Miss Tess & Lindsay Lou
Community goes hand-in-hand with so many forms of country.
Community is at the core of Miss Tess’s new album, Cher Rêve, recorded over the course of three days at engineer Joel Savoy’s studio in Eunice, Louisiana. Joined by A-list musicians, Miss Tess, Thomas Bryan Eaton – her partner/multi-instrumentalist who produced and mixed the album – and drummer Matt Meyer paint an audio picture of the connections and roots they have planted in Lafayette, and the rich culture they’ve absorbed over years of performances and visits.
“The album does a great job of portraying the feeling of the area from the viewpoint of an outsider,” she says. “It’s a snapshot of this community in South Louisiana and what’s it like to live there for a little bit and soak up some of that. It’s a representation of our entrance into that community, how it affected our lives, and what it sounds like.”
When it was time for Miss Tess to select an interview partner for an “In Conversation” feature on the album, Lindsay Lou (Queen of Time, 2023) was an obvious choice. The two met at a Folk Alliance International conference and a friendship developed quickly. Over the years, their paths crossed on tour, at festivals, and eventually as Nashville residents. From a distance and in person, they’ve built and intersected personal and professional communities, supporting each other’s careers and building musical networks.
GC: Tess, what made Lindsay the right person for “In Conversation” and Lindsay, what were your thoughts when Tess contacted you?
Miss Tess: Lindsay is a person I've known for a long time as a touring musician. We've had a lot of overlapping in our musical communities, including when we first started getting to know each other when she was still living in Ann Arbor.
My band would be coming through Michigan, I'd be like, “Hey, Lindsay, do you know how many gigs we could play? Can you put us up?” because we were barely making any money. They had a regular Tuesday night gig at the Wolverine State Brewing Company and they were going to be out of town, so we played their gig, stayed at their house, continued on, and then had various overlapping experiences. I was living in Brooklyn at the time and when they were on tour, we put them up in Brooklyn. These are ways that you dip into somebody else's community.
We ended up moving to Nashville at the same time, so our communities merged even more. People who are lifelong touring musicians, it’s its own particular kind of lifestyle and it's really important when you meet people who understand that and can help each other out with various things.
Lindsay Lou: I was not surprised that Tess and I are a pair to talk about community, because of everything she just said. When Lindsay Lou & the Flatbellys started touring, our first tour to the Northeast, we slept on pads on Tess’s Brooklyn apartment floor. She was always there to put us up.
If you're a starting out touring band and you're trying to play in the New York City area, that can be tough because, first of all, it's so saturated, so you have to have an inroad to the community. Also it's so expensive to stay anywhere. It would end up costing you money if you didn't have some community resources. At the time, Tess and Rachael Price were living together and Rachael made us breakfast. That felt so kind and helpful. I remember Tess taking us to Mona's to the bluegrass jam, to Skinny Dennis, to the cool things happening in the community so you feel tapped into the scene. Tess was such a big part of that for us.
When we moved to Nashville, we formed a scene together. For a good handful of years I lived in a house in East Nashville. It was myself, my ex-husband Joshua Rilko, and Mollie Farr. Molly Tuttle, Billy Strings, and Ally Dale lived across the street. Various people would come through and live there at the Petway house. We would have house concerts and dances. Especially that first year, me, Joshua, Tess, Molly, Oliver Craven, Maya de Vitry, and Thomas would be up until the sun came up, playing Townes Van Zandt songs in the kitchen.
There's a fabric of what we do that you have to be able to do in order to remember why you love doing this. The origin and purpose of music is that – just like playing together in the kitchen. So I was not surprised to be connected with Tess to talk about community.
MT: I got into being a touring musician because I like traveling so much. I started realizing that, as a musician, it gives you this special path and it is the universal language in a way. Wherever you are, you get this path straight into the fun, art-loving culture of a place.
If you can make friends along the way, like Lindsay – I would have never had such cool experiences in Michigan had I not met her. Memories like that are almost sometimes more important than the gig itself, just immersing yourself in what's going on around you and having these experiences you wouldn't normally get to have otherwise. You don't have to have money to do it. You just have to have music.
Tess, you also built a community in Lafayette. How did that develop and inspire your new album? Lindsay, of course you have played in that area as well.
MT: My knowledge about that area started when a friend in Boston had been to this Cajun Mardi Gras and he said, “Oh, it's crazy. They dress up in crazy outfits and there's dancing and music and food.” I saw the music video that our friend Tom Krueger made of the Red Stick Ramblers song “Made in the Shade.” I was like, “Man, this looks so fun!”
My friend Crista DeCicco [Cristabel & The Jons] in Knoxville, our bands had done some touring together. We went to the Blackpot Festival in 2010 and have been going back ever since and overlapping with some of those touring musicians. It's such an extensive culture down there, very open and generous and welcoming. You can't not have a good time, so you get sucked into this weird little vortex of a scene. At the tail end of the pandemic we were going down there anyway and I was like, “No one has gigs yet, so maybe we'll just do some recording with our musician friends.” That blossomed into this whole album.
LL: I have been to Lafayette, and I'm really surprised, Tess, that you weren't there the year I went. I just assumed you were there, but I guess it was the Flatbellys and the Stray Birds. We went to Folk Alliance after Blackpot, all the people I met at Blackpot were there and the festivities spilled over. It's amazing the connections you make when you're playing music with people and carrying on as we do when we jam.
MT: When we moved to Nashville, it was like we were having a festival continuously with our friends and just jamming. One thing I loved about Lindsay and Josh and those folks – they're always down to play music. We would learn songs together. Lindsay had this little video series she was doing. She would record herself doing songs with other people, capturing moments in the community and sharing the love of music together. That would spill over into we're playing the same festival, or we're doing a show together in another town, or a band is coming to town that one of us knew that's crashing at one of our houses.
I find that energy really inspiring, because when you're in the music industry, you can get bogged down in the business side of things. To be reminded that music is fun and inspiring, we like to share it with people, we like to play music with new people, and try things and learn things – that's what being a musician and an artist is about for me. I need these moments as reminders that this is why I do this. I need to get through all this other bullshit so I can still do this.
LL: It's getting together with people in a living room, a field, around a fire, at a dance, or wherever you are, and playing music together because you love it so much. It's the way we hang out. It's the track we follow in order to have social experiences. I've never had a social experience that was more joyful than a musical one.
MT: It's the notion of sharing music with people on the spot. We're lucky to have these traditional forms that allow us to do that. Lindsay comes more from a bluegrass tradition than I do, but I've always had a lot of friends that play bluegrass. Because I know how to communicate musically with people, even if it's a genre I'm not totally proficient in, I can find a little window in, or sing harmony, or play bass. I love getting together and sharing music. Once you realize that it's all about the same thing, you get hooked. You're like, “I want to do this more and figure out more, and how do I share in this tradition with people in a way that is fun?”
Lindsay, in one of your interviews you referred to “the sacred space of the stage.” Could you talk about creating community with the audience?
LL: It's a good thing to always keep in mind some form of gratitude for the honor that it is to have a platform, and to have people who hold that space for you and take in your art and your music. It is a special sort of sacred space. I've been on the receiving end of it enough to know how powerful it is. I've been in the audience and I’ve seen what's possible, what kind of beauty we're capable of conjuring.
What you can get out of a live performance is a spectacular thing and to be the person onstage delivering that is a great honor. I try not to take that for granted. A lot of musicians and performers are a mix of introvert-extrovert. We have a hard time in non-musical social situations, but a musical social situation or performance is a way that we can connect with people that feels really good and satisfying and fulfills that need for connection with community.
MT: I agree with that a lot, Lindsay. Another aspect in that way is you're creating a community amidst the audience too. You're providing an event where people can get together and have an experience that's organic and in-person. You're creating a platform for a community outside yourself, too, and hopefully there's an exchange happening when you're onstage.
Not to sound overconfident, but one thing that helped me get over being a nervous person was to think beyond myself, like, “I am giving these people a gift. I'm giving them what I think is my purpose to do and express.” You're doing something a lot of people wish they could do. They're like, “I wish I could be so brave and vulnerable to express myself like that in front of other people, or just be confident enough to sing.” You are allowing people to live vicariously and relate to the world in a way they might be afraid to do. You're speaking beauty. You're speaking anger. You're speaking culture. You're speaking the whole world. This communication exchange is very important.
When I was a teenager, I hated bluegrass music. My parents are musicians and they would play it on AM radio, and I was like, “This sounds like crap.” My friend Nate Leath, an amazing musician and particularly fiddle player who also lives in Nashville now, was like, “Why don't you come to this bluegrass festival with me?” As soon as I entered that arena of live bluegrass and jamming, once I was exposed to the culture and community around that, beyond just hearing a song on the radio, it broadened my world. I think in that regard, too, it's important for folks like me and Lindsay, who have a strong basis in traditional music, to keep being ambassadors for creating that community through shows and festivals, and through spreading our love of certain niche kinds of traditional music.
LL: It's a rich tradition and once you belong to one, you have an inroad to all these other cultures and traditions, because you develop the skill set to have a musical conversation. I feel really lucky to be a part of it and to know people like Tess who have been such an integral part of us making it work, building our lives around it.
MT: In Nashville there are so many professional musicians and people day-to-day who understand. Being a professional musician is really hard. It has immense challenges associated with it, but all these experiences I've had traveling and the friends I've made – I wouldn't trade it for anything. It’s a magical little charmed existence.
Photo Credit: Miss Tess by cowtownchad; Lindsay Lou by Kaitlyn Raitz.