Tag: Lonnie Holley

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Lonnie Holley Shares Meditative “A Change Is Gonna Come”

Lonnie Holley is an acclaimed, Birmingham, AL-born and-based multi-disciplinary artist, art educator and musician, who has had a profoundly difficult, well-documented life: As a child, he was taken away from his family by a burlesque dancer, who then left him in the care of the proprietors of a whiskey house on the state fairgrounds.

Holley then wound up living in several foster homes, before spending time at the notorious Alabama Industrial School for Negro Children in Mount Meigs, where he suffered terrible abuse.

From the time he was a small boy — around five or so — Holley worked a variety of menial and/or backbreaking jobs: He picked up trash at a drive-in movie theater, washed dishes and picked cotton. He even has had stints as a chef and even a gravedigger.

His creative and artistic life began in earnest in 1979: Heartbroken by the death of his sister’s two children, who tragically died in a house fire, he carved tombstones out of a soft sandstone-like byproduct of metal casting, which he found discarded by a foundry near his sister’s house. Holley firmly believes that divine intervention led him to the material — and in turn, inspired his art.

He went on to make over carvings and began assembling them in his yard with various found objects. Locally, he began to occasionally be known as The Sand Man.

In 1981, Holley brought a few examples of his sandstone carvings to Richard Murray, the then-director of the Birmingham Museum of Art. Murray was so impressed that the museum displayed some of those pieces immediately.  

Murray then introduced Holley to the organization of that year’s “More Than Land and Sky: Art from Appalachia” exhibition at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. This lead to Holley’s work being acquired by several renowned institutions including New York’s American Folk Art Museum, Atlanta’s High Museum of Art and others — and he has had his work displayed at The White House. 

By the mid 1980s, Holley’s work had expanded to include paintings and recycled and found-object sculptures. His yard and the adjacent abandoned lots near his home became an immersive art environment, that was highly celebrated by the larger art world. Unfortunately, that art environment was frequently threatened by scrap metal scavengers. Worse yet, his work was tragically torn down as a result of the expansion of the Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport. 

Holley sued and eventually won a settlement against the airport authority. The airport authority paid him $165,700 to move his family and his work to a larger property in Harpersville, AL.

From 2003-2004, Holley created a sprawling, sculptural environment at the Birmingham Museum of Art’s lower sculpture garden as part of their “Perspective” series of site-specific installations. The creation of the installation was documented in Arthur Crenshaw’s film, The Sandman’s Garden and by photographer Alice Faye “Sister” Love. 

He also installed sculptural work for the exhibition  Groundstory: Tales from the shade of the South at Agnes Scott College’s Dalton Gallery, which ran from September 28, 2012 to November 17, 2012. 

2012 was a very busy year for Holley: He released his full-length debut album Just Before Music that year. He quickly followed up with his sophomore effort, 2013’s Keeping a Record of It. He signed to  Jagjaguwar Records, who released his third album, 2018’s MITH, an afford that featured a sound and approach informed and inspired by the blues, soul, avant-garde jazz and spirituals.

Holley’s fourth album, 2023’s Jacknife Lee-produced Oh Me, Oh My was a sharpening and refinement of MITH. Stirring in one moment and a balm the next, Oh Me, Oh My details histories both global and personal. The album featured an acclaimed collection of collaborators including R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe, Sharon Van Otten, Moor Mother, Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon and Rokia Koné, who serve as choirs of angels and co-pilots, assisting in giving Holley’s message flight, while reaffirming the man as a galvanizing, iconoclastic force.

The album also saw the refinement of Holley’s impressionistic, stream-of-consciousness lyrics. During each writing and recording session, Holley and Lee would discuss the essence of the song they were working on, and then attempt to distill Holley’s words to their most immediate and earnest center.

During each session Holley and Lee would discuss the essence of the song and distill the acclaimed multi-disciplinary artist’s word to their most immediate and earnest center.

His recently released fourth album Tonky derives its name from a childhood nickname given to him when he lived a portion of his childhood in a honky tonk. Holley has long been an incredibly gifted storyteller with a commitment to the oral tradition and Tonky puts this on full display. The album is as expansive in sound as it is in making a place for a wide range of featured artists to come through the door of the record and feel at home, no matter how they spend the time they get on a song.

The album sees Holley and his collaborators delighting in finding a sound and pressing it against another found sound and another until, before a listener knows it, they’re awash in a symphony of sound that feels like it stitches together as it’s washing over you. The album’s sound is the result of decades of endlessly evolving and experimentation, informed by Holley’s life.

Last Friday, Holley shared Tonky‘s latest single, album closing track “A Change Is Gonna Come.” Anchored around instrumental contributions from Jacknife Lee, Jordan Katz, Marlon Patton and Steve Dress, the slow-burning and meditative “Change Is Gonna Come” features twinkling keys, mournful horns, bursts of 808s and some soulful gospel-like background vocal wailing serving as a lush bed for the acclaimed Birmingham-born and-based artist’s soulful and expressive delivery.

Arguably, one of the more emotionally ambivalent songs of Holley’s growing catalog, “A Change Is Gonna Come” is about renewal and the limits of hope and faith that sees Holley asking the listener “Are we truly ready and prepared for that change?”

Directed by Matt Arnett and Ethan Payne, the accompanying video for “A Change Is Gonna Come” features Holley on presumably his property with a variety of America-themed tchotchkes, family heirlooms and broken statues. Throughout the video, we may be reminded that Holley is a survivor, but that he has a deep sense of kindness, fairness and an unwavering dignity.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Lonnie Holley Teams Up with Michael Stipe on Atmospheric Meditation “Oh Me, Oh My”

Lonnie Holley is an acclaimed, Birmingham, AL-born and-based multi-disciplinary artist, art educator and musician. Holley has had a profoundly difficult life, which has been well-documented: He was taken away from his family as a child by a burlesque dancer, who ultimately left him in the care of the proprietors of a whiskey house on the state fairgrounds. He then lived in several foster homes, before spending time at the notorious juvenile facility the Alabama Industrial School for Negro Children in Mount Meigs, where he suffered terrible abuse.

From the time he was a small boy — about five or so — Holley has managed to work a variety of jobs: He has picked up trash at drive-in movie theater, washed dishes, picked cotton, was a chef and was even a gravedigger.

Holley’s creative and artistic life began in earnest back in 1979: Heartbroken by the death of his sister’s two children, who tragically died in a house fire, he carved tombstones out of a soft sandstone-like byproduct of metal casting, which was discarded by a foundry near his sister’s house. He firmly believes that divine intervention led him to the material — and inspired his art.

He went on to make other carvings and began assembling them in his yard with various found objects. Locally, he began to occasionally be known as The Sand Man.

In 1981, Holley brought a few examples of his sandstone carvings to Birmingham Museum of Art director Richard Murray. Murray was so impressed that the museum displayed some of those pieces immediately.

Murray then introduced Holley to the organization of that year’s “More Than Land and Sky: Art from Appalachia” exhibition at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.This led to the Birmingham-based multi-disciplinary artist’s work being acquired by several institutions including New York’s American Folk Art Museum, Atlanta’s High Museum of Art and others — and he has had his work displayed at The White House.

By the mid 1980s, Holley’s work had expanded to include paintings and recycled and found-object sculptures. His yard and the adjacent abandoned lots near his home became an immersive art environment, that was highly celebrated by the larger art world. Unfortunately, that art environment was frequently threatened by scrap metal scavengers. Tragically, his work was torn down as a result of the expansion of the Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport.

Holley sued and eventually won a settlement in which the airport authority paid $165,700 to move his family and work to a larger property in Harpersville, AL. (It shouldn’t be surprising that the acclaimed artist is a primary subject of Unreformed, a new podcast from the folks at iHeartMedia.)

His first major retrospective Do We Think Too Much? I Don’t Think We Can Ever Stop” Lonnie Holley, A Twenty-Five Year Survey was organized by the Birmingham Museum of Art, and eventually travelled to the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham, UK.

From 2003-2004, Holley created a sprawling, sculptural environment at the Birmingham Museum of Art’s lower sculpture garden as part of their “Perspective” series of site-specific installations. The creation of the installation was documented in Arthur Crenshaw’s film, The Sandman’s Garden and by photographer Alice Faye “Sister” Love.

He also installed sculptural work for the exhibition  Groundstory: Tales from the shade of the South at Agnes Scott College’s Dalton Gallery, which ran from September 28, 2012 to November 17, 2012.

2012 was a very busy year for Holley: He also released his full-length debut album Just Before Music. He followed that up with 2013’s Keeping a Record of It. His third album, 2018’s MITH, which was released by Jagjaguwar Records, saw Holley cementing a sound and approach informed and inspired by the blues, soul, avant-garde jazz and spirituals.

Holley’s fourth album, the Jackknife Lee-produced Oh Me, Oh My is slated for a March 10, 2023 release through Jagjaguwar. Oh Me, Oh My reportedly is a sharpening and refinement of the work contained on MITH, Stirring in one moment and a balm the next, Oh Me, Oh My details histories both global and personal. The album features an acclaimed collection of collaborators including Michael Stipe, Sharon Van Otten, Moor Mother, Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon and Rokia Koné, who serve as choirs of angels and co-pilots, assisting in giving Holley’s message flight, while reaffirming the man as a galvanizing, iconoclastic force.

Holley’s creative work is much more about our place in the cosmos, than the cosmos itself. It’s often about how we overcome adversity and bitter heartache and pain with our dignity intact; about how we develop and maintain an affection for our fellow spacetime travelers about how we need to stop wishing for some “beyond” and start caring for the one life and the one rock we have. Oh Me. Oh My sees the refinement of Holley’s impressionistic, stream-of-consciousness lyrics. During each session Holley and Lee would discuss the essence of the song and distill the acclaimed multi-disciplinary artist’s word to their most immediate and earnest center. And as a result, the central message of his work may arguably be the most clear and concise on this album.

The album’s first single, album title track “Oh Me, Oh My” is a hauntingly gorgeous, spectral, piano-led meditation featuring Michael Stipe’s imitable plaintive wailing and Holley’s achingly soulful crooning. Sonically seeming to mesh elements of Brian Eno‘s ambient work and Gil Scott-Heron‘s Pieces of a Man and I’m New Here, “Oh Me, Oh My” deals with mutual human understanding with a earnest yet beguilingly Zen-like profundity.

“My art and my music are always closely tied to what is happening around me, and the last few years have given me a lot to thoughtsmith about,” Holley says. “When I listen back to these songs I can feel the times we were living through. I’m deeply appreciative of the collaborators, especially Jacknife, who helped the songs take shape and really inspired me to dig deeper within myself.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Acclaimed Indie Act Lucius Release a Hauntingly Gorgeous Rendition of a Christmastime Classic for Charity

Richard Swift was a singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist (best known as a guitarist) producer, and owner of National Freedom Studio, who was largely considered a musician’s musician as he quietly built up an acclaimed career as a member of The Shins, The Black Keys and The Arcs; Swift also developed a reputation as a go-to collaborator and producer, who worked with Nathaniel Rateliff and the Nightsweats, The Pretenders, Kevin Morby, Sharon Van Etten, Valerie June, Damien Jurado, David Bazan, Foxygen, Jessie Baylin, Lonnie Holley, The Mynabirds, Wake Owl, Stereolab’s Laetitia Sadier, Gardens & Villa, Cayucas, Guster, Lucius and others. He was also a solo artist, who had released seven full-length albums through Secretly Canadian Records during his life — with his posthumously released eighth album The Hex being released earlier this year. 

Back in June, Pitchfork reported that Swift had been hospitalized in Tacoma, WA, recovering from a then-undisclosed life threatening condition and that a GoFundMe had been set up to help cover his medical expenses. Sadly, this isn’t surprising as musicians work as independent contractors, who have to pay the bills you need to get by, pay for studio time, and pay for medical expenses and insurance out of pocket.  If you’re a struggling working musician, you make the bulk of your living from touring or from being a session musician — and if you’re too sick to tour or get to the studio, it makes things increasingly difficult. A few weeks later, Swift died and about a week after his death, his family released a statement confirming that he had suffered from alcohol addition throughout his life, and that his death was ultimately caused by complications from hepatitis, as well as liver and kidney distress. 

Understandably for those within the larger music community, who worked with him, Swift’s death was devastating. As Luicus’ Jess Wolfe recalls in press notes, “We were on tour in Europe when we lost Richard. We didn’t get to say goodbye face to face. We didn’t get to go to the memorial service. I didn’t get a chance to hear his voice. I only talked to him while he slept, hoping somehow, in his dreams, he was hearing us. We sang to him. We sang to him and it was the worst and best gift we’d ever received. Somehow, pouring out something for someone who has done so much for your musical life, is the only way to cope. This loss really messed us up, as I know it did all of us in the musical community, and we felt the need, the urgency, to make sure to do something about that.” 

What initially started off as a small way that the members of the acclaimed Los Angeles-based act Lucius could personally and actively bring awareness to the impact of drug and alcohol addiction within the music community has grown into a much larger concept that they’ve dubbed THE FUG YEP SOUNDATION. Derived from a phrase that Swift coined, the idea is a 7″ record series with each release featuring 2 songs by many of Swift’s closest friends and collaborators. All artist proceeds and profits from the 7″ record series will give financial aid to the Swift family, as well as MusiCares, the charitable wing of the Recording Academy, who had Swift with many of his medical bills — and Music Support UK, who do similar work for British musicians. 

“Richard would have probably hated this attention,” Wolfe continued. “But we all wanted to do more for him, we all wanted to be a part of a better way, to be helpful. I think we can all agree, the best way we can do this moving forward is awareness. What a gift that we’re able to offer what we love in honor of those we love. What better way to feature his art, and his imprint on all of us, then to share it with you.” Pure Bathing Culture’s Sarah Versprille adds “Each over features Swift’s original artwork. He was a prolific and persistent visual artist. He made work all the time and his studio was just as much a place for creating visual art as it was for making music. Shealynn (Richard’s wife) has helped us curate a collection of his pieces for each cover of this series that provide a window into this side of his genius, humor and creativity.”

The first release of the series is slated for a December 7, 2018 release through Mom + Pop Music and will feature two singles written and recorded by Lucius at Swift’s National Freedom Studios last April — the A-side “Christmas Time Is Here” and the B-side “Keep Me Hanging On.” The A-side single is a atmospheric rendition of “Christmas Time Is Here” that sounds as though it could have been released sometime between 1956 – 1965 as it pairs a lush arrangement of shimmering keys, reverb-heavy guitars and gently padded drumming paired with Wolfe and Laessig’s stunningly gorgeous harmonizing. While being a holiday staple, the Lucius version possess a weary heartache — the sort that comes with the passing of time and the gnawing reminders that loved ones aren’t around to celebrate another holiday, and the passing of another year. 

Uncategorized by William Ruben Helms

Born in Birmingham, AL as the seventh of 27 children, Lonnie Holley has had the sort of life that should inspire a biopic – from an early age, Holley worked all kinds off odd jobs: picking […]