No Depression Sessions AMERICANAFEST 2024: Aoife O’Donovan

Grammy-Award winner Aoife O’Donovan joined us in the Carter-Cash dressing room in Nashville’s iconic Ryman Auditorium for her No Depression Session at AMERICANAFEST ’24. O’Donovan shared two songs including the title track from her current album All My Friends, leading with a devastating acapella first verse.

The record is inspired by the passage of the 19th Amendment, recognizing the right of women to vote. Tennessee was the last state needed to ratify the 19th Amendment, and The Ryman played a significant role in the suffrage movement, hosting its first gathering in 1897 including a speech by Susan B. Anthony. Seven pro-suffrage events and one anti-suffrage event would take place at The Ryman between 1897 and 1920, including the National Woman’s Suffrage Association Convention in 1914, described in the auditorium’s own words as, “the most important convention in the history of the Ryman.”

O’Donovan took specific inspiration from the speeches and letters of Carrie Chapman Catt, co-founder of the League of Voters, whose words resonated across a century strongly enough that O’Donovan was able to coax a full album from them. The second song in this ND Session is “Crisis,” taking its title from a Carrie Chapman Catt speech of the same name. O’Donovan reimagined the speech as if Catt were “a bluegrass singer holding a guitar around a campfire, compelling her fellow women to get on her side.”

Please enjoy Aoife’s solo acoustic performance of music from All My Friends in this No Depression Session, and stay tuned for more than a dozen No Depression x AMERICANAFEST ’24 sessions in the pipeline.

Setlist:
“All My Friends”

“Crisis”