By: Toni Tiemann
April is one of the most refreshing times of year. Spring starts to peak its way through the winter gloom, and as April arrives, we get to celebrate National Poetry Month. This year we get to kick off the month with the upbeat pop folk band Amy & the Engine headlining their first Boston show at Church on April 2 along with Grey Season and Providence-based The Silks.
Amy & the Engine highlight an underrepresented genre in Boston – think early Taylor Swift if she never went country. Like many of their Boston counterparts, both Amy & the Engine and Grey Season got their start at Berklee College of Music. Both groups blend catchy folk songs with influences ranging from indie rock to ‘60’s pop. In honor of National Poetry Month, we asked these two gems about their lyrical inspirations:
Grey Season
Allston Pudding: Who or what inspires you lyrically?
Ian Jones: Positivity. Life is good, and even when it’s not, our music is about uplifting people. We don’t want to hear someone moan about being in pain – we want to hear them sing about how they’re going to make it better.
AP: What is your favorite example of lyricism or poetry from another artist?
IJ: A line we’re loving right now is in Gillian Welch’s “The Way it Goes:”
“Miranda ran away
Took her cat and left LA
That’s the way that it goes
That’s the way
She was busted, broken flat
Had to sell that pussycat
That’s the way that it goes
That’s the way”
If you listen to the way she sings it, there’s a wonderful ambiguity to it. We don’t need to know why Miranda ran away with her cat or why she had to sell it. Of course there’s the colorful double entendre, but you instantly recognize the character. It’s the ambiguity in traditional folk songs that make them so good. You don’t need to explain everything. And the crux of the song is of all these tragic characters, but in the end “that’s the way it goes.”
AP: What is your favorite example of lyricism or poetry that you’ve written?
IJ: A song written by our drummer Ben Burns for Honeysuckle‘s new EP. There’s a great line about taking a hard look at yourself and growing up. I’m sure mostly everyone has had those fucked up nights where you stand in front of a mirror for hours on end…
“You’ve had your time with mirrors
Spent with your image backwards
Up in your head is spinning
Round and round
We’re so green
Young-boy dreams
Sometimes, silently
I still call you my friend”
It can mean something different to everybody, which is why it’s great. (By the way, Honeysuckle are the heaviest-hitting new folk group in the country, so check them out before your friends do).
Amy & the Engine
Allston Pudding: Who or what inspires you lyrically?
Amy Allen: Lyrically, I’m inspired daily by so many different things, whether it’s people, articles, movies, songs, pretty much everything that’s some sort of commentary on the world and the people who live in it. Though I have to say, most of my songs spawn from shared experiences between my older sisters and I. We are close enough in age that we can go through all of the same ups and downs together through relationships, careers, etc., but we’re also far enough apart that we go through them all at slightly different times, so I’m never at a lack for material.
AP: What is your favorite example of lyricism or poetry from another artist?
AA: Paul Simon’s use of lyrical language has always been a huge influence on my music, and more recently I’ve fallen in love with Jenny Lewis and Natalie Prass lyrics. One of the first lyrics I used to sing over and over when I was younger was from Simon’s “Kodachrome:”
“They give us those nice bright colors
They give us greens of summers
Makes you think all the world’s a sunny day
I got a Nikon camera
I love to take a photograph
So mama don’t take my Kodachrome away
If you took all the girls I knew when I was single
And brought them all together for one night
I know they’d never match my sweet imagination
Everything looks worse in black and white”
AP: What is your favorite example of lyricism or poetry that you’ve written?
AA: This is tricky because I feel like the curse of the songwriter (in my case, at least) is that we write a lyric that we think is verbal gold, and then 10 minutes later, we re-read it and think “Shit. This makes absolutely no sense at all…” That being said, if I had to pick a favorite lyric of mine, it’d be from a song I’ve never recorded called “Handmade:”
“Talk to me
‘cause I wanna be, wanna be on your side
And my thoughts are small suicide jumpers
Peering over the cliff
At the peak of my mind
So they go, 1, 2, 3
Follow me
Off into the air
Where they’ll fall and disappear
And it all goes white, I am
Left tongue tied”
While we might not be able to school you on the inspiration behind The Silks’ lyrics, the band is not one to miss out on. Hailing from just 40 minutes outside the home of Newport Folk Festival, the group is similar to what you might expect from a Providence trio. The Silks combine welcoming blues-rock with just the tiniest hint of folk.
Don’t forget to get your ticket to the show here.