HELLO STRANGER: Introducing No Depression’s Summer 2024 Journal + Playlist

EDITOR’S NOTE: Managing Editor Hilary Saunders’ letter, below, opens our Summer 2024 quarterly journal, featuring guest editor Béla Fleck, original cover art by Ian Felice of The Felice Brothers, and so much more. Buy the Summer 2024 issue in print or digitally here. Better yet, start a subscription with this issue and help support No Depression’s music journalism all year long.

Back in March, I got the chance to see singer-songwriters Aoife O’Donovan and Rosanne Cash in conversation together as part of The Grammy Museum’s New York City program series. O’Donovan’s latest record, All My Friends, had just come out, and the two discussed the centennial of women’s suffrage, history versus historical fiction, the creative process, and more.

The album, her fourth solo studio LP, came to fruition thanks to commissions from the Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra and the FreshGrass Foundation (No Depression’s nonprofit publisher). And although O’Donovan maintained in our conversation for a story that ran on No Depression’s website that she’s not a political songwriter, the record was inspired by the 19th Amendment, which prohibits gender-based voter discrimination, and suffrage activist Carrie Chapman Catt.

These topics hit even more heavily in yet another contentious election year. O’Donovan spoke about living in Central Florida, embracing local activism, and volunteering to raise awareness for regional candidates and statewide ballot measures. But while the concept album’s narrative remains almost completely in the past, O’Donovan and Cash’s conversation contextualized its messages not just in the present, but into the future.

Both women on stage that night bonded over being mothers of daughters. And Cash, after asking O’Donovan who today carries on the Catt’s spirit and momentum, mentioned the song “Someone to Follow” off All My Friends. Together, they alluded to the lyrics:

I know whichever way the wind blows, you’re gonna face it.
Stand tall, you can be someone to follow.
You’re gonna make it.

According to O’Donovan, the song — which integrates Noam Pikelny’s measured banjo picking and Rob Burger’s chameleon-like according playing — began as a musing on Catt’s personal life before she became president of the National Women’s Suffrage Association, but quickly morphed into something more pointed for her own daughter.

Cash replied, “I think one of the chief responsibilities of a mother is to be optimistic. You can’t steal your child’s future by pessimism.”

Despite an evening full of brilliant music and conversation, it’s that line in particular that has stuck with me for months. I’m not a mother, although members of our ND team are; I look to them and so many other women for the qualities that make a role model, caregiver, working professional, and leader. But those attributes can often be skills-based, so Cash’s emphasis on radical hope as life choice felt especially profound.

Here at No Depression, we also have to work under the assumption of radical optimism — that storytelling is vital, that music still matters, that traditions still carry. It’s particularly exciting, then, to welcome songwriter, banjoist, and musical explorer Béla Fleck to serve as our honorary guest editor for this issue. His decades-long career in bluegrass music and beyond — constantly perfecting and challenging form, tone, and meaning — echoes all of these beliefs. For the Summer 2024 issue of No Depression, Assistant Editor Stacy Chandler interviewed Fleck about his many musical and personal influences. And Fleck himself spoke with a number of his musical peers about what it takes to create the perfect banjo tone.

Each time we here at No Depression work to make another issue, we consider the state of roots music and the values of our audience. In some ways, it gets easier over time, as we continue to perfect our own systems and routines. But in other ways, it’s a bigger challenge with each passing day: The state of the world and the industry’s funding frustrations can feel insurmountable.

But like Cash said, I’m choosing hope — personally, professionally, and politically. And I encourage you, if you choose radical optimism too, to listen, to subscribe, and to vote in 2024.

Listen to our Summer 2024 playlist, featuring songs and artists mentioned in the issue: