Jude Brothers' new album, "Dogwood Maiden Voyage," is here. The Fayetteville native explores happiness, Ozark ballads, magic and wonder on the double-length record, out now from Gar Hole Records. There are 14 songs included, and each of the 14 titles includes an ampersand.
Brothers: I'm a big fan of the ampersand myself.
Kellams: What do you think that symbolizes?
Brothers: I think I love the word "and," and I think that the easeful "and" implied by the ampersand, or not even implied, just illustrated by the ampersand, is very useful because I have trouble calling anything just one thing.
Jude Brothers came to the Carver Center for Public Radio last Thursday, the day before the new album was released, to talk about all those ideas contained in the record. All of them connected by all of those ampersands.
Brothers: It took some convincing on the label's part. Kurt from really wanted me to split the songs at first because it seemed overly ambitious to do the double. But I really, really felt that these songs all belonged together, and they're all in the same... It's not necessarily a concept album, but I think that they're all in the same conceptual universe, and they're all traversing a lot of the same territory for me.
And it felt like the time capsule that I wanted to create for where I'm at as a music maker. They all belonged together.
Kellams: I also think you must have put some thought into the order that they appear.
Brothers: Oh, 100%.
Kellams: They tell a story?
Brothers: Yeah.
Kellams: When did the story start to develop for you?
Brothers: Hmm. Well, some of these songs are as old as 12, like almost 12 years old. And some of them were like written in the middle of the album recording process. And then some of them, the ones that are not original, there's two non-original songs.
One that I included is "The Quiet Joys of Brotherhood," which is a song I learned listening to Sandy Denny, who's one of my vocal heroes. And the melody comes from a traditional Irish air called "My Lagan Love." And the poetry was written by a folk revival musician and poet named Richard Fariña, who put out a bunch of really cool folk music in the '70s.
Kellams: It's a gorgeous recording.
Brothers: Oh, thank you.
[Excerpt of "The Quiet Joys of Brotherhood" plays]
Kellams: Where did that take place?
Brothers: My friend Chaz Knapp recorded that down in Winslow in the train tunnel, which hopefully is not illegal, I don't know. I think it's fine. We waved at the train guys.
[Music continues]
Kellams: Oh, Brothers, your voice is amazing there.
Brothers: Oh, thank you.
Kellams: What did you have to do to warm up for that?
Brothers: Honestly, I think I ate a piece of gas station fried chicken and drank a Red Bull. I would love to say I did something much more like ethereal and magical, but... Yeah.
[Music continues]
Kellams: I love the song "I'm Going to Build a Life I Don't Want to Escape From," and it's going to be...
Brothers: "& It's Going to Be Beautiful."
Kellams: Yes, I had the title so long I had to carve it up on the side. I think if anyone's having a bad day, that should be required listening.
Brothers: Oh, thank you so much for saying that. That's what it's for.
[Excerpt of "I'm Going to Build a Life I Don't Want to Escape From & It's Going to Be Beautiful" plays]
Brothers: I think that one of the great gifts of being a songwriter is that you get to tell your story to yourself over and over again, and look at it through another lens. And then you get to make it a bit of the universal and the collective and kind of like dig down and hold stuff up to the light to share with people.
So I wrote that. To me, recovery is a really expansive process and it isn't exclusive to substance abuse or a lack of substance abuse. It's like, because for me, those things oscillate. And I think that for many, many people, those things oscillate.
But what I found in my journey in recovery spaces and in like my healing and recovery journey as a person was like the thing that kept me coming back to my healing was the idea of like, I'm going to build a life that's so good that I don't want to escape it.
Kellams: When you were hearing these songs in your head, did you have a pretty specific idea of what they would sound like on the record? Because there's some wonderful production here. I'm thinking of "Wisteria & Starting Over."
Brothers: Mhm. Ah, that's an interesting one. So I wrote that song when I was 20 and I was playing in a gamelan ensemble, which in this case was a Javanese gamelan set. And it's a system of gong and mallet instruments that you play. You can't play it by yourself. I mean, you could, but you're supposed to play it with lots of other people.
And it's these really simple parts that are quite repetitive a lot of times, sometimes in longer sets of patterns. But what makes them intricate and complicated and twinkly is that they're juxtaposed against each other. And so when I wrote this song, I was hearing that.
[Excerpt of "Wisteria & Starting Over" plays]
Kellams: The LP is gatefold, and that means one that opens. That's old school.
Brothers: Yeah, it feels like a storybook. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of tracks and a lot of lyrics. So we had to give ourselves an expansive space to work with.
Kellams: Well, you mentioned that there was some conversation with Gar Hole Records about the double album and everything. Did you ever lose confidence in the concept?
Brothers: Every day.
Kellams: Oh, really?
Brothers: It comes out tomorrow and I still don't know what I'm doing. Yeah, I think that I don't know if it's a healthy or an unhealthy, or if that black-and-white thinking even serves. Because I think a lot of what I'm contending with on this album is like trying to take myself out of some binary thinking, but whatever, I digress.
I have a large amount of self-doubt and sometimes it serves me quite well because I have some healthy risk assessment. And then sometimes it keeps me from doing and achieving and creating a lot of the things that I would otherwise create.
And I think that my biggest enemy, other than the system, I'm laughing, but I'm quite serious. Other than the system that we live in, my biggest enemy to making this epic piece of artwork was myself. And that was that self-doubt. That was like, I was like, "Is anyone going to get this? Does anyone care about long-form art anymore?"
I've always written quite long songs. I think there's one short song on this album. But the rest are at least five minutes for the most part. And that's even too long for most radio, for most promotional things. And so yeah, of course. And I think that it made me have to get really real with myself about what I was trying to do, why I'm trying to do it and what this piece of art means.
Kellams: Now there's a release show coming up in October.
Brothers: Yeah.
Kellams: Tell me about it.
Brothers: I'm so excited. So yeah, the first of the release shows is at White Water Tavern down in Little Rock, Arkansas. And the woman opening for me is named Stephanie Smittle. And she's actually, you know...
Kellams: Yes, we know Stephanie.
Brothers: Yeah. She's originally in Northwest Arkansas, girlie. And so she'll be opening with her beautiful autoharp ballads and weird ancient music. I just feel so kindred to her. I feel that we really have a lot in common, and it's really nice to share a stage with as big of a nerd as I am.
So we'll have that. And that'll be with my Dogwood Maiden Voyage band, which includes Allison Williams on bass.
Kellams: Yeah. She's wonderful.
Brothers: Yeah. She's wonderful old-time bluegrass country. I mean, there's nothing that she can't play or do. And most string instruments, she knows her way around. So I feel really lucky to have her on stage. She's also been keeping me really organized and remembering arrangements and stuff, which is really awesome. This is the first time I've done anything quite like this.
And then Coral Bradshaw, who is my favorite fiddle player in Arkansas right now. She's new-ish to the area, but I think she's been here for some years now. Her ear and her attunement, and it was like she just got what I was doing and I was like, "You have to play on these album release shows with me."
And then my friend Chloe Caemmerer, who, she's a really interesting person. She's got family from Jonesboro and has just moved back to Jonesboro and plays under the name Dandelioness. She'll be singing harmonies with me because she's a wonderful soprano.
And yeah, we've got Nick Shoulders opening with a doom ballad set. We'll see what that's going to be like.
Kellams: And then Nick Shoulders is opening?
Brothers: He's opening for me at the White Water, at the... Oh, I'm sorry, I got confused. Thank you. So Stephanie Smittle at White Water. Stephanie Smittle at White Water.
And then on Oct. 10 at George's Majestic Lounge, Nick Shoulders will be opening with a set of doom ballads. And then DJ Girlfriend will be closing the show with a big dance party. She's so amazing. She's my favorite DJ in Arkansas, and we're just gonna have a great time.
Kellams: Come back whenever you want.
Brothers: Oh, thank you.
Jude Brothers in the Anthony and Susan Hui News Studio late last week. The new record, "Dogwood Maiden Voyage," is available now. The album release shows are at the White Water Tavern in Little Rock on Oct. 8 with Stephanie Smittle, and then Oct. 10 at George's Majestic Lounge on Dickson Street in Fayetteville on Oct. 10.
Before our visit ended last week, Jude Brothers asked if it would be okay to sing a song in our studio. And while our acoustics might not be the same as the Winslow train tunnel, here is Jude Brothers performing the traditional Ozark ballad "Quiet Joys of Brotherhood and Love Is Lord of All."
[Jude Brothers performs "The Quiet Joys of Brotherhood" in the studio]
Kellams: Well, thank you so much. That was beautiful. This is Ozarks at Large.
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a rush deadline and edited for length and clarity. Copy editors utilize AI tools to review work. KUAF does not publish content created by AI. Please reach out to kuafinfo@uark.edu to report an issue. The audio version is the authoritative record of KUAF programming.
