Photo: Emily Pinto and Shade Standard

Our shared language is getting tested. Perhaps never before have we seen a time so rich in the diversity of sound in what we the writers and talkers call country, folk, Americana, country rock, cosmic country, psyche country, ambient cou… on and on. This burgeoning swell of artists grows from every corner of our country, bursting beyond their regional bases to set the endless highway alight. Here at Saddle Mountain we are always chasing these fireflies, these beacons to push our gaze beyond the arena tours into a more experimental space. Two such artists are touring together this summer, so we thought it wise to capture this moment in musical time. We sat down with Mikaela Davis and Jeffrey Silverstein to talk about finding one’s way through the nomenclature to a career.

Saddle Mountain Post: The term Americana is holding on for dear life as artists like you continue to explore new space in which some common language is not just getting tested but destroyed. You’ve both created space for yourselves in a magical way, which I think is one of the hardest things to do in the music industry. Mikaela, would love to start with you and how you found your way to the harp, and what you’ve experienced building your band these last few years.

Mikaela Davis: I grew up in Rochester, New York. I started playing harp when I was eight, through my public school, which is really amazing and unusual. I was extremely lucky. It was out in Penfield, NY, one of the suburbs out there, and they happen to have a really unique music program that offered harp. I just fell in love with it. My mom says I would wake up and practice before school. I don’t really remember that but good for me. I am not a morning person anymore.

SMP: And so a rather academic music upbringing.

MD: Totally. I have a degree in harp performance, and I went to the Crane School of Music at SUNY Potsdam in New York, way up north, a college town, kind of in the middle of nowhere. Beautiful in the north country, but not a lot to do but practice.

SMP: Was your idea to become a touring musician or continue academics?

MD: Originally, when I went to school, I thought, oh, I’m going to get my undergraduate degree, I’m going to get my masters. I’m going to get my doctorate and teach at a college or find an orchestra position somewhere. That was my original goal. But all the while I was writing music, and that was more of my passion than my career at the time.

SMP: When did you start writing?

MD: Eleven, but I just wrote for myself, really. And then in college, I signed with my first booking agency and got a manager, and was touring on my breaks, and decided, well, maybe this is something I can take more seriously and continue instead of continuing on the classical harp path. So that’s what I did. And I love playing music with my band. I love meeting new people and being inspired by music from all over.

SMP: So fairly early you found yourself on the road, creating music. What were those conversations with bookers, promoters and the like? How did they deal with you?

MD: I don’t really know how to answer the question about where I fit in in the music world right now, because I’ve definitely been placed into the jam scene, because I am associated with Grateful Dead members. I love learning how to improvise and stretching out songs. The fan base in that world is awesome. People come out to all your shows and support you. But I don’t feel like that’s my genre, and I don’t really know what it is, to be totally honest. Yes we stretch out songs and improvise, but if you sat down and listened to ‘And Southern Star,’ you wouldn’t walk away categorizing that as a jam record. It’s more of a folk country rock thing going on I suppose. There’s that pedal steel twang people assign to country. I’m just influenced by so many different kinds of musicians and music; I don’t really know where to place myself. Just the other day I was trying to explain to a friend what Jeffrey’s music sounds like and I stumbled for words and think, here just listen to it.

Photo by Emily Pinto

SMP: Perfect segue. Jeffrey?

Jeffrey Silverstein: I want to think it’s just a deep love and appreciation for music of all kinds. I’ve always been drawn to music that is eclectic but accessible, that pulls from a lot of things can avoid feeling disjointed. Where you’re coming to an understanding about the person that’s making it. Circles Around The Sun was a band I saw as an early example of that for me, of a band that kind of proves to me that you could do that. And funny enough, the band that introduced me to the Grateful Dead, or having a larger appreciation of the Dead, is a band called Akron/Family, which, funny enough, their founding drummer plays with me now. And that group gets lumped in with some of this early freak folk, the movement that I feel was the step before what Mikaela and I are kind of doing now. I think for a while it was freak folk. Then psych folk. And I feel like now it’s all just becoming cosmic or psychedelic as the leading words.

SMP: All those terms are becoming pretty interchangeable.

JS: yes and its kind of fun to have a foot in the jam world. Foot in the country world. All things considered, I don’t have a country bone in my body. I am from the sleepy suburbs of northeast New Jersey. It’s interesting being placed in those categories by others, by the people watching you and experiencing you, and they’re the ones that put you in those boxes. And I think if you get too wrapped up in any of that, you just kind of lose pretty quickly, lose sight of what’s really going on. But it’s interesting because it’s a question you have to consider as a musician. You will continue to be asked about it for as long as you play music.

SMP: How did you come to your sound Jeffrey?

JS: I don’t know. I would say I kind of came to all of this stuff through the 2000s. Freak folk stuff during that time set the stage for me. My love of country music came later on in life for me, and that, I think was really just a virtue of falling in love a lot of solo guitar music and also and ambient music. But then simultaneously falling in love with the pedal steel guitar. Once I realized that, a lot of those things became connected, and I think I found my pocket inside there.

Photo by Shade Standard

MD: Which is such a beautiful thing and such a smart way to be; I’m actually not going to try to tell you what it is, because that might put you in a zone that you’re expecting something that then it’s not.

JS: I think context is just super important. I think people need context to be able to make sense of things. And labels are one or genres are one way of providing context. So I think it does serve a purpose for music at large, but I don’t know if it always serves a creative purpose for the person making music.

SMP: Mikaela, tell me about how you deal with this when speaking with your booking agent about planning tours and venues?

MD: When I was first signed to an agency and got a manager, I was really young, 20 or something. I was still finding myself, changing my music constantly and developing. What you want to be doing and, and how you want to perform and play, and what music you want to play is always changing. It can be annoying when people tell you, oh, you’re still developing your sound, or you’re still young, and so we’re not going to book you on this tour, this or that, because you’re still finding your voice. But I have had a long career already. I’ve been touring and putting out music since my first album came out in 2012. I’ve been touring a lot, opening for bands a lot in my career, and then I realized, after a certain number of years, that I really just needed to rip the Band-Aid off and start doing my own tours and just start building something from the ground up.

SMP: Back to the unique sound and business.

MD: There’s no right answer, wrong answer, right way to go in this business, because no one ever knows what’s going to hit or what’s going to work for a certain artist. I feel things have started to fall more into place since I’ve found that maybe I fit in this psych world more so than just the jam world. For example, I played Austin psych fest a couple months ago. I was really excited about that. And read a comment somewhere. Someone said, oh, Isn’t that interesting that Mikaela is on this festival because she’s a jam band. It’s funny someone would draw such a hard line between jam and psych.

SMP: Jeffrey, coming from your side; it’s almost as if you two are kind of meeting in the middle here on some levels, right? Everyone wants to put you into, I think, a psych thing, but keep me honest, do you feel as if you get more of the country in in terms of people coming at you?

JS: I think Mikaela made a really good point. I think sometimes people are kind also confused non what to do with me. Sometimes I feel confused about my own place in it. I think in Portland, specifically, you kind of do have a more kind of straightforward country thing, a person with guitar kind of thing. And I don’t necessarily fit in with that even though you see a guy, a guitar and pedal steel and stuff. I like to think about as if bands are creating ecosystems for themselves. Mikaela I have always been inspired by the kind of ecosystem you’ve created for your music.  Circles Around the Sun and Grateful Shred and how all three of those acts kind of are their own thing but can come together and support one another. I’ve always thought that to be really beautiful. I’ve also just been drawn not only to the music but by the work ethic too. I have other friends that are in different versions of that sort of space, in different parts of the country. I don’t necessarily always feel like I have that for myself to be perfectly honest. I feel really lucky to be associated with John Lee Shannon and Circles Around the Sun and that crew. That mutual kinship or friendship and appreciation has just been such a beautiful thing. All the more reason I am so stoked to be able to open for Mikaela on this upcoming tour. I’m just now at the cusp of getting to have experiences, like being asked to go out with bands that I look up to and admire. I’ve been booking and promoting my own music for also over ten years, so it’s a really exciting moment for me. But I’m also so happy that I have that kind of business language and knowledge having had no choice but to be so deep in it, to now know better how to use help more effectively.

MD: But really, it’s not going to be the album, or the help that gets you somewhere. It’s still going to be, you totally doing it.

JS: It is. it’s about meeting people and finding yourself with that core group of musicians and industry people that you can just count on. It gets easier to reach out and make something happen. I also say this knowing I’ve been so lucky and so grateful to work with Alissa from my label, Arrowhawk, who is now also my manager.

MD: Having your team does really matter, but it has to be people that really want to work alongside you, not them determining what they think the end game is.

JS: Getting the manager doesn’t mean that okay, I’m going to start getting all these big offers or get an agent. It doesn’t mean, all right, I’m finally going to get on all these festivals. Because it’s really just about continuing to tour and meet people, and that’s how folks will remember, oh, Jeffrey, I saw him DJ at Pickathon, and that was cool. ‘m going to check him out and have him maybe play my festival. That’s really how it’s happened for me. But it all matters. I mean, you need to have the team as there’s all these moving parts.

MD: It’s ten fingers. Everyone needs to be doing something.

SMP: What about your famous baby hand baby finger, though?

MP: Okay, the baby finger too, yes, but not on the harp.

SMP: You know I love you stepping in with Grateful Shred and you feel so natural with all those musicians. Given the jam band conversation, do you go out of your way to spend time in different venues or touring with acts less jamband?

MD: I mean, touring with Circles Around The Sun really make sense. I think that’s a really cool pairing as I see them similar to me in that they have that one foot in the jam world, but then they’re pretty much a disco band, a dance band. And you have to get the right slots at a festival, or have some moment happen for everyone to realize the same thing at the same time. It happens faster for some people than others. And sometimes you’re just working your whole life at it. But none of us would be musicians if we wanted to have lots of money and security. We just love music and love these connections with other musicians and, and playing.

SMP: to that point, I’m fascinated. What is that balance for the two of you of business and music. Given the economy at the moment, the inflation, all this macro shit that has nothing to do with music, but then also has everything to do with music, the industry, the streaming rates, etcetera.

MD: It still fluctuates for me whether I’m going to make money or not on tour. But one thing that has saved my life is merch; selling merch on the road, and just getting my shit together with that, learning what sells and finding the right artist that that you click with. I started working with Madalyn Stefanak a year and a half ago maybe, and pretty much have worked with just her alone on everything. And records too of course, but even though I’m selling my records, I have to buy them from my label and then sell them, so you don’t make too much per record. But if I’m printing shirts or stickers, patches or anything else, that’s my thing that I’ll make money on it after expenses are paid. That has really, really helped me. But it’s tough. I want to be able to pay everybody more, including myself. For now, we’re all just kind of riding the wave and, just hoping that it starts to get better.

SMP: How often do you say no to gigs?

MD: You have to say no to certain shows, because it doesn’t pay enough. If you just keep saying yes to everything, then it may just stay that way longer than it could. But if you create some sort of demand, okay, they’re not going to play in their hometown unless it’s something very special. It’s a constant juggling act. I really love doing session work, so especially in the winter time when I’m not playing too many shows, I’ll try to load up on that.

JS: It’s a very large conversation that’s happening on every level for musicians right now. When you really boil it down, none of it happens without a Mikaela or the actual artist, right? Therefore, on some level, you are the most important part of the equation. And yet, in so many facets of the music industry, you are the last person considered. And there’s that ‘you should be lucky to get blank.’

MD: And that’s a really dangerous mentality to be in.

JS: I see what Mikaela is doing. I think that’s what I’m trying to do, kind of tip-toeing my way in and practicing more of that, saying no, as Mikaela was also mentioning, I think I’ve also just had to carry the work of the booking and whatever for so long. I absolutely have this skill set now to do that for myself, and will continue to as needed, but I’m also really excited about being able to kind of let some of that go when I can or say no to things that just don’t make sense.

MD: I love how you talk about that. One of the most important things we have to do is help ourselves in our careers, and one of the fundamental parts of building is learning to do it yourself, DIY starting off and having to figure out how to book a show and how to talk to people. And it’s something really important that I kind of missed out on. In my really early years, I was getting myself shows in Rochester, but that was pretty much the extent of it. I just kind of rode the wave for a really long time, having a manager and a booking agent and not really thinking about, well wait, where are they booking me? Does this make sense? Am I hitting up the same place every three or four months to try to build something? I didn’t really think about those things for years. And I think that’s part of the reason why I just kind of stayed here for a long time. As much as it sucks to say, one of the things that helped me start to do better was actually treating myself like a business and actually looking at everything with a magnifying glass.

JS: When I talk to a lot of people right now, whether they have an agent or not, one of the hardest things right now, the thing that feels really heavy for musicians is booking. Just that landscape is intimidating, understanding how that looks and works at different levels. That can be quickly disheartening.

SMP: You may be the most active artist right now Jeffrey on this world building around the music. You’re still largely booking yourself. You’re doing the substack, mix tape memberships on top of consistent DJ gigs. Oh by the way you have a day job. You’ve got all of these irons in the fire. It’s Mikaela’s point of looking at everything with a magnifying glass. These are conscious considerate decisions.

JS: I mean, I guess, in a way, I go back to my conversation about having an ecosystem. I’m creating one for myself. DJing is a part of that. Writing is a part of that, and working with illustrators and other artists is part of that world. I mean, I met Mikaela because I was DJ at Pickathon, so boom, right away, talk about furthering my connection and ecosystem. That’s why I met Mikaela and John [Lee Shannon] for the first time. People will come to a show now of mine because they read something I wrote because they saw me DJ. That’s a really neat thing for me. Makes me think of my manager and label head. She really helps me think through a lot of that kind of stuff and helps me step outside of myself. Her expertise as someone that has been a publicist, owned a record label, now works for a management company. Her perspective. I’m just really grateful to be able to have a person to do that with that that makes me feel less alone in all of it.

SMP: Running these businesses, do you two feel like you’re just working basically nonstop all day, every day?

JS: I have a different lens on it given I’m living this dual life of school teacher/musician life, which I’ve done for a long time and and continue to navigate. I have just learned to work in seasons. I think we’re told right now that we need to create at all costs, and I don’t think that’s true.

MD: No, I think it’s extremely important to just chill, just go home and let yourself do nothing. I’m trying to give myself that mindset, but it’s still difficult to do. I’m home right now. I haven’t even been home for a week, and I’m already, oh my gosh, what am I doing? I need to do something. I need to write more songs. I need to organize this or that, or I need to get ready for the next tour. But I’m trying to tell myself now it’s okay, you can chill, you’re allowed to just go outside and have a swim and do nothing. It’s a roller coaster but isn’t any career or life? But there’s always, those moments, when you’re on the road where you feel so thankful that you’re in beautiful scenery in Montana or something. All those moments. I would never be here otherwise, or I would never meet Jeffrey otherwise. Or, you Adam. It’s just, there’s these moments where you can just see it all and it’s really cool.

JS: And I think a lot of those moments sometimes are totally unrelated to even the performance itself. A lot of times when you feel that, it’s because of what you’re looking at on a long drive, or the person you’re sitting next to in the van. You turn around and think, I’ve been playing music with that person for however many years? Holy shit. Can you believe where that’s taken us? I mean, don’t get me wrong, there’s the show high, right? But a lot of times those moments are, to me at least, can be totally disconnected from whether or not the show was good.

MD: Oh, absolutely. When it comes down to it, it’s not just about the show. You’re on stage for an hour and a half or something, but there’s the other, 22 hours a day that you want to feel good about too. So just surrounding yourself with people you love is so important.