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Portland, OR-based singer, songwriter, and producer John Craigie adapts moments of solitude into stories perfectly suited for old Americana fiction anthologies. Instead of leaving them on dog-eared pages, he projects them widescreen in flashes of simmering soul and folk eloquence. On his 2022 full-length album, Mermaid Salt, we witness revenge unfurled in flames, watch a landlocked mermaid’s escape, and fall asleep under a meteor shower.
After selling out shows consistently coast-to-coast and earning acclaim from Rolling Stone, Glide Magazine, No Depression, and many more, his unflinching honesty ties these ten tracks together.
The album comes from the solitude and loneliness of lockdown in the Northwest. Someone whose life was touring, traveling, and having lots of human interaction is faced with an undefinable amount of time without those things. So, he began writing new songs and envisioning an album that was different from his past records. The sound of everyone playing live in a room together was traded for the sound of song construction with an unknown amount of instruments and musicians—a quiet symphony.
Rather than steal away to a cabin or hole up in a house with friends, Craigie opted to set up shop at the OK Theater in Enterprise, OR with longtime collaborator Bart Budwig behind the board as engineer. A rotating cast of musicians shuffled in and out safely, distinguishing the process from the communal recording of previous releases. The core players included Justin Landis, Cooper Trail, and Nevada Sowle. Meanwhile, Shook Twins lent their signature vocal harmonies, Bevin Foley arranged, composed, and performed strings, and Ben Walden dropped in for guitar and violin plucking parts.
“Instruments were scattered around the theater and microphones placed in various spots,” he recalls. “It’s hard to say who all played what exactly.”
As such, the spirit in the room guided everyone. On “Distance,” warm piano glows alongside a glitchy beat as he softly laments, “I could lose you to the loneliness, vast and infinite.” Then, there’s “Helena.” A jazz-y bass line snakes through head-nodding percussion as he relays an incendiary parable of a mother and son in exile. He croons, “She said fire was how we’d make ‘em pay. As I ran across the fields, she would scream, ‘Light it up son’,” uplifted in a conflagration of Shook Twins’ harmonies. Strings echo in the background as his vocals quake front-and-center on “Street Mermaid.”
Elsewhere, the guitar-laden “Microdose” beguiles and bewitches with an intoxicating refrain dedicated to a time where he “Microdosed for months and months, dissolve my ego in the acid.” Everything culminates on the glassy beat-craft and glistening guitars of “Perseids” where he sings, “There’s always a new heart after the old heart. Maybe a new heart is enough.”
During this period, he explored the environment around him “from the Oregon coasts to the waterfalls” and read books about Levon Helm, Billie Holiday, and Ani DiFranco.
“I got time to silence all the noise and chaos of touring and look inward,” he observes.
Craigie had reached a series of watershed moments in tandem with Mermaid Salt. Beyond headlining venues such as The Fillmore and gracing the stage of Red Rocks Amphitheater, his 2020 offering Asterisk The Universe earned unanimous tastemaker applause. Rolling Stone noted, “tracks like ‘Don’t Deny’ and ‘Climb Up’ bridge a Sixties and Seventies songwriter vibe with the laid-back cool of Jack Johnson, an early supporter of Craigie,” while Glide Magazine hailed it as “one of his best records.” Perhaps, No Depression put it best, “For many weary and heavy- listeners hearted, the album might be exactly what they need.” Along the way, he generated over 40 million total streams and counting, speaking to his unassuming impact.
In the end, Craigie offers a sense of peace on Mermaid Salt.
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Grace Rowland (formerly Grace Park) is an artist/musician from Central Texas. She makes cut paper, stained glass, graphic art, and is frontwoman of Austin psych-folk band The Deer.
Grace Corinne Rowland was born in Lubbock, Texas in 1984. Not long after her family moved to New Mexico, where they lived in Las Vegas and later, Albuquerque. Her mother Annette, her father David, and her older sister Jennifer encouraged Grace to create from the time she began exhibiting gifts. From an early age she both sang and drew, fascinated with broadway musicals and comic books. The family moved to Marble Falls, Texas when Grace was 11. She performed in plays, honed her artistic skills, and sang in church, school, & competition choir until her graduation in 2002. She received a Louise-Merrick scholarship and studied vocal education at the Texas State School of Music. It was there she met future bandmates Jesse Dalton and Michael McLeod. After a battle with stage-fright, she began writing and performing in 2005. She finished her vocal degree while touring with her first working band, The Blue Hit. The trio toured for many years, went on to other projects like Middlespoon and The Brother Brothers, and still make music together occasionally.
Grace Rowland changed her stage name in 2011 to Grace Park (based on her then-husband Silas Parker's name), and began work with Michael McLeod to record an album of her songs: An Argument For Observation by Grace Park & The Deer. The project formed its core members, began collaborating and touring together, and became simply The Deer. They have been one of Austin Music Awards' Best Performing Folk Bands for three years, and two of their album covers (designed by Grace) were among Austin Music Industry Awards' Best Album Art in 2014 and 2017. They also received a major grant in 2018 from Austin music patron group Black Fret.
During The Deer's formation, Grace transitioned from barista to freelance artist/touring musician. In 2013 her friend and bandmate Stephanie Bledsoe passed away; her influence can be seen in much of Grace's art after that. She spent the next several years highly productive, living and working at Thigh High Gardens in San Marcos, Texas - the permaculture farm Stephanie created with Silas and a remarkable community of volunteers, who continue to keep it growing.
Grace's home and studio are now in South Austin. She continues to make paper and stained glass art on commission, display her original work in galleries and shops in Central Texas and London, design graphics for music-related media, and is a working musician on tour part of the year. Aside from her main project The Deer, she has performed and recorded with several acts including Alejandro Escovedo, MilkDrive, Roger Sellers (Bayonne), Abram Shook, Fire in the Pines, Jack Wilson, & more.