It might bring me something, it might weigh me down

A Good Folk April playlist.

Hi, hello, happy Monday, happy Eclipse day,

I am sitting outside on the warmest day in the last week, listening to the birds and looking out at the blue sky. I feel the same way as I do each April, which is that I blinked and suddenly the world burst into green. If you know me, you’ll know I rely on the phrase “everything is green” as a euphemism for the good that is change in my life. I steal it from my favorite short story, “Everything Is Green” by David Foster Wallace, which I have written about before in a very old newsletter post and which I continue to think about nearly every day from April to August, when the green turns gold and the world cycles itself back around.

Man, I love this landscape, this place. I love the way it shifts and turns before my eyes like a magic trick and I love the way it is always reminding me that everything will end and everything will begin again. I have only one bumper sticker on my car, which I picked up at fellow North Carolinian Indigo De Souza’s show at Cat’s Cradle last summer; in bright letters against a black background, it reads: All Of This Will End, named after her excellent album that released last year. I love to imagine someone stuck behind me in traffic on I-40 looking at it. I love the reminder that the best we can ever do is to live in the moment.

There is so much good new music to include in this edition that I almost don’t know where to begin. I have, of course, been listening to Cowboy Carter, and expect a newsletter here once I finally digest it all. New Waxahatchee! New 723 (and a show next week with the lovely Madisinn and Cuffing Season)! I’m late to the party, but I’ve been obsessed with Sierra Ferrell and I have had this tune from West Virginia’s Rett Madison on repeat for the last few weeks. Everything on here is good, trust me!

This playlist follows that strange sense of possibility and ending of April. It’s definitely felt like a particularly reflective month for me. It’s been a month of lots of work and big life decisions, and it’s definitely let me to retreat publicly. This duality of endings and beginnings is especially pertinent to me right now, as I wrap up my M.A. in Folklore at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and look towards next steps. More on that soon, but I have truly missed sitting down to write here weekly. This has always been a space—and a community—I turn to, and I mean it when I say this project has laid the groundwork for so many of the relationships in my life. As school wraps up in the next few weeks, trust that we will be back here with more discussions of contemporary Southern artistry, identity, and culture. How can you not be when there are so many incredibly artists living, working, and calling this place home?

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