Dolly's Wildflowers: live music from the series AI transcript and summary - episode of podcast Dolly Parton's America

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Episode: Dolly's Wildflowers: live music from the series

Author: WNYC Studios & OSM Audio
Duration: 00:30:29

Episode Shownotes

Music performed by: Justin Hiltner (@hiltnerj, http://justinhiltner.com) Esther Konkara (@esther_konkara) Steph Jenkins (@slhjenkins, http://www.stephaniejenkins.info) Stephanie Coleman (@stephiecoleman) Courtney Hartman (@courthartman, https://www.courtneyhartman.com) Shelley Washington (@shelleyplaysaxy, http://shelleywashington.com) Bora Yoon (@borabot, http://borayoon.com) Caroline Shaw (@caroshawmusic, https://carolineshaw.com) Recordings from National Sawdust were part of the NationalSawdust+ series: Elena Park is the curator of NationalSawdust+

Special thanks to recording engineer Garth MacAleavey, Jeff Tang, Charles Hagaman, and everyone at National Sawdust. Thanks also to Alex Overington and Jeremy Bloom for mix engineering.

Summary

In this episode, various artists perform live music inspired by Dolly Parton's work. Highlights include Justin Hiltner's rendition of 'Silver Dagger,' Esther Konkara's unique interpretation of 'Wildflowers,' and an instrumental cover of 'Marry Me.' The event, hosted at National Sawdust in Brooklyn, features performers who connect their traditional music to personal memories of home. Discussions emphasize the influence of Dolly's music and the artists' own narratives surrounding migration and memory, showcasing the powerful impact of her songs across cultures.

Go to PodExtra AI's episode page (Dolly's Wildflowers: live music from the series) to play and view complete AI-processed content: summary, mindmap, topics, takeaways, transcript, keywords and highlights.

Full Transcript

00:00:04 Speaker_03
Listener supported. WNYC Studios. Chad, Dolly Parton's America. So, I did say last week that the next episode would be in two weeks, and that is true.

00:00:18 Speaker_03
Shima and I are working on episode seven as we speak, but consider this a bonus, because during the course of producing and recording this series, we collected a lot of music. A lot of people came in and performed songs for us.

00:00:35 Speaker_03
Actually, a lot of people we were interviewing suddenly broke into song, and we ended up having a lot of music, and we've been getting a lot of emails saying, play more music. Okay, so here we go. In this bonus EP...

00:00:49 Speaker_03
I'm going to present to you guys some of the musicians that we encountered, most of whom were interpreting Dolly's music.

00:00:57 Speaker_03
A bit later, I'm going to play you selections from a live event that I hosted that was loosely inspired by the series and by the music in the series. But for the moment, I just want to play you some stuff that people have asked for, starting

00:01:14 Speaker_03
Well, you know, last EP we did, episode 6, about Jolene, we featured a guy named Justin Hiltner playing a song, his song, Silver Da- actually it wasn't his song, it was an old British ballad that he heard Dolly cover on one of her Bluegrass albums that became very important to him.

00:01:32 Speaker_03
It's a song called Silver Dagger. And he played that and we had a lot of people ask to hear the whole thing. So here it is. And I'll tell you, when he first played this song for us, it stuck so deep in my head.

00:01:41 Speaker_04
Maybe we would want to reset for that.

00:01:43 Speaker_02
Yeah, let's reset for that.

00:01:44 Speaker_04
Okay. So you don't have the two mics and everything.

00:01:47 Speaker_03
Justin was recorded by Tasha Lemley.

00:01:50 Speaker_04
Alright, here's Silver Dagger. Don't sing love songs, you'll wake my mother. She's sleeping here. right by my side. In her right hand is a silver dagger. She says that I can't be your buy.

00:02:35 Speaker_04
All men are fools, so says my mother They'll tell you wicked love and lies And then they'll go and court some other Leave you alone to pine inside

00:03:08 Speaker_04
My daddy is a handsome devil He's got a chain five miles long And on every link a heart does dangle Of another man he's lovin' wrong Go court another tender maiden In hopes that she might be your wife For I've been warned and I've decided

00:04:06 Speaker_04
I'll sleep alone All of my life I'll Don't sing love songs You'll wake my mother She's laying here Right by my side And in her right hand is a silver dagger. She says that I can't be your wife.

00:04:59 Speaker_03
That's Justin Hiltner with Silver Dagger, that song kills me, recorded by Tasha Lemley. You can check out more of his stuff at justinhiltner.com. Alright, next.

00:05:09 Speaker_05
I'm invited to perform my Kikuyu gospel songs, which I also now blend with country. I carry my guitar and do like two country songs, then I do my other gospel Kikuyu songs.

00:05:22 Speaker_03
For episode three, we interviewed a woman named Esther Konkara, who's known as the Kenyan Dolly Parton. She performed over Skype for us from Kiambu County, just outside of Nairobi, Kenya.

00:05:32 Speaker_03
And she sang a bunch of stuff for us, some gospel songs in her native Kikuyu, and also some Dolly songs. We'll crossfade from one to the other.

00:05:48 Speaker_06
Oshi oto ragia mwayo yowakwa Diyanadi rarawi niyonamwe Onakorone dana nyamayonde Diyagatwe ka onyamarori Diyagatwe ka onyamarori So just to translate, the song says,

00:06:44 Speaker_05
I will sing this song to praise you, God, because you have always been my great deliverer. Despite the many battles in my life, you have always made me... But I love Dolly's song that says that when a flower grows wild, it can always survive.

00:06:59 Speaker_05
So I grew wild and I've survived.

00:07:01 Speaker_00
Wait, what song is that?

00:07:05 Speaker_05
When a flower grows wild. You know that song? It's called Wild Flower.

00:07:10 Speaker_07
Oh, sing it.

00:07:19 Speaker_06
We were flowers and I was as wild, even wilder than they For at least I could run, they just died in the sun And I refused to just wither in place

00:07:35 Speaker_06
Just a white mountain rose needing freedom to grow So I ran, fearing not where I'd go When a flower grows, it can always survive White flowers don't care where they grow I grew up fast and wild, and I never felt right In a world so different from me

00:08:03 Speaker_06
I just never belong I just long to be gone So that garden one day set me free I hitched a ride with the wind And since she was my friend I just let him decide where I go When a flower grow wild It can always survive Wildflowers don't care where they grow

00:08:32 Speaker_05
It's a long song.

00:08:33 Speaker_03
No, it's great. That's beautiful. That's Esther Concara singing a bit of Dolly Parton's song Wildflowers, which is off of her album Trio. Esther was recorded in Nairobi by Thomas Brickhill.

00:08:46 Speaker_03
Speaking of trios, we actually got a trio to come in and play some scoring music for us. Three amazing musicians, Steph Jenkins, Steph Coleman and Courtney Hartman. Here's a little something they played for us.

00:10:19 Speaker_03
We connected with Steph and Steph and Courtney through an event we hosted at Radiolab and then got them in a studio to record.

00:10:26 Speaker_03
During that session, which we recorded at WNYC and which was engineered by the amazing Alex Overington, Courtney, who plays guitar, just sort of spur of the moment shredded through this instrumental cover of Dolly's Marry Me. Total earworm.

00:11:22 Speaker_03
That's all she played, but I have listened to that one minute like 70 times. We'll be featuring more from that trio, Steph Jenkins, Stephanie Coleman, and Courtney Harmon in the next few episodes.

00:11:33 Speaker_03
Gonna take a short break now, and then we'll be back with some very different kind of music that I presented at a live event in Brooklyn that was loosely inspired by the series. That's coming up. Hello, hello. Hi, everybody. Thank you, Elena.

00:12:00 Speaker_03
Thank you, National Sawdust, for getting me back here and creating a place where I can do a weird thing. Hey, I'm Jannai Boomerod, back with a bonus EP of music we recorded live as part of the series Dolly Parton's America.

00:12:12 Speaker_03
About two weeks before we released the series, Into the Wild, I hosted an event in Brooklyn that was sort of inspired by that visit that Shima and I took to Dolly's Tennessee mountain home, which I described in episode four.

00:12:28 Speaker_03
How we went up there to see the home, and it reminded me very strongly of my dad's Lebanese mountain home.

00:12:35 Speaker_03
And so when we came back I got to thinking about all the songs that we sing about home and how as we leave home we carry those songs with us and we morph them and transform them.

00:12:44 Speaker_03
And so I ended up hosting this event at National Sawdust in Brooklyn as part of the National Sawdust Plus series curated by Eleanor Park.

00:12:53 Speaker_03
where I got together three incredible musicians, Shelly Washington, Bora Yoon, and Caroline Shaw, who all played traditional music that they connect to, that reminds them of home, that is from their home.

00:13:06 Speaker_03
But they all took that music and gave it a new spin. We called the event Covering Home, like covers of traditional songs of home. And I'll play you some excerpts. Please give it up for Shelly Washington. Shelly Washington was the first one up.

00:13:24 Speaker_03
She's a composer at Princeton University. Her work has been performed all around the world.

00:13:28 Speaker_02
Hello, everyone. So I will be playing this large tube. This is a baritone saxophone. If you have not seen one before, it's also the one that Lisa Simpson plays.

00:13:40 Speaker_03
Shelly explained that her traditional music was actually a record that her parents gave her when she first started playing the sax, when she was about

00:13:48 Speaker_02
My parents gave me one of the Mingus big band essential albums that I immediately just tried to memorize every single line. I was just obsessed with that entire album. So every solo line, I could sing all of them.

00:14:04 Speaker_02
And you can hear the band chattering in the background and making these little, like, uh-huh, different exciting moments. So you might hear that in the piece.

00:14:14 Speaker_03
What Shelly did is she took all her favorite Mingus lines, put them all together in the same piece, and then played it on her gigantic baritone sax that she's named Titan. Here's an excerpt of that piece called Moingus.

00:15:00 Speaker_07
so I'm So,

00:16:07 Speaker_03
That was an excerpt of Moengas from composer Shelly Washington. You can check out more of her work at shellywashington.com. That's S-H-E-L-L-E-Y, washington.com. Next up was composer Bora Yoon.

00:16:35 Speaker_00
This is a piece that is called The Houses We Carry Within, and it was actually in response to an exhibit at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in D.C. last spring.

00:16:45 Speaker_00
It's a Korean artist named Do-ho Seo, who makes these really beautiful fabric houses made of actually Korean hanbok material, which is this kind of like stiff crinoline that's translucent.

00:16:58 Speaker_00
And he literally makes exact replicas of his Berlin apartment, his Lower East Side apartment, the house he grew up in Korea, but they're all reconstructed from his memory.

00:17:07 Speaker_00
So there's these fabric houses that just hang in space, and you get to walk through them. I mean, it's really OCD to the hilt. I mean, like, radiators, like, crocheted together. So these are all kind of these suspended times and spaces.

00:17:23 Speaker_00
Because he talks about how, as an expat from Korea, He goes to all these different cities and lives in all these different places, but his accent's too thick, so they always say he's not from there.

00:17:34 Speaker_00
But when he goes home to Korea, they're like, well, you're not from here either. You left. It's this constant theme in his work. So the exhibit was called Almost Home.

00:17:43 Speaker_00
And this idea of home existing in your memory, or in your mind, or kind of that the houses that we carry inside of us, and that these architectures live in our memories and our archetypes.

00:17:55 Speaker_03
For the performance, Bora played about a dozen different instruments and found percussion objects and very strange things like a strove violin, which is a violin with a horn on it. And she played electronics and sang. Here's an excerpt.

00:18:33 Speaker_07
It's a memory. It's a memory of your childhood.

00:19:51 Speaker_03
That was an excerpt of Bora Yoon performing her multimedia piece, The Houses We Carry Within. It's a beautiful piece that you really kind of need to see as well as hear. So I would urge you to go to borayoon.com. That's B-O-R-A-Y-O-O-N.com.

00:20:08 Speaker_03
You can see a lot of her multimedia stuff there, hear a lot of her music. Okay. The final performer of the evening was Caroline Shaw, Pulitzer Prize winning performer, composer, collaborated with pretty much everybody from Kanye,

00:20:21 Speaker_03
to the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, and she did a duet with cellist Andrew Yee. A series of duets actually, I'm gonna play you two of them.

00:20:30 Speaker_03
OK, so maybe just set up the next song and then I think our fellow composers, performers should join me on the stage because we're gonna be Caroline's backup ball band.

00:20:38 Speaker_01
Sure.

00:20:40 Speaker_03
So what are we about to hear?

00:20:42 Speaker_01
The next tune is called On Jordan's Stormy Banks I Stand. At least that's the first line. It's not really a title. And that was written, the words are written by Samuel Stennett of England in 1787.

00:20:56 Speaker_01
But it also is, you know, this essential exodus narrative of leaving a place, searching for freedom, crossing the River Jordan. And the function of the River Jordan is strong in a lot of these songs.

00:21:10 Speaker_01
And the last one is a very famous I'll Fly Away, which is also written by Albert Brumley in 1932.

00:21:16 Speaker_01
It's an interesting history of the song, though, because he himself is kind of covering other songs that have to do with the Exodus narrative in the South.

00:21:29 Speaker_01
So I find the song kind of interesting and problematic and I keep trying to find what it means to go home in that song.

00:21:42 Speaker_03
Caroline Shaw, Andrew Yee. Give it up.

00:21:49 Speaker_01
I'm very happy to be joined by Shelly and Bora and Elena and Jad here too.

00:22:30 Speaker_08
On Jordan's stormy banks I stand And cast a wishful eye To Canaan's fair and happy land Where my possessions lie Don't you feel like going home? Don't you feel like going home? My home is in the promised land and I feel like going home.

00:23:32 Speaker_08
Oh, that transportive rapture scene that rises to my eyes. Sweet fields arrayed in living green and rivers of delight. Don't you feel like going home? Don't you feel like going home? My home is in the promised land. And I feel like going

00:25:07 Speaker_08
Some bright morning when this life is over I'll fly away To that home on God's celestial shore I'll fly away When I die, hallelujah, by and by, I'll fly away.

00:26:26 Speaker_08
Like a bird from those prison walls I'll fly I'll fly away I'll fly away, oh glory, I'll fly away When I die, hallelujah, by and by I Oh, how glad and happy when we meet I'll fly away No more cold iron shackles on your feet

00:27:49 Speaker_08
I'll fly away I'll fly away, oh glory I'll fly away When I die, hallelujah, bye-bye Just a few more weary days and then I'll fly away To a land where joys will never end I'll fly away I'll fly away When I die, hallelujah, by and by I'll fly away

00:29:47 Speaker_03
Those are excerpts from A Night at National Sawdust in Brooklyn, a night I put together with curator Elena Park, loosely inspired by Dolly Parton's America.

00:29:57 Speaker_03
All those Dolly songs, like Tennessee Mountain Home, that are about trying to hold a feeling of home even while you're wandering far, far away. This was part of the National Sawdust Plus series that Elena curates.

00:30:09 Speaker_03
I want to thank Jeff Tang, Charles Hagman, Garth McAlevey, who was the mix engineer for the night. Thank you to Jeremy Bloom for helping to mix this episode. And all the musicians who appeared in this bonus EP.

00:30:22 Speaker_03
Justin Hiltner, Esther Concara, Steph Chenk, Steph Coleman, Courtney Hartman, Shelley Washington, Bora Yoon, Caroline Shaw, and Andrew Yee. Shima and I will be back in one week with another episode of Dolly Parton's America.

00:30:34 Speaker_03
Until then, I'm Jad Abumrad. Thanks for listening.