#kate wolf

I was finishing up yet another listen of the excellent new Kevin Morby record the other day when it occurred to me that the final track is a kindred spirit to the closer of Ratboys' (coincidentally, also excellent) new record. Morby's "Field Guide For The Butterflies" and Ratboys' "At Peace in the Hundred Acre Wood" close their respective projects on a note of grace, finding slivers of serenity in retreat to the natural world and offering nuanced but ultimately optimistic takes on how to move forward through the dizzying, suffocating reality of everyday life.

There's obvious musical similarity, with both tracks stripping down to plaintive lead vocals and breezy supporting instrumentation. They convey a similar sense of sonic resolution, but the lyrical commonalities are especially notable. They earnestly sing of mornings and fresh starts (always a welcome trope at the end of a record). Morby hits the open road in his Econoline, while Julia Steiner and crew sail away to "leave my old life behind." They both even address the inevitability of death and lean towards accepting time's passage with a mix of dignity and defiance. Morby squeezes all the juice he can out of this life trying "to grow wings," and Steiner hints that the titular patch of woods is a source of eternal peace.

What really cements the songs' bond, I think, is their shared emphasis on friendship as a way to mitigate pain and joyfully live out shared values of community and love — Steiner even went so far as to cite Winnie The Pooh as an influence on the song, which is so wholesome it hurts. There's something particularly beautiful about saying it as plainly as "where there are my friends, there are happy times" and "laugh through the pain / it doesn't hurt so bad when I am with my friends." I'm grateful for these albums and songs and will always think of them as cousins — which got me thinking about other songs I think of in that vein, and more broadly about when artists are seemingly in conversation with each other across the years.

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In the "songs that are cousins" category, a few other candidates immediately come to mind — Hop Along's "Sally II" and Nervous Dater's "Farm Song" are earthy, country-indebted outliers on otherwise emo-heavy albums. Sticking with the Ratboys theme, I previously wrote that their 2023 epic "Black Earth, WI" was "the stonier, less abrasive cousin" to Wednesday's ferocious "Bull Believer." Which brings me to instances of music as both homage and conversation, something that Wednesday is unparalleled in the modern era at making manifest.

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One of the many things I love about Wednesday is Karly Hartzman's willingness to wear influences on her sleeve; she talks openly about the writing process and how she layers those influences into her own songs. "Chosen To Deserve" is a prime example of this metatextual spirit — she explains "I heard “Let There Be Rock” by Drive-By Truckers. The premise is describing a fucked-up childhood, basically, and I wanted to write that song but use all my memories instead." Even DBT's straightforward chord progression played a part in how the song was structured, relying only on three chords in service of simplicity and accessibility. And going one layer deeper, "Let There Be Rock" is a nod to the 1977 AC/DC album of the same name...will circle back if it turns out there's a reference to a reference to a reference to a reference I haven't yet peeled back.

"Bitter Everyday" also invokes one of the great American songwriters, alluding to Iris DeMent's "Easy's Gettin' Harder Every Day," a deeply mournful portrait of lower-middle class decline that's somewhat perversely become one of my most reliable comfort songs. Elsewhere, "Bath County" lifts multiple memorable lines from Loudon Wainwright III's "I Am the Way (New York Town)." "Fate Is..." borrows from the Arthur Russell classic "What It's Like" and "Hot Rotten Grass Smell" opens Rat Saw God with a Bill Callahan reference. It's impossible not to hear the opening riff of Dolly Parton's "Gettin' Happy" in the re-recorded version of "Phish Pepsi," and "The Way Love Goes" owes a debt of gratitude to, naturally, Merle Haggard's "That's the Way Love Goes." (Bonus reference — it's self-evident that MJ Lenderman's "Knockin" would not exist if it weren't for Dylan's "Knockin' On Heaven's Door" before it.)

All these references fit seamlessly into the band's oeuvre and serve to enrich their lyrical depth, contextualizing the band's sound and explicitly placing them in a unique songwriting lineage. Discussing Callahan's "The Well," Hartzman notes the immediate resonance to her own personal life, along with her tendency to "collect stuff by tone." For someone with similarly avid music collection habits, it's so cool to witness my favorite band continuously layer in these easter eggs throughout their catalogue.

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I also love the path that songs can take changing hands from artist to artist over the years — Kate Wolf writing the stunning "Across The Great Divide" in the 1980s would have been more than enough on its own, but Nancy Griffith and Emmylou Harris valiantly breathed new life into her words in the 90s, as did Little Mazarn just last year. Shoutout Iris DeMent for backing me up ahead of this live cover — "this song of Kate's that I also think of as Nancy's song; in my mind, they're kind of merged somehow."

Cataloguing the full scope of artists who have covered "A Satisfied Mind" would be a fool's errand, but what a joy to hear the old country standard turned into Bon Iver's intensely emotional and vocoder-smothered interpretation, just as with Lucinda Williams' and Loretta Lynn's more traditional takes decades prior (not to mention Vampire Weekend's own interpolation!).

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Song Review: Lindsay Lou with Kyle Tuttle - “Like a River” (Live, 2025)

With Kyle Tuttle’s banjo driving the boat, Lindsay Lou’s 2025 rendition of “Like a River” at the Grey Fox Bluegrass Festival rolls, well, just like a river.

Singing and playing acoustic guitar alongside her bandmates Emma Rose (bass/harmonies) and Wila Frank (fiddle/harmonies), Lou takes temporary possession of Kate Wolf’s song with a stripped-down but fully formed version featuring three-part harmony from the women and solos passed between Frank and Tuttle.

Lou is an under-appreciated gem in the current bluegrass scene. Well-shot videos such as this should turn the tide.

Grade card: Lindsay Lou with Kyle Tuttle - “Like a River” (Live, 2025) - B+

It was back in the late eighties, the Winter of '87. I was working as a Math and English teacher at Berkeley High School, and was very burned out and running on empty, having recently been forced to take a gun from a student - and I was pondering whether I even wanted to be a teacher anymore.

It was a freezing late Winter afternoon, the red sun setting in a welter of clouds over the Golden Gate. I'd been buying groceries for my dinner at the Berkeley Cheese Board and at a little chicken shop there, and vegetables at that great produce market that used to be on the corner of Vine and Shattuck (maybe it still is).

A frigid breeze was blowing off the bay, and as I lugged my groceries up the hill and threw them in the car, I decided I just had to have a cup of coffee at Peets.

Just to keep going. I went in to Peets, and ordered a cup of French Roast, but I was so wiped out and my hands were shaking so badly, that when I pulled my money out, the coins just fell clattering all over the counter.

Suddenly a voice to my left said to me: "Friend, you really need to take it easy." I turned and there was a bearded man standing there, his face all rosy and aglow and with the most beautiful smile on his face, a smile that just filled me with warmth and peace and happiness. I stammered, "Thank you!", and turned for just a second to grab my cup of coffee, but when I turned back to talk to the man, he was gone.

There weren't many people in Peets at that moment, so a quick glance confirmed that he wasn't in the shop. I ducked out the door (Peets is right on the street corner at Vine and Walnut), and looked in both directions down both sidewalks, and they were empty except for papers blowing in that biting winter ocean wind. He was nowhere to be seen. And then it hit me.

I had been talking to an angel. This song seems to resonate with the appearance and identity of that mysterious being who stepped in to a turning point in my life, a Rilkean angel telling me that I must change my life.

But did I change my life? 27 years later I am still haunted, still burned out more often than not, still a creature of stress and mystery and still fueled and running on empty with caffeine. A lonely single Dad raising a lonely only daughter.

But you know, sometimes there are songs that go beyond feelings. There are songs that voyage out beyond thought. These songs put us in touch with our own lostness which is also our own divinity. They are rare, indeed, and they work their way into our hearts like the black and white ghosts of old angels.

Such is "The Wind Blows Wild," which Wolf composed and recorded partially in a hospital room during her final days. It's about life, love and death and was written by Kate Wolf as she, herself, was dying. Kate died in 1986, at age 44, after a long battle with leukemia.

She is buried at a small church cemetery in Goodyears Bar, California. My daughter Gabrielle and I went there, in the deep snow, in the Winter of 2004, not long after my Mom died. Kate was there, sleeping under the snow like the Yuba River that flowed by Goodyears Bar was sleeping under the ice. I encourage you all to go out and buy this album, and all of Kate's albums. I have no commercial interest in this song.

If you want to own it, purchase it online or in a CD store. All of her albums are great. This is from her last, and is the title song. Buying it will support the perpetuation of great music everywhere, and Kate will be smiling from that quiet grave West of Weaverville in that little place on the Yuba River called Goodyears Bar. It should be deep in snow again right now.