Everyone wants to be country: Gwen Stefani, Post Malone, Beyoncé, of course and recently Lana del Rey. Country has developed out of his niche and adopted the American music mainstream. Now that the political future of the United States appears uncertain, Country is greater than ever: This music, which stands for this country like no other, born out of influences from Africa, Central America, the Caribbean, from the Appalaches, from the working class. The mainstream blurred these traces. Country as a mirror of American history and reality refusal: This metaphor is almost too flat to be true.
In the middle of this country Renaissance, the musicians Julien Baker and Mackenzie Scott recorded an album that also pays homage to the genre: Send a Prayer My Way. It would be easy to understand the duo as a further example of all those who want to dare the country wave, two artists who, actually in other musical worlds, now appear as country artists for the first time.
But Scott and Baker do not quite fit into this narrative: their version of the country turns away from the pop crossover that dominates today and is looking for older roots. And: both live open queer And sing exactly on your album. Queenness is a taboo in the world of the mainstream country.
In the zoom interview, Scott, blond-colored hair, wears a sweater with the inscription Lesbian Inspire – Inspire lesbians. “The back there is my cowboy hut collection that my wife has banished to our basement,” she says. Baker sits in a light -flooded room full of cupboards and poster, and guitars are stacked behind her. The two musicians live at different ends of the country: Scott with her wife in Brooklyn, Baker in Los Angeles, just like her bandmate Lucy Dacus, with whom she, as is known after this interview, is also in a romantic relationship. Send a Prayer My Way is your first collaboration. Mackenzie Scott is known as a solo artist under the name Torres, Julien Baker appears as a single artist, but above all as part of the Indieband Boygenius with Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus.
Does Country have space for two queer artists who are open on stage? Scott and Baker do not at all ask this question. They ignore them. In the twelve songs of the album, they sing about relationships, alcohol and drug addiction, about leaving their own home and finding a new one- gladly in the arms of a partner.
Started Send a Prayer My Way In pandemic, says Baker. 2020, during the first Lockdown, she received a SMS from Scott, which she only knew fleetingly: “Lol, do you want to record a country album with me?” As arbitrary as it sounds, this message was not at all, says Scott: “I wanted to publish a country album for a long time, but I didn’t want to do it alone.” And who would be closer than a colleague who also comes from the deep south and grew up with Country? “We are two queer southern who fought out of their restrictions to create something that is larger than ourselves.”
Their cooperation is characterized by mutual enthusiasm, the two tell in an interview. Baker remembers that she was obsessed with Scott’s second album sprinter. Scott’s concerts would have shown her how to take space as a musician, create your own identity that could ignore the expectations of the audience. “I started listening to Mackenzies music in the high school,” says Baker, “about the Grooveshark platform – Sorry, Mackenzie, you didn’t earn anything about any of these streams.” Scott laughs. She found her own biographical experiences in Baker’s music: both musicians come from Baptist families. In the interview, they tell of the early encounter with Christian fundamentalism, of friends who were forced into so -called “conversion therapy” due to their homosexuality. The growing up as queer outsiders in the US south connects them, says Scott. “This made me feel like I was able to trust Julien in a way that I can trust no one else.”
