Folk Alley Sessions

The Cactus Blossoms are made of conundrums. The duo is from Minneapolis - states away from the nearest cactus. Page Burkum and Jack Torrey are brothers - only with different last names. And, even though their songs are young and fresh, their tight harmonies and rockabilly guitar would sound just as at home 60 years ago. Page Burkum and Jack Torrey started The Cactus Blossoms in a simple way, matching harmonies around a campfire. The brothers' fondness for pre-1960 country songs landed them a residency at the Turf Club in St. Paul, Minnesota, where they started playing and writing - building a huge repertoire of songs that were old or just sounded that way. Singer/songwriter J.D. McPherson offered to produce an album, Jack and Page took him up on it, recording 'You're Dreaming' with an in-studio rhythm section, to keep the music pure and real. They say, "We weren't born in the wrong era. We just got into some music from a different era and found a way to make it our own."The pair took time out at the 2016

As the snow started to fall in Upstate New York, the Folk Alley and BeeHive crews headed south to the 2016 30A Songwriters Festival along the Emerald Coast in Florida. The festival, which presented hundreds of performances by the best in the business, offered Folk Alley the opportunity to create intimate recordings of top folk and Americana artists.Grammy-nominated singer/songwriter Shawn Mullins has been thinking a lot about love. All of the songs on 'My Stupid Heart' have something to do with some kind of love - of one person, of one country, of one another. While at the 30A Songwriters Festival, Mullins took some time to tell Folk Alley about the new collection and play a few songs - inspired by the unrest in Ferguson, the failure of his "latest" marriage, and zombies - for the cameras.Whether composing alone or with others, Atlanta native Mullins has always been a dynamic songsmith. Forging influences from folk and R&B to traditional country with pop-leaning melodic sensibilities, he crafts memor

Indie singer/songwriter, Brooke Annibale's evocative musicianship, nurtured by her family's music store, is driven by an enduring passion for songwriting. Born and raised in Pittsburgh, PA, Brooke's maternal grandfather opened a music retail and live-sound business in the 1960s, which is still family-run today.When it comes to songwriting, Annibale started young, writing as a 3rd grader, but really began taking music seriously as a teenager. Annibale took that passion for songwriting and performing to Nashville, where she earned her degree in Music Business at Belmont University. Not wanting to be boxed in by a traditional music program, she was drawn to a more business oriented major that aligned with her entrepreneurial spirit. Her songs have been placed on popular TV shows like 'Vampire Diaries' and 'Pretty Little Liars.' And, even though Brooke has recorded CDs in Nashville, she is still a Pittsburgh girl. There's grit in the upper Midwest.She stopped by Beehive Studios in Saranac Lake, New York, in Octob

Kevin Gordon's narrative began in Monroe, Louisiana, where he "grew up the son of well-intentioned, but backsliding parents. I was a very confused young man." Like many other children of the 1970s who fit that description, Gordon wrote poetry and discovered skate-boarding and punk rock despite being weaned on the region's early rock, blues, honky-tonk and rockabilly sounds. He sang in a high school band whose repertoire was entirely Ramones and Sex Pistols covers. But his own fusion of words and music ignited after a girlfriend's parents gave him a guitar and he discovered the more literate and worldly compositions of the influential Los Angeles roots-punk outfit X.In the late-'80s Gordon moved to Iowa City, where he studied poetry and graduated with a masters degree from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop. At the same time, he became indoctrinated in the world of the working musician. Gordon graduated from blues jams to playing guitar in a regionally touring band led by Bo Ramsey. When Ramsey took a hi

A grand prize winner in the John Lennon Songwriting Contest, Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers performs original folk rock with masterful band-in-a-box accompaniment on acoustic guitar. His most recent album, 'Almost There,' won the 2015 Sammy Award for Best Americana Recording, and he was picked for the prestigious Emerging Artist Showcase at the 2015 Falcon Ridge Folk Festival. Along with his work with being founding editor of 'Acoustic Guitar' magazine, Rodgers is also a contributor to NPR's 'All Things Considered' and author of 'Rock Troubadours' (featuring his interviews with such artists as Jerry Garcia, Paul Simon, Joni Mitchell, and Dave Matthews) and other books on music. He teaches courses on songwriting and creative nonfiction writing in the honors program at Syracuse University. Having a variety of skills has been very handy in an age where musicians are often booking and promoting themselves. Recently, Rodgers brought Wendy Ramsay and his strumstick to visit Beehive Studios in Saranac, New York for an

Matt Lorenz is a musician, visual artist and tinkerer, as well as a professional showoff. The Suitcase Junket's artistic vision is one of salvaged and repurposed objects, images and emotions. Lorenz tours The Suitcase Junket nationally playing on festival stages and city street corners, in concert halls and dive bars, in living rooms and listening rooms. "The band" is built around a resurrected dumpster-diamond guitar, an old oversized suitcase, a hi-hat, a gas-can baby-shoe foot-drum, a cookpot-soupcan-tambourine foot-drum, a circular-saw-blade bell and a box of bones and silverware that operate much like a hi-hat. He pounds out rhythms with his feet and his twang-and-buzz guitar growls through a couple of old tube amps. On top of all this is the ethereal edge of his overtone throat-singing. The Suitcase Junket has earned the title unique.The Suitcase Junket is as much a visual experience as an aural one. His musical style is true Americana with a little of a lot of genres rolled into something all his own.

"You can't fake a work of heart," Old Man Luedecke sings in "The Girl in the Pearl Earring," the second song on his 2015 release, 'Domestic Eccentric,' and the assured confidence of that line, the assertion of a straightforward truth, is the guiding principle behind the entire album. Old Man Luedecke is the real thing, a modern-day people's poet and traveling bard and balladeer. He's played around the world to a loving and increasing fan base, and won two Juno awards in the process. He collaborated on 'Domestic Eccentric' with Tim O'Brien - the two last worked together on Luedecke's 2012 release, 'Tender is the Night,' which was nominated for a Juno and won Album of the Year at the East Coast Music Awards.When Luedecke and Joel E. Hunt stopped by the studios of Beehive Productions in Saranac Lake, New York, he told Folk Alley that 'Domestic Eccentric' was created in response to his past songs about not having children. Now, with three little ones, he has a new point of view - including being on the road and c

At age 18, Robby Hecht made a "strangely confident and final" decision to commit to music as his calling and career. At college in Madison, Wisconsin, he poured out his first wave of song ideas but, as he approached performing, there were doubts. It was not until travels in Europe, a time in San Francisco where he formed the duo AllDay Radio, a move back to his hometown of Knoxville and a final shift to Nashville – that he learned he'd been suffering for years from bipolar disorder. Robby's newfound consistency and stability were rewarded with a rush of opportunities and victories. He placed second at the prestigious Telluride Troubadour Contest, a contest he would later win. He took a title at Kerrville New Folk Competition, a national nerve-center of contemporary songwriting. Nashville songwriter, Robby Hecht paid Folk Alley a visit in the spring of 2015 to play some songs and tell us about his approach to songwriting. Hecht is a songwriter with a mission. He took it up before college, because he deci

Many people play roots music, but few modern musicians live those roots like Minnesota's Charlie Parr. Recording since the earliest days of the 21st century, Parr's heartfelt and plaintive original folk blues and traditional spirituals don't strive for authenticity: They are authentic. It's the music of a self-taught guitarist and banjo player who grew up without a TV but with his dad's recordings of America's musical founding fathers, including Charley Patton and Lightnin' Hopkins, Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly. With his long hair, fathertime beard, thrift-store workingman's flannel and jeans, and emphatic, throaty voice, Parr looks and sounds like he would have fit right into Harry Smith's "Anthology of American Folk Music."In July 2015, armed with his 12-string and resonator guitars, Parr stopped by the studios at Beehive Productions in Saranac Lake, New York, to record a few songs and talk to us about about his formative years living and playing music in the legendary West Bank of Minneapolis, Minnesot

Eamon O'Leary started playing Irish music while growing up in Dublin through his friendship with the Mayock family, traditional musicians from County Mayo. When he moved to New York City in the early '90s, he immersed himself in the city's traditional music scene and travelled widely, performing with many of the great players in Irish music. Jefferson Hamer is a guitarist and singer based in Brooklyn, NY. In 2013, he and songwriter Anais Mitchell released 'Child Ballads,' a collection of new adaptations of English and Scottish folk songs which won a BBC Radio 2 Folk Award. O'Leary and Hamer met in New York while performing traditional Irish music. They discovered a shared love of the old songs - from Ireland and throughout the British Isles. They joined together on an album that became the name of their duo - The Murphy Beds - which O'Leary says is a mystery to their audiences in Ireland. The pair visited the studios at Beehive Productions in Saranac Lake, New York to play the traditional music that

Amy Helm began connecting with audiences early in life, playing her first gig in her early teens in a Manhattan bar and drifting informally through a series of combos before her father recruited her to join his live band. She also absorbed musical and personal inspiration from her mother, noted singer/songwriter Libby Titus; and her stepfather, Steely Dan co-mastermind Donald Fagen, who offered Amy additional opportunities to find herself as a performer.Amy's vocal and songwriting talents soon found a home in the New York-based Ollabelle, whose three acclaimed albums and countless live gigs saw her evolve into a confident, charismatic performer. She also resumed her musical collaboration with her father, singing and playing in his band, playing on and co-producing his Grammy-winning 2007 comeback album 'Dirt Farmer,' and helping to organize the now-legendary Midnight Ramble concerts at Levon's home studio in Woodstock, New York.Amy is now touring behind her debut album 'Didn't It Rain' with her new band,

Caitlin Canty creates her own material on her 1930s Recording King guitar - which she describes as like "having another person in the room," and delivers her songs with a dusky alto, painting the line between joy and pathos with uncanny precision and power. Raised in small-town Vermont, the daughter of a school teacher and a house painter, she spent a decade in New York City cutting her teeth on both sides of the microphone " as a performer and as the first employee of the Artists Den. A constant collaborator, Caitlin writes and performs with several bands including Down Like Silver, her ongoing duo project with Peter Bradley Adams. She is currently based in Nashville, Tennessee.While she was out on the road in support of her 2015 release 'Reckless Skyline' (produced by Jeffrey Foucault), she and Jefferson Hamer stopped by Beehive Studios in Saranac Lake, New York, for an in-studio performance and to talk about the new album, happy videos of little girls singing "Get Up" and her move to Nashville.

The road has been good to Mandolin Orange (Andrew Marlin and Emily Frantz) since the 2013 release of 'This Side of Jordan.' Folk Alley (via NPR) called the album "effortless and beautiful," naming it one of the year's best folk/Americana releases, while Magnet dubbed it "magnificent," and American Songwriter said it was "honest music, shot through with coed harmonies, sweeping fiddle, mandolin, acoustic guitar and the sort of unfakeable intimacy that bonds simpatico musicians like Gillian Welch and David Rawlings." The record earned them performances everywhere from the iconic Newport Folk Festival to Pickathon, as well as tours with Willie Watson, Gregory Alan Isakov, The Wood Brothers, and more.Marlin and Frantz did not play the mandolin when they visited Beehive Studios in Saranac Lake, New York, to record an interview and a few video performances. Instead, the pair who met at a bluegrass jam turned to acoustic and electric guitar " demonstrating how their sound is evolving from its old-time and mount

Over countless miles on the ribbon of highway, playing gigs in wood-stove-warmed living rooms one month and Carnegie Hall the next, husband-wife singing songwriters Mike Merenda (guitar, banjo) and Ruthy Ungar (guitar, fiddle) have built a troubadour life inclusive of family. Ruthy, daughter of Grammy Award-winning Jay Ungar ("Ashokan Farewell") and folksinger Lyn Hardy, was born to it. She first appeared onstage at age three, and joined her dad on 'A Prairie Home Companion' at twelve. After studying theater and living the thespian life, she met aspiring playwright and fellow floor-sleeping New York denizen Mike Merenda. An erstwhile guitar thrasher of the punk and ska variety, Mike was grieving the loss of three close friends in succession. Mike + Ruthy heard and felt the songs in one another, and two paths leading away from music became one consumed by it. They headed for the hills, embracing life as a duo " musical and otherwise.Today Mike + Ruthy can honestly say that music is their life. The couple

Martin Sexton, an upstate New Yorker, left home with seventy-five bucks and a Stratocaster to chase his musical dreams singing in the streets of Harvard Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts, gradually and independently working his way to the premier venues of North America inspiring fans and musicians along the way. The activity and touring behind his records laid the foundation for the career he enjoys today, headlining everywhere from The Filmore to Carnegie Hall. Since launching his own label, Kitchen Table Records (KTR), the fiercely independent Sexton has infiltrated many musical worlds, performing at concerts, ranging from pop (collaborating with John Mayer) to the Jam scene to classic rock (collaborating with Peter Frampton); from the Newport Folk Fest to Bonnaroo to New Orleans Jazz Fest to now shows around the world. Regardless of his reputation as a musician's musician, Sexton can't keep Hollywood away. His songs can be heard in feature films and television including Showtime's 'Masters of Sex' a

After promising his dentist father that he work hard as a professional musician, Memphis native Drew Holcomb found a band of agile, competent musicians whose musical library is vast and deep and demanding. Along the way, he married his wife, Ellie. She quit her teaching job and joined the band, and toured for seven years. Drew and his band, the Neighbors, made several records, and spent the majority of the last decade on the road. Their songs have made their way to TV on dozens of shows like "Nashville," "Parenthood," and "How I Met Your Mother." They have toured with artists like the Avett Brothers, John Hiatt, Needtobreathe, and sold out their own shows in places from Chicago to Austin, LA to New York, London to Denver, and selling over 100,000 records in the process, all while staying independentIn his interview, recorded at Folk Alley's studio at WKSU in Kent, Ohio, Drew talks about song development and telling his stories of real people and important moments. Songs from his latest CD, 'Medicine,' were in

The Steel Wheel's genesis dates back to 2004, when lead singer/guitarist/banjo player Trent Wagler, standup bass player Brian Dickel and fiddler Eric Brubaker were college students in Harrisonburg, Virginia, which sits in the Shenandoah Valley, an hour's drive from Charlottesville. As undergraduates, Wagler played bass and Dickel guitar in a punk-leaning alternative band, but over time they developed an interest in acoustic music, as Trent learned flatpicking and began writing songs, while Brian studied guitar making at a school for aspiring luthiers. They began performing casual gigs as a duo, and it wasn't long before Brubaker began playing with them, expanding the nascent group's sound with his fiddle and bass voice, which enriched the harmonies. Once Wagler crossed paths with mandolin player Jay Lapp on the local folk circuit, the lineup was complete" although none of them realized at the time that these four like-minded friends had begun the process of becoming a going concern. After making an album toge

Lindsay Lou & the Flatbellys are in a state of discovery - looking for the "the us-est us" in songs from their album 'Ionia' (named for the Michigan city where they recorded it). The band's new songs reflect a further move away from its traditional bluegrass roots to a space band members - Lindsay, Josh, PJ and Mark - can call their own. Lindsay Lou & the Flatbellys' music keeps the flavor of old-time tunes while reaching out with a contemporary Americana spirit that is fresh and exciting. The band stopped by Beehive Studios in Saranac Lake, New York, to recreate some of the magic they found recording tracks live for 'Ionia.'In 2009 The Flatbellys recorded 'Get 'Round' in a house on Foster Ave in Lansing, MI. Josh calls it an unofficial Bluegrass thesis for college years spent studying the topic. Lindsay Lou was a groupie. Soon the band began to splinter for post-college activities and Lindsay left the country for her final semester. She returned with a suitcase full of songs, which she recorded with

Anna Roberts-Gevalt and Elizabeth LaPrelle sound like they could have been recorded by John Lomax in the Appalachian hills during the '30s. Their harmonies have a heartfelt honesty born from their love and appreciation of the stories in the songs they sing, as well as the history of the people that wrote them decades ago - passing the tunes down from generation to generation in the true definition of folk music. Along with their instruments, the pair also illustrate the stories with "crankies," a hand-cranked pictorial crafted from fabric, yarn and other colorful elements. Anna & Elizabeth were recorded for Folk Alley by Beehive Productions in Saranac Lake, New York. Anna & Elizabeth began thanks to a broke down car. Elizabeth's. In town to see a concert, she ended up spending the night with Anna, but the two didn't get much sleep. They shared songs and harmonized; they talked about a shared desire to inspire people with the beautiful soul of Appalachian roots music. And then came Anna's crankies: clo

A native of Portland, Oregon, Kristin Andreassen's own roots as a performer stretch back to her early years touring as a featured dancer in the Maryland-based Footworks Percussive Dance Ensemble. In 2003 she joined Uncle Earl, a pioneering all-g'Earl stringband that blended traditional and modern influences. Andreassen's debut solo record, 'Kiss Me Hello,' was released in 2007. She also recorded two albums with Sometymes Why, the irreverent and evocative trio she formed with Ruth Merenda and Aoife O'Donovan. Constantly on the road, Andreassen only put down roots in Brooklyn a few years ago, where she quickly integrated herself into the vibrant avant-roots scene. Depending on the night, she can be found driving fiddle tunes on acoustic guitar, adding bells, ukulele, or harmonica to an indie-folk outfit, or performing her own songs on her own.Kristin spoke with Folk Alley while on the road supporting her solo album, 'Gondolier.' Andreassen describes her musical journey - which moved from her early career as a p