitar paired with Davis’ timeless, world-weary delivery. It sounds a bit like a 70s country ballad, much like Johnny Cash‘s take on the Kris Kristofferson-penned “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down” — with a subtly modern vibe.

“‘Young Man’ was born a few years back in a Texas green room while I was out on tour with Sam Burton,” Davis explains. ““I was fresh off a breakup, emotionally raw, and the song arrived naturally in that in-between space – part exhaustion, part reflection, part release. Later, I brought it to life with Michael Harris at Valentine Recording Studio. Working with Michael was a joy; he creates an atmosphere that’s both encouraging and effortless, making the recording process feel less like work and more like discovery.”

Directed by Magnolia Ellenburg, the accompanying video for “Young Man” is a gorgeously shot fever dream of heartache, despair and pride that should feel familiar to anyone who has had to nurse their bruised heart and investigate themselves in the aftermath of a breakup. Those answers aren’t easy to come by, but you figure out a way to move on and learn from it as best as you can.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Night Teacher Shares Lived-In “Past Life”

Singer/songwriter and musician Lilly Bechtel is the creative mastermind behind the indie project Night Teacher, a project that derives its name from Bechtel’s day job — she has worked asa trauma-informed yoga instructor for the past 15 years — and perhaps more poignantly, to the nature of the lesson. As Bechtel says, “Pain can be a teacher. It can have some really important things to tell you — if you’re willing to listen.”

Along with producer and collaborator Matt Wyatt, Bechtel’s Night Teacher work feel like notes slipped under the door or knowing winks across a table, little hints and nods of solitary that acknowledge struggle without demanding explanation or solution. “Healing doesn’t have to be linear,” says Bechtel. “It’s usually not.” Sonically, Bechtel and Wyatt craft a gritty, propulsive and often off-kilter sonic world that has drawn comparisons to Margaret Glaspy, Thom Yorke and Cate Le Bon among others, which can be heart on Bechtel’s 2020 Night Teacher self-titled debut.

Bechtel’s sophomore Night Teacher, the recently released Year of the Snake refers to the Chinese Zodiac and to this year, which according to the Chinese Zodiac is The Year of the Snake — a time for transformation. The album’s material was written during a period of profound personal hardship, including family challenges, a bitter breakup, and a relapse after 12 years of sobriety, all intensified by the isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic. “I kept asking myself, ‘Can I survive this?’” Bechtel says.

Year of the Snake‘s second and latest single “Past Life” is a gritty and lived-in fever dream of lingering heartache, regret, failure and old ghosts haunting its narrator — and in turn, listener — in the present. And if you have lived a full and messy life, as I have, the song should feel familiar, expressing thoughts, feelings and observations that you’ve felt and seen, but haven’t been able to put in words. At its core, is a deeply humanistic tale of stubborn survival, hope, and of the recognition that recovery and healing are often a slow, uneasy, painful and necessary process.

Directed by Cat Rider, Zap McConnell and Lilly Bechtel, the accompanying video for “Past Life” is a surreal fever dream of doppelgängers, being watched and watching, of past, present and future constantly and uncomfortably colliding.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Happy 80th Birthday, Neil Young!

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Neil Young’s 80th birthday.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Happy 79th Birthday, Neil Young!

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Neil Young’s 79th birthday.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Happy 95th Birthday, June Carter Cash!

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates the 95th anniversary of the birth of June Carter Cash.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Sarah Lake Shares Ernie Lake’s Nu-Disco Remix of “Soul Shaker”

Lake relocated to Nashville back in 2017. And since then she has released music that has been featured on Tidal, Apple Music and a variety of Spotify playlists. As a songwriter, the Canadian-born and now-Nashville-based artist has written songs for The Voice Season 13 finalist Moriah Formica, Ms. America Betty Cantrell — and Reba McEntire took her song “Amen” into the studio in 2018.

And although as a songwriter, she continues to write material across a range of formats and styles, as an artist, Lake’s work has firmly in the realm of Americana/folk.

Her latest songs “Devil in My Head” and Messy” have been featured on Nashville-based radio station Lightning 100. “Missing Home” has been added to several Apple Music playlists. And the video for “Wide Eyed Girl” was added to CMT online.

Released earlier this year, the Everette and Lake cowritten “Soul Shaker” is a hook-driven and anthemic bit of country pop — or perhaps pop country? — that captures the swooning sensation of love with a folksy and lived-in earnestness. Recently, Ernie Lake, who remixed Pink‘s “Get The Party Started” and Taylor Swift’s “Willow” among a lengthy list of others, remixed “Soul Shaker,” turning the track into a summery, Stevie Nicks “Stand Back”-meets disco heyday-like bop featuring wah-wah pedaled funk guitar, soaring and cinematic bursts of strings, conga, and a relentless funky groove — all of which seem to serve and emphasize Lake’s easy-going soulful delivery.

Lake hopes that the song will take listeners to a happy place and back to simpler times of roller skating rinks and dance floors.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Joe Kaplow Shares Bitter and Heartbroken Lament “Rock and Roll”

Joe Kaplow is a New Jersey-born, Santa Cruz, CA-based singer.songwriter and musician. Before his music career got serious he had to make a serious decision: Take over his parents’ thoroughbred fam in New Jersey or pursue music in California and relinquish the family home to sale. And although on occasion, he wonders if he could have made a music career work, if he had stayed on his parents farm, he’s happy where he is.

The New Jersey-born, California-based artist’s work is deeply inspired and informed by his life’s moments — “smelling 4 acres of freshly cut grass, watching the steam from a horse’s breath in the early morning, finally holding the neck of my guitar after holding bridles and worn wooden handles all day,” he says. “And then — smelling 4000 acres of freshly burnt wildfire, watching the steam from the Pacific Ocean’s breath in the early morning, finally holding the neck of my guitar after holding the worn steering wheel of the tour van all day.”

Kaplow’s third album Posh, Poodle, Krystal and Toe is slated for a May 17, 2024 release through Fluff and Gravy Records. Deriving its title, appropriately enough, after his bandmates’ nicknames, the album is more of a cohesive “band” statement than his previously self-recorded material. Most of the album’s tracks were cut over a five-day span, performed live at Enterprise, OR‘s OK Theater with engineer Bart Budwig.

The album’s songs were learned and workshopped on the spot, capturing very honest, energetic “fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants” moments and takes Kaplow’s honest and raw songwriting style and propels it forward with spontaneous collaboration and undeniable rhythm.

Posh, Poodle, Krystal and Toe‘s latest single “Rock and Roll” is a slow-burning and meditative track anchored in the lived-in, bitterly harsh and shitty realties of being a struggling musician/artist/writer/creative featuring a deceptively simple arrangement of strummed and plucked, acoustic twang, easy-going backbeat paired with Kaplow’s achingly plaintive wail. The song seems to ask the question — “when does the struggle to make it work get too overwhelming to continue?” While sounding a bit like a heartbroken S/T-era The Band, the song is inspired by an actual experience while on tour:

“We had a bad show. Overall, it wasn’t a very good tour,” Kaplow explains. “After playing a show to three people in the back corner of some bar in San Diego that was decorated more appropriately for a football game than a concert, our drummer had a breakdown. On the sidewalk outside the venue he began to cry. Then his despair turned to rage, screaming at me how foolish I was for booking this show and booking the tour, how he had to take time off work and lost money, how he spent 2 weeks away from his girlfriend who was now questioning dating a musician, and how he hadn’t gotten a good night’s sleep since tour began. I thought to myself, ‘I know, isn’t it great?’ ‘Rock and Roll’ is a song about how it feels to be a touring musician before you get the tour bus. It’s hard. The late Robbie Robertson of The Band said, ‘It’s a goddamn impossible way of life.’ ” 

Directed by Ben Judkins and Joe Kaplow, filmed by Ben Judkins and edited by Rob Armenti, the accompanying video for “Rock and Roll” was shot on a grainy Super 8 and follows Kaplow on tour through California. While there are moments of sublime beauty, pride and goofy joy, there’s also a sense of struggle and hard-won experience throughout.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Happy 94th Birthday, June Carter Cash!

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates the 94th anniversary of June Carter Cash.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: One Adam One Shares Atmospheric “Where Do I Begin”

Starting their careers as founding members of acclaimed yet defunct alt-country band Nadine, St. Louis-based musicians singer/songwriter Adam Reichman (vocals, guitar) and multi-instrumentalist, composer and producer Todd Schnitzer have collaborated yet again with their latest project, One Adam One, which sees them delivering a fresh take on their unique Midwestern sound: Reichmann’s lyric-driven acoustic music is paired with Schnitzer’s adventurous backing instrumentation and production, featuring fuzz guitars, synths and drum layering.

The duo’s long-awaited, five-song mini-album Where Do I Begin released through Die Trying Records sees the duo painting an intimate and poetic picture of modern life in a rapidly-changing world with the mini-album’s material touching upon bewilderment love, longing and hope with a lived-in earnestness. The mini-album’s latest single, title track “Where Do I Begin” pairs strummed acoustic guitar, a supple bass line and atmospheric synths with Reichman’s sonorous and achingly tender tenor. Rooted in earnest, lived-in lyrics “Where Do I Begin” discusses the bewilderment of loss and a gradual sense of acceptance with a novelistic attention to detail.

women who kick ass by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Happy (Belated) 83rd Birthday, Mavis Staples!

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms belatedly celebrates Mavis Staples’ 83rd birthday.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Ben Rice Longs for The Old New York in “Everything Changes”

Ben Rice is an accomplished singer/songwriter, guitarist and producer and owner of Brooklyn-based DeGraw Sound. As a producer and session guitarist, Rice has worked with the likes of Norah Jones, Jonas Brothers, Valerie June, Fletcher and The Skins. As a guitarist, Rice has played in couple of indie rock projects that signed with Warner Music Group and toured internationally with Arctic Monkeys, Band of Skulls, The Bravery and Brendan Benson.

Rice’s self-produced, self-engineered and self-mixed, full-length debut Future Pretend was written and recorded at his DeGraw Studio during the terrifying and deadly first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic and the sociopolitical upheaval of that year. The album which features contributions from the likes of producer Gian Stone, who has worked with Justin Bieber and Maroon 5; Norah Jones’ and Mavis Staples’ Pete Remm (keys); The Autumn Defense’s and Norah Jones’ Greg Wieczorek (drums); Raffaella’s and Leyla Blue’s Charlie Culbert (drums, production) and Eighty Ninety’s Abner James and Harper James is a personal and artistic reset for Rice, who saw Future Pretend’s creative process as an opportunity to process seismic life changes and connect with our tumultuous present. Featuring nine reflective songs that thematically finds Rice offering intimate and personal ruminations on culture, our society and personal evolution. Sonically, the album finds the Brooklyn-based singer/songwriter, guitarist, producer and engineer embracing what he dubs “big city Americana,” which isn’t really about cowboy shirts, boots and twangy guitars but about yearning for a halcyon days.

Future Perfect’s latest single, the Damn the Torpedoes-era Tom Petty-like “Everything Changes” is centered around shimmering synth arpeggios, twangy guitars an anthemic hook and the sort of Romantic yearning for the past that New Yorkers are known for. The song finds Rice’s narrator lamenting about the passing of time and the inevitability of aging while shouting out beloved places and a long lost innocence. Certainly, as a 40 something, who finds his city phasing him out while losing the places I loved, the song hits me in a deeply personal and familiar place. As James Murphy once sardonically yet wisely sung “New York, I love you but you’re bringing me down . . .”

“I wrote ‘Everything Changes’about watching the city I grew up in change and realIzing that every generation of New Yorkers has probably experienced something similar,” Rice explains. “The things that to me feel like authentic aspects of the city that are now slipping away might have felt like the strange and new things that ushered in change to previous generations.”

Directed by Abner James, the recently released video for “Everything Changes” is split between footage of Rice and his backing band performing the song in a backlit studio and James Spenser Saunders, who plays a young New Yorker, walking the streets of the Lower East Side and stopping at some of the places Rice references in the song. Shot during the pandemic, the video captures New York at its eeriest with beloved bars, clubs and eateries closed or barely opened. The video captures a city going through some incredibly unforeseen and unimaginable changes, the seemingly unending sense of unease and uncertainty of our world and a palpable loss of innocence.