Doug: ​ From a secret location in room 100 of 540 Jack Gibbs Boulevard, this is Craft. I'm your host, Doug Dangler. Singer songwriter Ruth Moody's new album, Wanderer, is her first solo album in a decade. Moody is a founding and current member of billboard charting and Juno award winning folk trio, The Wailing Jennies. She will be in town on Friday, September 27th with six string concerts. Welcome to craft, Ruth Moody.

Ruth: Thank you so much. 

Doug: Tell me about your new album, Wanderer. On your website, it's described as 10 deeply powerful and personal songs that reflect your inner world and wanderings. 

Ruth: Sure. Well, that's pretty accurate. I had wanted to make the album for a while, ever since I put out my last record, These Wilder Things.

I started writing a bunch of songs and I can remember actually wanting to record it when I was pregnant eight years ago and it didn't line up schedule wise. So I thought, okay, I'll do it next year. And of course that didn't happen. so it got put on the back burner and just as I was getting around to it again when my son was going to preschool, finally had some time, the pandemic happened.

And so it got put on the back burner again. And so last year, 2023 I found myself in Nashville and I felt really inspired to finally make it happen. and it was an amazing experience. I had a really great. band of kindred spirits and a great co producer. And it really felt like just a beautiful experience sharing music with people and a moment in time, which is what I wanted it to feel like.

Just, very free and, accessing that vulnerability that you feel when you write these emotional songs. And they are deeply personal. They really deal with a lot of change in my life, motherhood and, grief and loss and love. So I'm really happy with how it turned out and it's been out now for over three months, three and a half months. 

Doug: You had said, deeply personal songs I'm curious about your song Wanderer, because it includes these lyrics, and I will not sing them, by request.

I've been a wanderer all of my life. It's all the life that I know. I've never slowed down for anything much, but you put on quite a show. And, reading those and listening to them, and I don't want to confuse the writer with the song narrator, but I would guess that there's a lot that's you in that song.

So when you write personal stuff, how do you navigate writing enough to make it good and to draw in people's interest, but not revealing more than you want to about your life, about not, using the people around you as just inspiration, I guess. 

Ruth: Hmm. That's a good question because I think if you, can keep it vague enough and a little bit mysterious then more people will, will relate to it. I think if you sort of give away too much, then it's not as, interesting to people. They want to be able to relate. They want to be able to sort of see themselves in your poetry. And so there is a balance there because you have to write from your experience, I think, for it to be, you don't have to.

I do. I feel like I need to write from my experience to sort of make it meaningful and to make it ring true, I guess, The raw emotion of it is what will bring the raw motion in other people but you also want it to not be too detailed.

Doug: Yeah. 

Ruth: Does that make sense? 

Doug: Yeah. Have you ever had a moment where you're writing a song and you think, I'm going to back this up. This is more than I really want to reveal. I mean, I've had personal moments in my life that I I wouldn't want to share with anybody else because it's almost like it takes away from that moment for you.

Ruth: I don't think that that's happened. I think I have kind of a built in meter for that. S o I think, part of me just knows where that zone is because it's not going to feel good for me, right then, if I'm saying something that's too much. I'm just going to know it right away. 

Doug: Okay. You became a mother between your two solo albums. What's been the best part of motherhood as a traveling and performing musician?

Ruth: Well, actually those two things are In a lot of ways, very incongruous because I didn't think they would be, I kind of imagined myself, in an airstream touring with my little one and it was going to be such a dream. With my partner who, plays bass with me, and, pretty much from the start we realized that it was very, very difficult to tour with a little one, and some people I think manage it better than I was, but I found it hard to juggle. so, it's difficult, but I think that becoming a mother, deepened my, sense of purpose in life and made me appreciate every moment a little bit more. It made me notice different things and, write about different things.

It's not for everybody. And I would never say it's the only way. Opening myself up to that new kind of love that very special kind of love was a very beautiful and deepening experience. But yeah, man, is it hard work.

So it's, it's, yeah, it's, really interesting and, I have friends and, one sibling that have chosen not to have kids and they are very, very happy in their lives. So again, it's not the only way, but It's enriched my life. And I think as an artist and as a writer, it's been very cool because you need new things to write about, you know, as you go.

Doug: So we can look for a song about finding the right kind of diapers at 3am in Tulsa. 

Ruth: Well, you have to write in code a little bit when it comes to that kind of thing, but yeah. Yeah. 

Doug: My follow up question on that is an attempt at being even handed. I was going to ask what's been the most challenging part of motherhood, but you already answered that because it's the balance.

Ruth: Yeah. The balance and touring means leaving and that's never easy. it's not easy for me. It's not easy for my family. He's pretty adaptable. He's pretty great. So he gets it. But that is one of the challenges. I think that also just managing time is a really interesting challenge that I didn't anticipate. Before I had my son, I would have these long stretches of time for creativity. And then, of course, that changed and you have these little very short windows of time. It's changing a little bit now, more and more, but especially for the first few years, you have to learn how to turn the creative tap on quickly for short periods of time.

And that really took some getting used to, and that's never been easy for me. Like sometimes I will need a whole day to kind of get into that zone. And then, I would book myself four or five days for writing and the first day would just be getting myself calm and centered and quiet.

and then I would have three days of productive writing. And so now it's sort of like, okay, you've got 45 minutes, what are you going to do? So that's very different. 

Doug: So you find yourself introducing songs as I wrote this one during one nap. 

Ruth: Or, well, there, there are songs that I actually wrote when he was very little and just hanging out beside me.

And that's actually really special. And I, did succeed a few times in writing in those windows when he was just Hanging out and crawling around but yeah, exactly. you just grab these little windows of time when they come up and I'm better at it now than I was, it was a real struggle at first.

Doug: I imagine that's going to be a struggle for anybody. That's a very big task to take on to have both of those. So 

Ruth: Definitely a big change. 

Doug: So you play guitar, banjo, accordion, piano, and bodhrán. I'm not sure if I'm saying that correctly. It's an Irish frame drum. 

Ruth: Yeah. It's called the bodhrán. 

Doug: The bodhrán. All right. What drew you to learn all of these instruments? That's a big span of different kinds of, mostly, string, although I don't think accordion is. 

Ruth: No well, piano was my first instrument aside from singing. My mom taught me when I was a kid. My mom's a music teacher, so my siblings and I all learned from her first.

And then, guitar, I started teaching myself in my early twenties because I got really into folk music partly because I didn't have an operatic voice. I was taking voice lessons in my, teens and, realize that, okay, this isn't going to work. I need to find something. I serendipitously discovered folk music through Celtic singers, and I thought, Oh, that's more suited to me. And so that led me to be interested in folk music and writing my own songs and guitar seemed like a necessary part of that.

So I started to teach myself and then I was in a Celtic band in my early twenties called Scrooge McDuck, which later on became a band called the Ducks. And one of the founding members of that band is an amazing banjo player, and he got me interested in the banjo. And so he gave me a couple lessons and then I sort of taught myself how to play some basic claw hammer, old timey banjo, and I'm not an amazing banjo player by any means, but I really love to use it as a songwriting tool. And accordion, I, I'm not a great accordion player either, but in the Jenny's the piano was just too heavy to lug around my weighted keyboard. We did try it for a summer, but it became obvious that I needed something smaller. So I adapted my skills to the piano accordion. And bodhrán, I learned when I was in Scrooge McDuck. , I needed something to do on the instrumental on the, fiddle tunes. And, I was so into Celtic music and, really into, the drumming, so, I took some lessons and, became the bodhrán player.

Doug: Yeah. Well, well, every band needs one, 

Ruth: Well, that's arguable. I was not always, I didn't always feel welcome at the jams, but it was tolerated. 

Doug: It's good to know that, they're tolerant of it. And, the, the final question is you collaborated with Mark Knopfler on These Wilder Things and performed on his albums Privateering and Tracker. What was it like to meet and start to work with someone as well known as Mark Knopfler, who was of course in Dire Straits and just an incredible guitar player in his own right? 

Ruth: Yeah. It was surreal. Obviously, you know, meet someone that you've been a huge fan of your whole life and doesn't even seem like a real person, and then, suddenly they're, they're, they're getting in touch with you. It's a very strange experience. But it was a really wonderful experience to work with him. And he's just a legend, literally, and also in the, the Australian definition of the word just a amazing person, very kind and very humble and generous and his whole team of people, group of people were So great to work with and yeah, I mean it was just an experience I hold very very dear 

Doug: Did you take you a long time to get over thinking every time you see him? Oh my god, it's Mark Knopfler 

Ruth: Well, he's so down to earth that Yeah, yeah, at first it felt like that and then it just felt kind of normal because he makes you feel very at home, but but yeah, yeah, it was, it was definitely, wild ride.

Doug: Yeah. Ruth Moody, I want to thank you very much for talking to me today. Appreciate that. And you will be in town on Friday, September 27th with Six String Concerts. Best of luck to you in touring with your family and performing. 

Ruth: Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. 

Doug: For more information from my guests, visit www. crafttheshow.com. This is Doug Dangler. Until next time, be creative.