Robin Macy and Kentucky White will celebrate their new album, "Truth," on Sunday, May 12, with a performance at Bartlett Arboretum in Belle Plaine as part of a bill dubbed “Wine, Women & Song,” which begins at 4 p.m. Oklahoma-based musician Janet Rutland will kick off the performance, followed by Macy and White who will be joined by guests The Cherokee Maidens and Little Big Twang.
Lyrically, “Truth” explores a range of themes, from the personal to the global, each imbued with Macy’s singular perspective with musical settings that draw from a range of styles within the tapestry of Americana music.
The following interview has been edited for clarity and length.
It occurred to me in listening to this record that you really had something to say this time. There’s some real meaty lyrical stuff.
Robin Macy: That’s what 65 years will do. You zone in on what matters and what feels truthful. I’d say there is some meaty matter on this. Tending to the earth and planet for the last 28 years, I’ve learned a lot and I’m a little mad. Maybe you picked up on some of that.
Is that where it starts, you see something going on and decide, “I need to say something about this”?
RM: I think so. I’m not sure I could have said it that well. Jedd, I think you’ve nailed it. Usually Kenny’s in the room, and he’s noodling on something on the Slingerland. That’s kind of how it starts. He’s the maestro. He turns a simple song into an orchestra. I think I’m the poet or the lyricist of the two. I’ll come up with some simple line and somehow it transforms into something I’m much more proud of than what I started with.
Kentucky White: Kind of like George and Ira Gershwin. You’re Ira. [Laughs.]
RM: We call each other Mr. and Mrs. Country Music sometimes.
Did some of this originate with the pandemic?
KW: Yes, and before. This record started about five years ago and took that long to gestate. We both have busy lives, so songs come when they come. It’s been a long process to get them all together in a collection.
RM: Many of the songs happened during that era but then there have been these recent things that have happened. Kentucky White is the boss of bluegrass. He’s the executive director of the International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA), so he spends a lot of time in Nashville. I am suffering from deep bereavement from the loss of important people. These two things have happened in the last couple years. I think the newer songs are a reflection of reflection. It’s not all about the good Earth, sometimes it’s about the soul in the soil.
The record sounds so good. Tell me a little bit about the recording of it.
KW: It’s been important for us to invest in our home studio setup, so we can do really professionally sounding things right in our living room, which is great. Needless to say, our living room is not big enough to track drums in. We have a great colleague, Carter Green. We record a lot of stuff with him in Wellington. We will do basic tracks with Carter, and then we will come home and overdub vocals and extra guitars or other things. We’ll bring guests to our house, or we’ll bring them down to Wellington.
We have a good setup but it’s also important to work with people who are professionals. Our good friend Shelby Eicher has a great home studio setup. Our friend Mark Hallman in Austin helped us put the finishing touches on the record. He’s a producer/engineer with lots of great experience, Carol King, Ani DiFranco.
RM: Ken went back to school during the pandemic. He had not finished his college degree and neither had his son. He felt like his son was not going to finish because Kenny hadn’t. Kenny and Micah graduated on the same day. He got a degree in audio engineering.
KW: Shout out to Torin Andersen.
RM: It was funny because Kenny would go into the classes and they would say, “Hey, man, what are you doing here?” “Well, I’m in your class!” That was the shortest distance between two partial degrees, to get this degree.
KW: Audio production.
RM: The first thing we mention on this packaging is all the places we went. One was Congress House in Austin, Texas, not to mention the second best-kept secret in Sumner County, which is [Carter Green’s] Greenjeans Studios. We went to Tulsa and worked at our own Whistlestop Studios. We do have a quiet zone in Belle Plaine now.
KW: We started recording before the quiet zone. There were trains coming through. If you hear any trains in the background on the record, that’s why.
You mentioned some of the friends you worked with on this record, and I wondered how important it is in the creative process to have people around you who you really trust and know.
KW: It’s super important. We have been in the music business long enough that we know some really great professional A-list players that we could have recorded with. But I think over time, we realized that it’s more important to bring talented friends to the project as opposed to just spending a bunch of money and going to Nashville to do it. The results are, I think, just as good.
RM: If not better.
Kentucky, I have a question specifically for you.
KW: OK.
How’d you get so good at guitar?
KW: [Laughs.] My first instrument was the banjo. I grew up listening to Flatt and Scruggs, and J.D. Crowe. That’s who I wanted to be until I heard Tony Rice play the guitar. Then, I was, like, “I can’t do that on the banjo.” His records with David Grisman were a gateway drug to jazz for me. So, I went to music school. I got to learn from the great guitarist Jimmy Raney who played with Stan Getz back in the ’50s. That opened me up to Charlie Parker. You can listen to just about any era of Miles Davis and be inspired.
I found my voice on the guitar. Banjo is a very mechanical instrument, so guitar was liberating. I played a lot. All kinds of styles. I trained myself to be as good a sideman as I could be. That’s one of the things I find harder as I get older, is to be more of a front man/mentor type. Never say no to a gig. Learn as many different styles as possible. Always serve the song and the artist you’re playing with, and you can do lots of great things. It’s led me to lot of different types of musical experiences that I never would have anticipated. I got to play with the Wichita Symphony Orchestra. I got to play mandolin with them.
RM: And banjo.
KW: I get to play with Robin Macy. Who knows where it will lead you. Keep on plucking. How did I get so good at the guitar? I opened my mind to lots of influences and practiced real hard.
RM: He has some great DNA for starters.
KW: The hills of Kentucky, you know?
