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BGS: That’s very much the message of “Better Way,” which is about online trolling. Was that inspired by a specific incident?

Andrew: A number of incidents. It isn’t unique. Every time somebody puts themselves out there on social media you have the people who love to drum up negative energy. And I can’t wrap my head around it because that’s not how I was brought up. I rarely meet people who would do that when they’re talking to you face to face. So I don’t understand why those people feel compelled to sit at their computer or pick up their phone and try to rip others apart. It’s a weird way to live.

BGS: Emily says it’s one of the favorite tracks you’ve ever laid down together.

Andrew: Yeah, I love the sound of that tune. It’s a gentle drive to it, the way the groove is so set. It has this steady pulse that fits with the whole idea of the tune, this nagging thing in the back of my head: why do people feel compelled to be such assholes?

Andrew: Basically, [it’s about] how unabashedly mean people can be on social media. I don’t believe people are that way in their everyday lives. If I were to have a conversation with someone who’s just completely ripped us apart on social media, I don’t think it would ever go there. They might express their opinions and we might differ, but I think we could find some common ground. But there’s never that moment to have an actual conversation with eye contact and body language, and that’s what I was calling out in that song. If you wouldn’t do it standing beside somebody or sitting across from them at a dinner table, then why would you feel so compelled to rip them apart online? It doesn’t make sense.

EH: 'Hiding from the monsters in the belly of the beast' is one of my favorite lines from this record, maybe because I can’t figure out what it means. Can you help me out here?

Andrew: “That’s a pretty out-there line for me, because it kind of means a bunch of different things. You know, just the pattern of being a touring musician, and drawing so much inspiration from getting out and sharing songs with people night after night, you never really know how you're going to feel on a given night – or I never know how I'm going to feel on a given night when I step out on that stage. And yet, I still have to enter into the emotion of the song, and be there for those people that are there to take in these lyrics and these moments in this music.

So, I think that’s a big part of that line. I feel like I've almost become haunted by some of these things that I've talked about in these songs, you know, whether it be the loss of my mom, or just dealing with some of the darker parts of how I exist, and then having to kind of rehash that every night and re-share that every night sometimes can be a little overwhelming.”

Andrew: I wrote that tune after Jeff Austin committed suicide. I didn’t know him super well, but we had a lot of mutual friends and had crossed paths through the years and it woke me up in a scary way. Being a full-time musician you have to continually find new ways to stay relevant and interesting to people, and you have to deal with real bouts of anxiety and self-consciousness. Is this good enough? Am I good enough? Writing and playing is something I’m extremely driven to do for myself, but I also have to do it for others, and I throw my music out in the world to be judged by other people. It’s a weird process that I’ve found is extremely helped by therapy!

BGS: So is that what performing is for you: “Hiding from the monsters in the belly of the beast”?

Andrew: Yes — I love that line. When people talk about being nervous to perform, for me it’s not wondering whether I’m able to perform well, it’s more that when I step out on stage I don’t know what that crowd’s energy is going to be, how receptive they’re going to be. Are these people going to allow me to be myself tonight or am I going to have to put on a hat? For the most part our fans are really receptive and I can be myself. That’s when it feels like things are right.

BN1: The video for New Star captivated us, as it offered a narrative and a range of welcoming emotions – which is increasingly rare in modern pop promos. How much input do you have on the scripting? And do you like your videos to tell a story?

Andrew: Amelia nailed that video. She brought forth the concept and we loved it. I remember finally seeing it for the first time and getting bleary eyed. There are so many close friends and community members of ours featured in the video and, especially after over a year without seeing so many of them, it felt like a homecoming.

Andrew: Yeah, I just like how the song keeps morphing. It was kind of talking about meeting our daughter for the first time. And then, it’s that real vision that I’m sure every parent has, where you’re like, oh my gosh, I’ve been missing you my entire life but I didn’t know that was you I was missing until I got you in my arms right now. And then just like how fast life changes from that point on.

I think the song captures that really beautifully. It never stops moving. And some of the parts are really intense, and some are really peaceful. Which I think goes hand in hand with being a new parent. So I don’t think that was the intention of the tune, but I do love that that can be derived from it now.

In the song “Lonely Love Affair,” Marlin sings about having a “stranger” in his house, which he says refers to himself, not his daughter. When he saw his daughter for the first time, he got a strange feeling of forgetting how to exist as himself and write songs.

Holler: The song ‘Lonely Love Affair’ is such an interesting take on parenthood, with the daughter being a kind of stranger in the house. Where did that song spring from?

Andrew: It’s actually the opposite.

Holler: You guys are the strangers?

Andrew: We are. I can’t speak for Emily, but I can speak for myself. I felt like a stranger to myself after Ruby was born, because suddenly I had this whole new purpose in life and a whole new intention. It was almost like getting to know myself all over again. These moments where I was spending time with myself, suddenly it was hard to find a zone to write and to want to play what I was writing about because I wasn’t stepping away from my day-to-day; I was stepping away from this little being that required me to be there all the time, to keep it alive.

That was in the first week, I think, when I wrote ‘Lonely Love Affair’. There’s also a spiritual essence about that tune, where babies are the link between the real world and the spiritual world.

Holler: ‘Coming Down from Green Mountain’ is such a beautiful instrumental. How did it come together in the studio?

Andrew: I wrote that one at the end of a musical festival.

Holler: Which one?

Andrew: Green Mountain Bluegrass & Roots. It’s in Vermont.

Emily: It’s a small, relatively new festival that started a couple of years ago.

Andrew: It was a weekend full of playing with some of my favorite people to play with. When it came to an end, it had me feeling all these feelings - so I sat down at, like, 4 in the morning and wrote that tune. More and more, as I get older and dive deeper into the mandolin, I keep becoming more inspired by instrumental music.

I love how, especially on the recorded version, it sounds like we’re all searching. We ended up using the first take that we did. Josh Kaufman played the electric guitar on it, with Josh Oliver on acoustic, Clint on bass, Joe on drums, Emily on fiddle and me on mandolin. We all sat down and talked about where we wanted to go with it, but we kind of felt it out. I think we did two other takes after that first one, but that first one felt right. You can kind of hear Joe trying to figure out where his drumbeats are going to be. It’s evolving the whole time. I love that searching feel.

One of the reasons we ended up using that take is because, since we recorded it at this lake house, we had this beautiful view of the lake. During the first take, Josh Oliver starts getting this huge grin on his face. There were these two guys on a boat out on the lake and they caught this huge fish right in the middle of the take. We never stopped playing but we all looked out there, and we’re all smiling and silently cheering these guys on because they were so stoked to catch this big fish. We thought we have to keep this take now, because if not it’s the one that got away.

Andrew: I hit a butterfly when I was driving down the road and it really bummed me out. Animals have no ideas what cars are. For something to come out of nowhere at 70 miles per hour has got to be the weirdest thing in the world. And that got me thinking about who had made the first car, and it turned out it was this guy, Karl Benz. And when he made this car he had no idea where it was going to lead and how terrible it was going to be for the environment.

For our own convenience we destroy a lot of this world and don’t give a lot back as humans. And my car hitting that butterfly felt like a really strong metaphor for what we’re doing to the earth. It’s a very delicate ecosystem and we’re killing all its intricate little working parts.

Andrew: Yeah, I was just riding down the road and I saw this butterfly coming – or I guess I was going towards it – but whatever the case is, we were coming together (laughs). I couldn’t miss it, and it was this huge, beautiful butterfly, and just (slaps hands together) right into the windshield. I was like, ‘Ah, goddammit.’ That was a beautiful creature that I just destroyed in my search for convenience, you now, just to be able to drive down the road. Obviously, late at night I’d sit down to write that song with the total intention of paying homage to this butterfly and it ends up talking about the fuel industry and how, you know, cars are contributing to destroying our planet and all that good stuff.

But I feel like that’s one of the greatest things about songwriting too, is that it doesn’t have to be that specific. I think the music itself adds a lot of depth to what you’re saying, without having to say too much. I think that song is a good case point for that, where you just start off with an idea and the song itself will kind of almost tell you the way it wants to go, if you’re listening for it, which I try to do.

Andrew: Sometimes I’m gonna write a song and I have no idea what I’m going to write about, but I can tell I really want to write one. So I wrote this next one about writer’s block. [Plays “Nightbird”]

Andrew: I was showing the group that tune, and Clint, the bass player, came up with that bass line. The one that we ended up building the whole orchestral part off of. And they were in San Francisco, down in the Green Room, and he was coming up with that bass line, I was like, dude, that’s awesome, we gotta remember that. So did a little voice memo and captured that. So we played it all live in the studio, but then went back and added the parts to it. To really flesh that one out.

Emily: "I felt like that video was really powerful ... and I probably shed a few tears the first time I saw the edit. Some of the guys that made the video experienced the loss of a parent at a young age, too. And so it felt like they really nailed the portrayal of that in a way that felt really honest and not over the top."

""Golden Embers" is probably the tune that takes it [grieving process] by the horns the most, and it was written pretty early on ... but I don't think it was until most of the songs had been written and we started to think of them as a group that we realized it was more of a common thread that came up in a lot of these songs, [...]”

Andrew: "That's one that Emily sings, it's one of my favorites on the record. It was actually one that I wrote about her grandfather. We got to spend some time with him when he was kind of getting close to leaving this world. We would just sit down and listen to him tell stories."

Emily: "He had such a love for travel, and specifically driving. He was of such a different generation than us, and I don't think could entirely wrap his head around what we do for a living. But we could relate when we talked about travel and driving and highways. He loved that we went to so many places, and he saw that as such a form of education. So a lot of that part of his personality is wrapped up in that song, too."

Andrew: It definitely was a big inspiration. My dad is a huge classic country fan. And because this record deals with so much of the healing process with losing my mom, I wanted to write a song for my dad and kind of think about it from his perspective about, you know, losing his wife. And now his kids are all grown up, and so he’s going back home to this house that used to be full of life and full of energy and now it’s just him. So I wanted to write him kind of like a classic country tune from his perspective, and that’s what came out of that.

Emily: And I like how that tune—it has such a specific meaning for Andrew—but I also can hear it as sort of a relationship tune. I think of it that way because we sing it as a duet. I think of how often people can be in a relationship for a long time and you start to get that feeling of loneliness and like you’re with someone all the time but you’re still not fully connected to them. And so I like that juxtaposition with us both singing it together.

Interview: That’s a great answer. Because I was going to ask why did you decide to do harmonies on that song because it’s about being lonely. But that makes a lot of sense to me.

Emily: Andrew and I used to talk about this when we first started singing together, because we felt like there wasn't necessarily anything tonally about our voices that went well together, but that we just try and sing really straight and evenly, and that somehow that kind of lends itself to blending the two together."

Andrew: “I think Emily's selling herself short there, because I've definitely got a lilt, and some timing things that I go to and do and she's really good about following those. I would say a lot of that is due to Emily's ability to sing harmony."

Interviewer: Well what’s it feel like when you do hit it? When you nail it and you know you got it right?

Emily: It is such a good feeling. There’s this buzz you hear. It’s almost like there’s a third voice there. Which, in that “Suspended in Heaven” chorus, there is a third voice. Josh Oliver is singing with us. But when we’re singing just the two of us live or on any track and you hit just that perfect critical point, it’s almost like there’s an extra sound in there.

David Roberts: The opening notes of "Hey Stranger" [the first track on Blindfaller] echo the opening notes of "Old Ties & Companions" [the first track on Such Jubilee]. Was that on purpose?

Emily Frantz: We actually struggled with that. We felt like "Hey Stranger" was the first track, but we were wondering if we shouldn't do it for that reason. But I kinda like that now. It's a bit of a nod to that record, but the records themselves are not all that similar.

Emily: I think I was a little more hands-on in some of the arranging, in particular with the lead track “Hey Stranger.” With that one we went into the studio and recorded in a completely different way. It was in a different time signature and had a totally different sound at first. We weren’t really happy with it. So I was hands-on with the chord structure and the rhythm of that one, which was really fun for me. But, for the most part, they are all Andrew’s lyrics and melodies.

Andrew: "Wildfire" was written probably three days before we went into the studio. We showed that tune to the guys on the record the day we decided to record it. We hadn't really thought about an arrangement, so we kind of just went for it. At the end of the first solo section, I actually forgot to come in with the lyrics, because I was thinking, "What the hell is the next lyric?" So we just decided to keep playing, and it ended up being this really great spot for Allyn Love on the pedal steel. Those little happy accidents make for some character on the record.

Andrew: It’s one of those songs—which I’m sure y'all got some—that when you're done you're surprised at how, like, complete it feels, you know? It doesn't always happen. And that one when I got to the end of, I was like, sweet. It says what I wanted it to say. And then as time has passed, [we could take] even more from it. Just, in its simplicity and how it doesn't just hit you over the head with anything. It gives a stance but also leaves a lot of it open so you can still draw different conclusions from it.

Arran Fagan: Another great one is “My Blinded Heart”—can you tell me what this song is about?

Emily: Yeah, that one definitely stayed more in that country feeling vein. I think that was one that was born in the studio with the bass player and the drummer because they were able to take it into those awesome half time parts that really give it such a fun groove to play and to sink in to. I think that is definitely a sort of relationship song, it has a lot of long relationship sentences in it, and sort of navigating those feelings of dedication but also the restlessness that sometimes creeps up for most people probably.

“There’s little things here and there, like at the end of ‘My Blinded Heart’ we do this ending section that starts on the 7th chord of the progression and it just goes between the 7th and the 1st (chords), and everyone’s just kind of floating in there. And that was an idea that Kyle, our drummer, and Clint, the bass player, had, and we all loved it. We were just messing around with it in the studio and it ended up being a big turning point for us because then we realized that not only did we have musicians that were capable of taking sections like that and just running with it, but also that these guys just have some great ideas. We all tried to open ourselves up to everyone’s ideas and I think that’s what led it to sounding like it does. It was more a collaborative production.”

“I think ‘Hard Travelin’’ was probably the biggest shock to me because it came out like straight out of a honkytonk. The first time we ever got the five guys together we did a demo session. I called Kyle, who played the drums, because we had a mutual friend. We had never played with him before and so he came in and just for fun at the end of the day we did ‘Hard Travelin’’ straight honkytonk. And Josh was just ripping it on electric guitar and Emily and I sang it live and sang it really hard. It was a demo session. We weren’t gonna use it. We were planning on doing that song a little more bluegrassy. So we messed around with a bluegrassy version a little bit but then at the end of the recording session we went back to the original demo and were like ‘that’s a take.’ I think that was probably the biggest surprise for me because it was the first time we had ever gone into the studio to just completely fool around and ended up coming out with a really great take. I’m glad it ended up on the record the way it did. I think it’s how it was supposed to be.”

David Roberts: What’s a song you had to wrestle with for a long time to get right?

Andrew: "Gospel Shoes" was one that I recollect was written over a period of about two months. I like to be kind of minimalistic as far as lyrics go. I love it when you can get one line that can be taken in five different directions. That's one of the things I like to do most of all, really start paring down. If I can take an entire section out of a song, take snippets and include them in earlier sections, I'll definitely do that.

"Gospel Shoes" was a subject matter — I wanted to make sure I was really happy with every line. That was one I toiled over for a few months.

Then you have a song like "Wildfire" — I didn't change a single thing about it after it was written the first time. It was done within the first 15 minutes of writing it.

Arran Fagan: The last song on the record, “Take This Heart of Gold,” hit me hard, especially the line, “Take this heart of gold and melt it down.” What is this song to you?

Emily: Aw man, I love that song too! It’s had a bit of a transformation before we recorded it, because it had a little more of a country feel for a while. I think we realized that we just wanted to let the lyrics and the emotion of the song shine and took it a bit more in that ballad-y direction. But about the line “take this heart of gold and melt it down”—I love that line so much. Andrew said we were listening to a Tom Waits record and he thought he heard that as a line in a song, but then we realized it wasn’t. He just misheard it. He loved that line so he held on to it for a long time, really wanting to write a song about it or at least in that vein.

I guess you could say the line “Take this heart of gold and melt it down” means changing your heart but also the ultimate giving of your heart to someone else, saying this is what I have and I’ll let it be completely yours? I don’t know… I’m on a real cheese train right now (laughs).

Andrew: “Little Worlds” is probably my favorite one on the record. Lyrically, it’s a little more scattered, it’s less specific than some of the other tunes, but I think the feel of that one’s really cool too. It came together in a great way.

Andrew: That one, the place I grew up home to, called Jump Mountain, it’s just outside of Lexington, Virginia. There’s some old folklore surrounding the mountain. The legend goes — I’ll give you the Cliff’s Notes version — this young Native American girl was in love with this one guy, and her father wanted her to marry this other guy, this rich guy. So they had a race up the mountain to see who would catch her, and whoever caught her would win. So, instead of allowing herself to be caught, she ends up jumping off the mountain. So the whole moral behind it is, that her ghost rises up every night and makes that same run. So the song is basically her dad reflecting, watching his daughter’s ghost rise up.

Emily: I really like “That Wrecking Ball”. If I had to pick one song, I think that’s my favorite song.

Andrew: It’s just one of those heavy things. I think, just the timing in our lives, when it happened. And just the fact it happened in school when all these kids were brutally murdered. I think the point of the tune was just to shine a spotlight on that, but also violence in general. You can’t stop violence with violence.

Emily: It’s just one of those things too. Like, I think, with all of our music, and with anybody’s music, part of what compels — and I, again, don’t write the songs — but from being around it and thinking about it a lot, it’s not like Andrew woke up one day and was like, “I need to write a song about that.” It’s like those things that happen that are so — like you almost emotionally can’t process them because they’re so heavy. You can’t even think about it and make any kind of sense of it. That I feel like it’s almost inevitable that some kind of song or expression has to come out of that. Because you can’t, like, talk about it. You can’t figure it out. You can’t make it better. You just have to sort of like let it come out in a different way.

That song is basically… the night before that happened, our roommate at the time had had her 30th birthday party, so we threw down and woke up feeling terrible and I’m just lying in bed on Twitter, and that’s when I heard about it and I came out into the living room where they all were and we’re all just laid out feeling so sorry for ourselves because we poisoned ourselves the night before, and that’s kind of the first line of that song, it says, “one morning after drinking”.

Andrew: It’s not the sentiment of “no matter how shitty we feel right now, tomorrow we won’t be hung over anymore” but, like, “these kids still won’t be here”. The heaviest moment that we’ve ever faced doesn’t even come close to how heavy that realization must be for the parents and everyone involved. That song just kind of came out of that suffering and is what it is.

Emily: [...] “Daylight” to me is one of the most fun ones, fun to play live, and it has that sort of train beat sort of groove. It’s one of the more —

Andrew: Upbeat numbers?

Emily: Yeah. A little bit upbeat, mid-tempo! [...]

Andrew: I wrote that as the anti-"mansion of gold" in the Bible. It seems too much like an infomercial for the afterlife; I'd like it to be not so much about money and riches, and just the solid things you can build your life on.

Andrew: That's basically my dad talking to a bunch of his friends about going to see my mom on the other side of Jordan, going to see her in the afterlife. It's a song that portrays his sense of humor. It uses a few quotes I've heard him say throughout my life. His only reaction to the song was, "Did you just call me a damn crow?"

David Roberts: Emily, how do you pick the songs you sing lead on?

Emily: Usually it's a joint decision, or we'll try it out. Sometimes it feels totally wrong, but then other ones — I think "Hey Stranger," from the very beginning, was one I was singing. And same with "There Was a Time," from This Side of Jordan. Certain ones just immediately feel like I should do it. And I do like to sing lead when we find the right song.

Andrew: This is one that I wrote after a friend of mine went through a pretty bad divorce. He called me up and told me that his wife was leaving him. I said, "well, I'm really sorry about that. I'll write a song about it." It was my way of consoling him, but I ended up writing the song from his ex-wife's perspective. So, what are friends for, right? We're going to get Emily to sing this next song for you. It's called "There Was a Time".

Andrew: A friend of mine got a divorce. I went back and was thinking about past failed romances that I'd been through and put them together with what he's going through, and into a song.

Andrew: After the accident, was when (Emily) and I started getting back together. Emily really looked after me during that time. It made me realize that true love isn't true love without the right person.

Andrew: I stumbled home from a bar one night really late, and I was living by myself at the time and kind of down in the dumps. I wrote it at like 4 a.m. You romanticize going out and getting drunk with your friends, but then it turns into something you can't get rid of.

Andrew: That song's about how we walk right up to the edge and think we'll never fall. Flirting with these disastrous things. Walking right up to the door and peering in ... until the guy at the door grabs your hand and pulls you in.

He wrote “The Doorman,” which traces the murky line between curiosity and addiction, after hearing about a friend’s band that had to push out one of its members with a heroin problem, after many attempts to intervene. “You get a little too close to the edge, thinking ‘Yeah, everybody else fell in, but I’m not gonna. I just want to check it out and see how close I can get.’ And then realizing all the sudden that you can’t turn back,” Marlin says. “The Doorman is just the guy standing at the gate saying, ‘Hey, I’ve got no friends over here. Where are all my friends?’ So you come up and try to comfort this dude, and all the sudden he grabs your hand and pulls you in, and you’re stuck.”

Andrew: I think it has a lot of really cool imagery in it. There's this heroine of a woman capable of anything, patching holes in the setting sun ... also all these needle references because they did send me home with a lot of pain pills.

Andrew: There a law that got passed here in North Carolina that makes civil unions and gay marriage completely illegal. The song is written to Adam from a secret lover of his that's male, and he's like, "What the hell, man? Everyone's using you as this example of marriage, but yet we share this love together. All I need you to do is make the people see that love is just love."

Andrew: I wrote that with a friend of mine, Dave Hutchinson, and we were coming back from Asheville one night and we were bored and tired and it's like a three-and-a-half hour drive. So we’re trying to stay up and I'm like, 'Hey, let's write a song." I figured we'd write a country song, and if we were writing a country song it had to be a waltz and it had to be about whiskey.

Andrew: That song was actually written about six years ago. I was kind of taking some of the stuff I went through with my mom dying and about death in general. That was pretty much the first folk tune I'd ever tried to write.

Alright we’re gonna start this one off with kind of a slow tune. My folks are here. This is one I wrote for my sister, and she’s here. Her name is Rebecca and I’ve called her “sister” my whole life and I probably will until I die.