Haley Heynderickx and Max García Conover made their second collaborative record in the spirit of Woody Guthrie. From opposite corners of the country, the two songwriters spent a year sharing songs while reading Woody’s words and biographies, slowly exploring a patchwork of Americanism to see where their stories fit. García Conover, half-Puerto Rican, and Heynderickx, half-Filipina, found themselves with this collection of music about the legacy of colonialism, generational identity, commercialism, and the slippery target of addressing social equity in song. Heynderickx’s precise, delicate eloquence met García Conover’s vivid, angular poetics in a barn in Vermont, where this record was recorded directly to tape in five days. With guitars, voices, and some found percussion, they played the record straight through, channeling Woody’s union of spontaneity, sweetness, and defiance.
The two alternate songwriting contributions on this record: García Conover’s ‘Song for Alicia’ tells the story of Puerto Rican independence activist Alicia Rodríguez; Heynderickx’s ‘In Bulosan’s Words’ responds with the poetry of Filipino-American writer and labor activist Carlos Bulosan. In ‘Cowboying,’ García Conover looks at the people around him, and in ‘Mr. Marketer’ Heynderickx looks at the systems around her. In ‘Red River Dry,’ she looks at her lineage, and in ‘Buffalo, 1981’ he looks at his. In ‘Fluorescent Light,’ Heynderickx looks away from the brightness of her phone, while in ‘This Morning I Am Born Again,’ García Conover looks to the vivid words of Woody Guthrie. In ‘to each their dot’ she writes of the collective tension all around, while in ‘Boars’ he writes about the spirited friendship between them. Together, all of these songs reveal a conversation between the two, sung in their respective styles, each coloring between the lines left by the other.
Max García Conover writes songs in his attic in Bath, Maine. He’s toured across the US and Europe and he releases records both independently and through the Barcelona-based label Son Canciones. In between songs he tells stories, and his storytelling has been featured on The Moth Radio Hour and Stories From The Stage.
From her early days, staying late after-hours at her video rental store job to record songs, to her packed tour schedule of today, Aly Spaltro has remained focused on music that connects, empowers and astonishes. She built her fanship the old-fashioned way, getting in front of audiences and projecting her poetic confessionals, silencing rowdy crowds with an a cappella opening song in the center of a dark stage.
Spaltro was quick to develop a reputation as a breakout star in her home state of Maine, and then expanded slowly outwards, moving to New York at twenty to continue work on the songs that would become Ripely Pine. She is fifteen years and four albums into a career where her voice has never wavered, and anyone witnessing the long lines of fans seeking signatures after her performances can see how each release has grown in stature. Her live shows are revelations, a further deep dive into what makes Ripely Pine such a mainstay.
Spaltro is celebrating ten years of Ripely Pine with the release of a 5 LP Box Set. With the original songs remastered, as well as reams of additional material produced and arranged by Spaltro and mixed by original co-producer Nadim Issa, Ripely Pine [2023 Deluxe Edition] captures the time, mood, art and ambition of Aly Spaltro in her early twenties, who had already accumulated years of playing and self-recording experience before laying down tracks for this giant of a debut record.
Ripely Pine [2023 Deluxe Edition] contains all the ferocity, emotional power and inventiveness of the original album and blows it out to a larger, more embellished world. To complement the anniversary, Spaltro will be performing Ripely Pine in full for the first time since its conception, playing the original arrangements with the largest band to accompany her on stage at one of the most formative venues of her career.
