Folk duo Lisa Maria and Amy Lou Keeler, AKA Mama’s Broke, are talking live and direct from Canada via Zoom to Folk Radio ahead of their second album ‘Narrow Line’ (reviewed here and out 13th May on Free Dirt Records). Having been bowled over three years ago upon hearing their debut album ‘Count The Wicked,’ I jumped at the opportunity for a lengthy chat with these two artists, especially now that their new record is proving definitively that the musical talent evidenced in 2019 continues to evolve into something truly special today. But what kind of people are they going to be in the flesh? Can they really be as dark and brooding as those deep lyrical meditations suggest, or is there a lighter side to Mama’s Broke? Well, unsurprisingly, for people with such vital music pumping through their veins, they turned out to be equally engaging in conversation. Before I dived deeper into the music, however, I opened the chat with an enquiry about the worrying news that the band had been involved in a road collision back in December?
Amy Lou Keeler: Yeah, it wasn’t really a collision, but somebody collided into my van while it was parked.
Lisa Maria: Luckily, we weren’t in the vehicle, it was in the middle of the night, but we were able to hear it from inside the house.
ALK: Normally, I do sleep in my van when travelling, so the night before, I had slept in it, then that night I decided not to. Oh yeah, there was somebody looking out for me that day.
I have seen Mama’s Broke described as ‘folk without borders’…
ALK: I think that’s just because we have travelled around a lot and both of us really love traditional music from everywhere, so that bleeds into it. I’d say that 95% of our fans or people who listen to our music are people who have seen us at some show around the world, so it’s like a personable interactive thing.
What were both of your gateways into knowing, loving and playing traditional music?
LM: I think it’s something that’s always been with me. I was really fortunate to grow up being taken to a lot of different folk music and world music festivals as a kid. Just hearing music from a wide variety of backgrounds growing up so it’s just something that always intrigued me. As I got older and started finding what really jumped out at me, it would just send me down a rabbit hole because I would always want to know the source of where these musicians got their inspiration and going further and further back into the original source material, it would take me to music from all over the world. So, there was never a particular tipping point; it’s just always been with me.
ALK: My Dad’s a musician, he’s a guitar player, he’s like electric blues, so he grew up with Howlin’ Wolf and all that kind of shit in the fifties and sixties, so that’s what I grew up listening to. Also, being from Nova Scotia, it’s like very much fiddle music is around a lot; ceilidhs and stuff like that were happening a lot when I was growing up. But I wasn’t interested until much later in life; for me, the first time was a Ralph Stanley recording; I remember the exact moment I was like, “oh, that is what I am looking for.” It was super stripped-down; I think it was him and his banjo, and then there was some a cappella stuff like ‘O Death’ or whatever, that led me to Dock Boggs, and that led me to this whole Appalachian wormhole, and that led me back to British Isles stuff and balladry. Just like simplify, simplify, simplify, which is so interesting, like similar to what Lisa said it was let’s go to the very source, then go behind that and see what it’s all about.
And what about anything less detectable in your music DNA?
ALK: Oh yeah, all of it, as we say that it is all part and parcel of so many genres. I played in a psych-punk band when I was like twenty or whatever; Lisa’s played in a ton of shit…
LM: … yeah, a doom metal band…
ALK: So many of those scales; we were talking about doom metal recently; it’s so ballad based. Like so much of the same modal scales but just layered in different ways, spoken through a different medium.
LM: There can be a lot of crossovers for some of the messages for that kind of music lyrically, bringing it back to the kind of songs of protest; there’s a lot of crossovers there.
You seem very engaged with the idea of protest and topical subject matter in folk song; there’s still a place for that today, is there?
LM: I definitely feel there is a place for it, just like there always has been in a lot of folk music, but not even just restricted to the folk genre. I think it’s a very natural thing to be portrayed through music.
ALK: I think to value that is really important; the stuff that’s going to sell isn’t normally the most protesting, aggressive opinionated shit, you know? I think that people play it safe. With funding, you’re kind of like, “this is what I want to say,” but there are definitely a lot of funding bodies all over the world that are like, “let’s keep it mild, let’s play it safe, let’s not offend anybody” so I think that’s super unfortunate. It’s going to get out no matter what; it’s just a matter of who is going to hear it?
So, if you had a song idea, for example, about Putin, you wouldn’t stop yourselves from writing it?
ALK: I think with my own and our songwriting style, it wouldn’t be so obvious; we would just sneak it in, maybe allude to it. I think that a thing that I don’t really love is when things are super heavy-handed because I think it should be something that…
LM: …anyone from any part of the world would be able to relate to…
ALK: …sometimes it can be heavy-handed, and sometimes it’s not, I don’t know, there are no rules (laughs)
Watching and listening to you across two albums now and viewing a bit of online film footage etc., it seems to be that music flows out of you fairly naturally as if it were part of your DNA. Is that how it feels to you two?
ALK: Yeah, you know, probably yeah! For me, I have been singing since I could talk. So, it’s in there; it’s ingrained.
And how about lyric writing; is that a joint endeavor?
ALK: Yeah, it is; it’s become more and more of a joint endeavor over time. When we first got together…
LM: … we both brought a handful of songs…
ALK: …yeah, and Lisa already had a bunch of instrumental stuff, so for a while, Lisa was like the instrumental half, and I was the lyrical half, but over time, we started collaborating more and more on both, so the Venn diagram got closer and closer. We still have some songs that are all Lisa and some that are all me and then arranged together, but this record is a majority collaborative effort on all fronts.
Often doing interviews around an album release, artists have told me that it’s only then that they start to work out what the songs are about. I sense with you that you know what you want to say from an early stage?
LM: It can be a mix; I feel like sometimes lyrics will slightly evolve over time to mean a different thing, personally.
ALK: Yeah, exactly; I think they can take on a new meaning, especially when more people hear it; I mean, we’ve been playing these songs out for a little longer; some of them we’ve been playing longer than the recordings have existed. So, if somebody’s reaction is a certain way, then maybe that will make me think of it in a different way, because somebody’s like, “oh, this made me think about this struggle in my life” or whatever, and I’m like, well I hadn’t thought about it like that, cool. That’s just as valid as the idea I had when I started writing it.
On a song like ‘How It Ends’, it jumped out at me as being a very personal song (shrieks of laughter from ALK). Am I right then? Is that a personal song, and how do you feel in general about personal lyrical content?
ALK: That one is really particular because I think that most of them are more metaphorical, and that one is just, really straightforward, a break-up song. Err yeah… It’s very obvious. That was a really interesting thing for me to do because I started writing this song after a break-up, obviously, and I was like, “oh god, am I going to write a break-up song? This is so embarrassing; can’t I write something more metaphorical with imagery and something about the ocean?” I don’t know, but then I was like, “fuck it, I’m just going to do it.”
Was there any discussion between the two of you about whether you should do that, could there be any comeback etc.?
ALK: There’s always a discussion, always, you know, “Is this too cheesy?”
LM: Oh definitely, that song, in particular, took on a lot of different forms like its initial raw thing was more Carter Family style. Then I was trying to work out a mandolin part for it, and then we completely re-changed it. We probably had at least three or four different choruses before we settled on one, then it really morphed into like this old-time tune.
ALK: Yeah, it didn’t even have a chorus when I first wrote it and then I brought it to you and then we wrote the chorus together then totally re-arranged. There were so many different forms in how that one evolved.
LM: It wasn’t until we were in the studio, and it was kind of like an afterthought, that Amy was just, “huh, I wonder if I should see how a guitar would sound on this song?”
Well, thank you for your honesty there; I am feeling overall in listening to this new album that it is like a dark gothic lament for our times.
ALK: I feel like a few times in the studio, I was like, “this is pretty upbeat, this could have some summer hits”, but then we’re like, wait, no. 70% of this is like super fucking dark and intense. It’s funny because we’re both pretty silly people, really. So that’s a fair assessment, I’d say.
It doesn’t really just apply to this album either because the dark stuff (gallows, alcohol dependency etc.) were all featured heavily in your first album. I have to ask, do people find you quite hard work to be around? Are they always telling you to lighten up?
(Both laugh; fortunately)
LM: We’re both very silly; I think Amy could have a career as a comedian.
ALK: No, I’m like one of the friggin’ goofiest people around. I have actually acted in sitcoms; I love sitcoms. I think in every other aspect of life, I am the opposite… (Sarcastically) Yeah, we’re really hard work. We do have resting bitch faces; maybe it comes off that way (laughs).
From: https://klofmag.com/2022/05/mamas-broke-narrow-line-interview/
