This playlist ends and begins with songs by Flaco Jimenez—a name and a figure who is ubiquitous within my hometown of San Antonio. I grew up hearing Flaco’s music all around me, and it’s something that I wish I’d actively engaged with more as a teenager and seen as the extraordinary gift it is. Nowadays, I deeply love this music and it instantly transports me to certain places and times in my life in Texas. As I worked on this playlist, I thought about how I was engaging with Folkways records growing up in a city that’s so synonymous with Flaco’s presence and connections. Most of the music I included is deeply tied to specific memories that I connect to the disparate and vast Folkways archive.

In a way, this playlist is a sort of personal reckoning with history, memory, influence, and taste in a manner similar to how I often compose and conceptualize my work as more eaze. A few memories I associate with this music: Stumbling into an Anna and Elizabeth show at Secret Project Robot in 2018 on an off day on tour and being profoundly moved by their music; developing an intense obsession with “Whoa, Back, Buck” by Lead Belly in high school because the Take This Hammer compilation was the only CD of his I could find for sale anywhere in San Antonio; having my mind blown in college by the forward-thinking music of Todd Dockstader and Jon Appleton; Craig Kupka’s “Trombones of Lithia” making a mind-numbing office job feel less painful; Mary Lou Williams’s “Black Christ of the Andes” emotionally wrecking me on a flight back from a long European tour; the lyrics to Lucinda Williams’s “Howlin’ at Midnight” hitting me so hard when I first moved to New York City with just a few gigs; and most recently, marveling at The Freeborne’s DIY innovation while taking my dog on a long walk through the city at night.

I hope that this music conjures up listeners’ own memories and associations and makes people think about how all this work exists under the umbrella of Folkways and America in general.

Listen on Pandora here