Bahamas, Paula Cole, Lilly Hiatt, and more on Mountain Stage

1900 Kanawha Blvd E,Charleston , WV WV 25301

03 October, 2021

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Bahamas, Paula Cole, Lilly Hiatt, and more on Mountain Stage with host Kathy Mattea ALL AGES Bahamas, Paula Cole, Lilly Hiatt Join NPR Music and WVPB's Mountain Stage as we record a new episode for broadcast, live in Charleston, West Virginia. Bahamas “I think I’m always trying to get closer and closer to the source, like the way old blues albums were made—there’s no production; all the emotion you’re hearing is just the players, the room, the song. It’s almost like a photograph as opposed to a painting, where if you don’t like the color of a certain flower in the garden, you change it. I want you to hear every word I’m saying, and take in the song and make it your own.” The fifth album from Bahamas, Sad Hunk takes its title from a nickname bestowed upon the artist by his wife in reaction to how he was being portrayed in the media, “Something like ten years ago I did a photo shoot, and in all the pictures they sent back, I was lit half in shadow, looking all brooding and mysterious,” says the award-winning singer/songwriter otherwise known as Afie Jurvanen. “When my wife saw the photos the first thing she said was, ‘Whoa—sad hunk,’ and after that it became sort of a joke among our friends.” It’s a fitting backstory for an album that embodies an undaunted self-awareness, each track graced with Bahamas’s wry wit and unabashed heart. In sketching Sad Hunk’s delicately composed batch of songs, Jurvanen drew much inspiration from his home life and all the joy and struggle that comes with building a family together. Having recently moved to the coast of Nova Scotia with his wife and two daughters, the Ontario native inevitably imbued the album with his surroundings, even while committing to a sometimes-painful sincerity in his lyrics. “I definitely use music to work things out for myself,” says Jurvanen. “It’s possible I’m too open sometimes, but I really don’t know any better way to be. If I tried to just go write fun songs about hot dogs or something, I’d probably fail.” 2018’s Grammy-Nominated Earthtones saw Bahamas joining forces with bassist Pino Palladino and drummer James Gadson (the rhythm section behind D’Angelo’s Black Messiah), and even merging them with his stable of longtime heavyweight musicians on Kimmel. Jurvanen created Sad Hunk with those same collaborators - Christine Bougie (guitar), Don Kerr (drums), Mike O’Brien (bass), and Felicity Williams (vocals). Recorded by longtime producer and multi-Grammy nominee Robbie Lackritz (Feist, Jack Johnson, Robbie Robertson), Sad Hunk is the next step in Afie’ virtuosic signature style of restraint as a guitarist. It also features the graceful guitar work of Sam Weber, a virtually unknown musician whom Jurvanen discovered on YouTube. “I sort of had a musical crush on Sam, so I invited him to open for us a few years ago and we ended up hitting it off,” says Jurvanen. “I asked him to come out and record with us without even knowing what I wanted him to play, which is generally how I like to work with people: I always think it’s so much more interesting when you let them find their way into the songs on their own.” An album born from charmed spontaneity and raw imagination, Sad Hunk unfolds in a genre-less groove-heavy and jangly sound beautifully suited for Jurvanen’s warm vocal presence. In its musing on what’s essential and what’s expendable in today’s world, the album offers up songs like “Own Alone”—a brightly kinetic track threaded with a bit of self-effacing wisdom (“Too broke to feel so wealthy/Too young to feel unhealthy/Too old to understand the selfie/Too far gone for you to help me”). “That song came from being fascinated by how being on our phones all the time changes us at a cellular level—it changes the way you think, it changes the way you operate,” says Jurvanen. “I’m not suggesting we become Luddites and churn our own butter, but I do think we need to question whether you really need to have this thing on you at all times.” Elsewhere on Sad Hunk, Bahamas slips into a tender examination of love and all its complexities. One of the album’s most revealing moments, “Less Than Love” finds Jurvanen owning up to his anxiety about the ways he might fall short of his family’s expectations (“Everything that’s left unsaid/All the books I bought and never read/Thank god she can’t see into my head/She’d see I know nothing”). Penned with co-writers Dee White and Pat McLaughlin (John Prine, Bonnie Raitt), the acoustic-guitar-driven “Half Your Love” shares a profoundly heartfelt outpouring of affection for his wife. “It’s the first time I’ve ever co-written a song, but I feel every line of it to the point of tears,” Jurvanen says. And on the album-closing “Wisdom of the World,” with its shapeshifting textures and unruly guitar solo, Bahamas presents a layered meditation on forgiveness and regret. “That one’s about my brother, who’s a recovering alcoholic and recovering addict and just got sober again a while ago,” says Jurvanen. “Writing it helped me to think about how to love people who are hard to love, which has been a recurring theme for me for a long time. Because no matter how you feel about someone, they still get to live their life. We all have to figure out a way to try and live together, even when it’s hard.” For all its moments of heavy-hearted reflection, Sad Hunk ultimately channels a certain lightness, the pure elation in expressing what often goes unspoken. “You say things in songs that you’d never, ever say in conversation,” Jurvanen notes. “But it feels really good to say those things. I don’t know why telling people the most basic things you’re thinking is so hard sometimes, but it is. ”In sharing the album with the world, Jurvanen hopes that his songs might inspire others to embrace their own sad-hunk tendencies. “We’re all sad hunks—we’re all these broken beautiful human beings,” he says. “The idea that there’s only one way to live life is so backward. So instead of listening to the noise, just get in touch with what’s inside and find something you love to do, and then do it well. And don’t let yourself be hard. Just be soft. Be as soft with each other as you possibly can.” Paula Cole On Revolution Cole tells a wider story of all those sidelined by gender, age and race, beginning with her great-grandmother Charlotte, who hovers like a restless spirit over the album, first making an appearance in “Blues in Gray,” in which generational choices are forced upon her, obliging her to choose marriage over education, household drudgery over self-realization. Charlotte also appears in the tour de force, “Silent,” the final song written for the album. More short story than song, it’s painful and specific: Cole’s voice trembles with uncomfortable memories of being a witness to abuse and then a victim of it herself. But it is not a victim’s tale, it’s the account of someone who learned that keeping quiet causes much more harm than speaking out -- even though she hears her great-grandmother’s voice in her head instructing her to “hush.” She has come to regret that unspoken advice over the years, and that realization is one of the inspirations for this album. On Revolution, Paula Cole speaks out, testifying loudly for all those who did not. So, after the stirring mission statement of “Revolution (Is a State of Mind),” Cole pillages her own life, exploring familial and personal wounds, not sparing herself or those closest to her in her insistence on telling important and sometimes terrible truths. It’s all grist for Cole’s mill, because she feels she owes that kind of honesty to her audiences. She is talking to the tribe, and in showing who she is, she allows them to see themselves more clearly. Because if anything, art is a mirror. Lilly Hiatt Lilly Hiatt felt lost. She’d just returned home from the better part of a year on tour in support of her acclaimed third album, Trinity Lane , and, stripped of the daily rituals and direction of life on the road, she found herself alone with her thoughts for the first time in what felt like ages. “When you’re out there on the road, you’re just kind of living, and you don’t have the chance to stop and think about how everything you’re experiencing is affecting you,” says Hiatt. “When I got home, I realized there was a lot I needed to catch up on.” So Hiatt did what’s always come most natural to her in times of questioning and uncertainty: she picked up a guitar. Over the course of the ensuing winter, she wrote a mountain of new music that grappled with her sense of self and place in the world, reckoning with issues that had been bubbling beneath the surface of her subconscious in some cases for years. The result is Walking Proof , Hiatt’s fourth and most probing collection to date. Produced by former Cage the Elephant guitarist Lincoln Parish, the record walks the line between Hiatt’s rough, rock and roll exterior and her tender, country roots, exuding a bold vulnerability as she takes a deep and unflinching look in the mirror. What emerges is a newfound maturity in Hiatt’s writing, an abiding sense of calm in the face of chaos as she learns that sometimes, you have to let go in order to get what you want most. “It’s crucial to live and let live, to be able to accept things for what they are,” says Hiatt. “Coming to terms with those sorts of boundaries has inspired a lot of growth in me lately, and I’ve realized that it leads to better outcomes in relationships and in art. Things seem to bloom if you can just get out of your own way for long enough.” Things have been blooming for Hiatt in a big way lately. In 2017, she released Trinity Lane , a commercial and critical breakout that helped establish her as one of the leading voices to emerge from the embarrassment of musical riches that is East Nashville. Produced by Shovel & Rope’s Michael Trent, the record earned Hiatt dates with the likes of John Prine, Margo Price, Drive-By Truckers, and Hiss Golden Messenger among others, and helped her secure festival slots everywhere from Pilgrimage and High Water to Luck Reunion and Wildwood Revival. NPR called the album “courageous and affecting,” while The Independent raved that it showcased Hiatt’s “gift for unpicking knotty lyrical themes in a personalised blend of countrified rock music,” and Rolling Stone hailed it as “the most cohesive and declarative statement of the young songwriter’s career.” As rewarding as the album’s success was, the collection came from an emotionally challenging place, and Hiatt found herself frequently revisiting the hurt and struggle that inspired it as she spoke candidly to press about her painful breakup, her struggles with sobriety, and the overwhelming sadness of her mother’s suicide. Rather than succumbing to the weight of it all, though, Hiatt managed to emerge stronger and more serene from the experience, treating it as a foundation from which she could begin the essential work of re-examining her relationships with herself and the world around her. “When I got that little gap in my schedule over the winter, it gave me the chance to appreciate some mental stillness,” says Hiatt. “I can be a pretty anxious person, but I found a sense of peace by deconstructing all of these interactions and emotions I’d experienced and reconfiguring them into songs. It helped me make sense of everything and learn to relax.” By the time she headed into Parish’s Nashville studio in May, Hiatt had piled up more than twenty-five new songs, and with the producer’s help, she pared it down to a tight and cohesive eleven. After capturing the core performances live with her band over the course of roughly a week, Hiatt devoted the early part of the summer to finishing touches, which included contributions from friends like Amanda Shires and Aaron Lee Tasjan along with a guest appearance from her father, legendary songwriter John Hiatt, who joins his daughter on record for the first time here. “The energy was electric in the studio,” says Hiatt. “Lincoln’s a very intuitive person, and the sessions just felt like a bunch of old friends getting together. We developed a sense of trust early on that made everything totally comfortable and effortless.” That effortless comfort is apparent from the outset of Walking Proof , which opens with the muscular yet dreamy “Rae.” A tribute to the impossibly deep bonds of sisterhood, the track showcases Hiatt’s deft ability to shift from gentle intimacy to brawny grit and back, and it lays the groundwork for a record all about the endless search for self. “Sometimes I pretend this isn’t who I am,” she sings early in the tune. “I throw caution to the wind and don’t give a damn / But I can’t get away.” The infectious “Drawl” locates the beauty in the simple things that define us, while the effervescent “Brightest Star” celebrates the outcasts and misfits who never seem to get their way, and the driving “Some Kind of Drug” tries to make sense of who gets by and who gets left behind in this world. “I rode along with my sister some nights this winter helping the homeless in Nashville, and I met so many incredible people going through such hard times,” says Hiatt. “It made me think a lot about what we’re losing in this town, about who decides what constitutes progress and the pain that comes with it.” Though the record does indeed grapple with hard times, it also makes plenty of room for joy and gratitude, and it stands undoubtedly as the most upbeat and optimistic work in Hiatt’s catalog. The breezy “Candy Lunch” finds comfort in accepting what lies beyond our control, while the searing “P-Town” responds to a bad day with wry humor and resilience, and the slinky “Little Believer” revels in the ecstasy of new love. It’s perhaps the bare-bones title track, though, that encapsulates the album’s spirit best, as Hiatt offers a lilting refrain full of empathy and faith: “I could tell you that it’s easy, but that wouldn’t be the truth / If you ever need to call me, well you know there’s walking proof.” Lilly Hiatt’s not feeling so lost these days, and with Walking Proof , she’s crafted a roadmap to share with the rest of us. Bahamas, Paula Cole, Lilly Hiatt For more than 30 years, Mountain Stage has been the home of live music on public radio. Produced by West Virginia Public Broadcasting and distributed by NPR Music, each two hour episode of Mountain Stage can be heard every week on more than 240 stations across America, and around the world via NPR Music and www.mountainstage.org. Recorded in front of a live audience, Mountain Stage features performances from seasoned legends and emerging stars from genres across the board.