On his new album AMERICANANA, Joel David Weir shares a mix of live and studio recordings of "songs to help through trying times. Weir visited the WYSO studios for a live session on Kaleidoscope and talked with music director Juliet Fromholt about this new collection and the role of songwriters.
"I really like that idea of [songwriters as] chronicler because these songs are obviously could be seen as political, but in a time like this, I don't know that more partisan rhetoric is helpful necessarily, especially from a songwriter," said Weir. "But I think that songwriters need to kind of report what's happening. We gotta tell stories and, yeah there's advocacy for for people. I've always taken it seriously, the idea of giving voice to people who might be voiceless. You know, it has to be true and it has to be, you know, reporting back something that's true. So I hope I can do that a little bit, contribute to that."
Weir isn't solely focused on exploring the American experience his music, however. A recent trip to Scotland provided inspiration for the next record and a cure for writers block.
"I had some things happen in my life, some grief and just couldn't break through. And so I went over to Scotland for just a week. And the songs just kind of...I don't know if it was a Scottish air or what it was, but it just started flowing out."
For that batch of yet-to-be-released songs, Weir collaborated with his wife Maria, a writer whose poetry became the basis for lyrics.
"It was a lot of fun. We were on the same wavelength about what we wanted to write about. And it also helped me through my, you know, my writer's block. I mean, that was kind of a wonderful thing to be given some lyrics and as I was still working on getting lyrics out again."
