Transcript 0:00 Jane Kramer makes new music to post mile markers in her life. I first met Jane about eight years ago on the eve of her third solo album, Valley of the Bones. 0:09 A miscarriage, the death of a close friend, splitting from her husband, and her longtime women's Americana trio, Jane chronicled all of it in songs sprinkled over her first three solo albums. 0:21 Now, she sees gray clouds in her rear view mirror, but sunshine in her windshield as she turns out her first record in seven years titled Moon and Mother. I'm Matt Pike in of See Hear. 0:33 On this episode of the See Hear Podcast, Jane dives deep into her personal new album and how it chronicles a profound chapter of her life, becoming a mother while losing her own mother to cancer. 0:45 She talks about navigating grief through her songwriting process and questions whether the music industry still has a place for her. 0:53 We also look back on her time in the Barrelhouse Mamas, leaving Asheville for Portland, and finding her way back, both to the city and to her voice. She also performs two songs live. Oh, the years might make weary years. 1:11 I don't think we've talked about your music formally in seven years since Valley of the Bones. I know. Isn't that wild? Yeah. 1:20 You had quite a path of life leading up to Valley of the Bones, and you've had quite a path of life since then. I have, yeah. So, so talk about what you've been doing musically in your life, or not doing- Mm... 1:33 because of life in the seven years since Valley of the Bones. Yeah. 1:37 So where the Valley of the Bones album for me was very much about loss on the journey to starting a family, because I did experience a lot of miscarriage, and I know that that's something that's common that isn't often talked about, and my songwriting became a place of sort of therapy and reckoning for that, and then a kind of a hopeful place of sharing for other people that were maybe enduring the same thing. 2:01 And the pandemic happened, and I did get pregnant with a pregnancy that resulted in a beautiful baby girl, and new motherhood happened. Our country shut down with a really scary global pandemic. 2:14 There was a lot of quiet, forced introspection time, so some songs came from that. 2:20 Some of the songs on this new album, Moon and Mother, date all the way back to that six-year, seven-year lapse you're talking about, so it's an archive of all of that time. I wouldn't presume myself that it was a lapse. 2:32 [laughs] Yes. You might have been very active in that time. Thank you. It's just that between albums. Yes. And that's a long span of which life can inform what your music has become. Absolutely. 2:42 And it seems like- Yeah... this new record really is imbued with that recent- Mm... life since Valley of the Bones. Yes. So let's dig right into that a little bit. Motherhood is rife in this record. Yes. Yes. 2:54 And y- you talk about family a lot. You mentioned your husband. You mention there's a lot of memories. 3:01 And I'm wondering if where you're coming from lyrically, the thought patterns that are within you, are they the same... Not that the thoughts are the same, but is your process the same now for how songs germinate- Mm... 3:16 from thoughts to full-blown songs? What has evolved for you- Mm... in the time since making the music that led to Valley of the Bones? I love that question. 3:26 Yeah, I have to say, and touching back to your last question, Matt, I'd be remiss to not mention right at the beginning of the interview that basically the whole seedling for this Moon and Mother album was not only becoming a mother, but it was losing my mother at the very beginning of my own motherhood journey. 3:42 And my mother was, I say, my moon, like my North Star. Not everyone is lucky to have a parent that just imbues them with everything they feel like they need to be a successful human in life, but I did. 3:54 She was very much that for me, musically, spiritually, and everything else. 3:57 So the loss of her was very difficult and very profound, and beginning my own motherhood with the thought of her not there on the planet was just incredibly difficult and transformational and like a spiritual untethering. 4:11 So that was so deep for me, and I was so mired in raising a toddler that honestly, I had moments where I just wanted to step away from the whole business of making music. 4:22 I just, I didn't have the spiritual chutzpah, as my Yiddish grandmother would say, to stomach the industry. 4:29 I am a very sensitive human, as many artists are, and the way that the industry continues to change, in some wonderful ways and in some ways that are really difficult, it makes me kind of wanna die to think about my numbers on Spotify or tending a social media account in the hopes of it going viral. 4:47 That's just stuff that I am unwilling to do. And so the question I found myself asking myself was how do I still do this in a way that's in alignment with my very tender heart right now a- and what I want? 5:00 What do I want out of this? So there were moments where I just thought, "You know what? I'm just... I can't. I'm just gonna be a mom and figure out what I need to do to pay the bills." 5:09 And even in those stepping away moments, the songs were in the back of my head. A goldfinch landed outside my window, and I was like, "Damn it, Mom, I guess I will still write this song." 5:19 And the songs that came were very much about her and having to look inside myself to find her to be strong enough to mother on my own. Mentioning your mom and growing up, you mentioned a Yiddish grandmother. 5:30 You grew up in a Jewish family in Philadelphia, right? From what I remember. I did, yes. 5:35 All of my, you know, relatives were Jewish, but my mom, half of her side of the family was not, was Lutheran, and my mom was very much hippie, pagan, woo woo in her faith. So there was a lot going on there. 5:47 But culturally, there was Judaism, and I appreciate that so much. You talked about how your mother died right after y- childbirth, or? Yeah, so she died when my daughter was a little over two. Oh. 5:59 But she was diagnosed with a really aggressive, rare cancer when I was seven months pregnant with my daughter. So sort of the whole, thank goodness they were able to have some time together- Yeah... 6:09 but the whole short amount of my daughter's life, my mother was sick, and she was unable to come be there right away when I gave birth and that sort of thing. 6:18 So there was already a lot of sort of anticipatory grief happening. Yeah, so you're steeped in family grief from your mom. 6:24 You're raising a young person, and I imagine- If songs were coming to you, it wasn't necessarily deliberately that you were necessarily seeking to write music. It, that's just what I'm inferring, that it- Right... 6:38 they just came to you. Right. You also touched on the career of music. It's one thing to make music, it's another to wage a career in this era of Spotify, ad nauseam, all the- the digital services. 6:50 Were you writing this music without regard to thinking of your career? Was, were songs coming to you, stories coming to you? And if so, what were you wanting to write? 7:00 What was coming out of you without even thinking, "Is this a record or what?" What was coming out of you? Yeah. 7:07 I think that a lot of what was coming out of me was just a desire to sort of archive everything that I was living through, not only for myself, but for my daughter, and as a way of honoring my mother. 7:21 My mom always nurtured the seed of music in me. She was a singer herself, even though she wasn't a trained one. I'm not a trained one either. 7:29 But she was always pushing me to grow my ear and listen to the harmonies of things. She really taught me how to sing harmony. 7:35 And I think I also felt sort of this burning desire to reconcile how terribly I felt about engaging in a career in music, and my desire to make honest music, and somehow find a way to do that in a way that felt in alignment with my values. 7:53 So in terms of the writing process, one thing I did do during this six or seven years was work very hard on my craft. 8:00 I think, for me, when I distill everything down and I shut out the noise, my joy and my sort of closest place to the divine is letting a song come through me and working on it for three months to a year or whatever it is. 8:13 It's a very long and wonderful chiseling process for me. 8:18 I've studied a lot of the writers that I love, and yes, it doesn't necessarily look like the discipline of picking up a guitar every day and saying, "I'm gonna write this record." 8:27 It was very much rocking my daughter at 2:00 in the morning and having melodies in my head. 8:32 And those little snippets would kinda keep me going, and I'd go over it and over it, and then maybe pick up a guitar a week later, and that's how a lot of these songs came about. Or driving to a show and driving home. 8:44 So a lot of the songs, a few of them did come very much with the purpose of, "Okay, I wanna write a banger now 'cause I got a lot of real sad ballads." 8:52 [laughs] There's a song on the album called The Summer You Learn to Swim, and that one I wrote the day we were demoing songs for the record, and I just felt like maybe giving myself the pressure of a deadline and sort of the structure of, "Okay, let's try to write something a little more upbeat, a little catchier." 9:08 That was abnormal for me, but I did do it. It's funny you mention upbeat and catchier. This record seems very slowly paced. Mm. 9:17 And- and I don't know if that was deliberate for you, if you felt almost a certain beats per minute going through you, because there's a similarity there- Mm... 9:26 for me, in terms of the pacing within the songs, and they're very patient songs, and almost as if you're singing your journals- Mm... in a way. D- and you mention chiseling away when you're writing songs. 9:39 Do you come up with volumes of lyrics, and is that what you're talking about when you're chiseling away, coming up with so many things you want to say, and then chiseling down to what the essence is? Absolutely, yeah. 9:52 For me, the visual kind of imagery is helpful and is sort of the way I see the world. But yes, very much so. 9:59 I'm a verbose person, and the art of putting words together and painting with words, I delight in it and I love it. 10:07 And so for me, often, because songwriting is, and certainly there's many different kinds of songs, but for the most part, it is a certainly more distilled art form and template than prose, writing prose or whatever. 10:22 So yeah, I think the act of chiseling away and getting down to the bones of what matters most and what punches hardest is the crux of it. Yeah. 10:32 These songs, again, they come across, to me at least, as journal entries bathed in music. Mm-hmm. Is that an accurate way to look at it? 10:41 Do you see y- yourself as telling your own stories and burrowing deep into meaning, and using literal events, literal people in your life to tell deeper truths, and then finding the music that somehow underscores what you're saying? 10:59 Yeah. I think you're absolutely right there, and there's no part of me that attempts to hide behind or say that this isn't autobi- biographical. It is. It is my lived experience. I do think there's something 11:11 universal and wonderfully spiritually nebulous that we tap into as writers, as creatives, as painters, whatever it is, and sometimes, especially as empaths, we embody a lot of different people's experiences. 11:24 So, you know, sure, I could go line by line and say, "Well, maybe this happened a little bit more like this," but really, truly, they are my lived experiences. 11:33 Have you always written to your lived experiences, or do you think that's happened more so in recent years? 11:40 Or did Valley of the Bones and even the music you made with Barrelhouse Mamas, did it always stem from your lived experiences? For me, it did, and I think from early on, I gave m- myself permission to do that. 11:54 Certainly I still do once in a while write songs, write story songs from the perspective of maybe someone I met or something like that, but that's more occasional for me. 12:06 One of the things I would wonder about is do you think about or concern yourself with how your audience relates to the music? One of my thoughts is when you're writing so deeply- Mm... 12:18 personally, that maybe a listener can't see themselves in the song because- Mm... you're talking about such specific events. 12:24 Even though everything might be specific, some of it leaves openings for people to put themselves in. Mm-hmm. But other things, I think, your memories are drawn so tightly. Mm. 12:34 Do you ever concern yourself, or do you ever get feedback from audiences like, "I'm having trouble connecting here"? No, it's the opposite really. 12:41 And there was a time early on as a young writer where I asked myself that question, and I think there are some people schooled more rigidly in writing or songwriting that say, "Oh, don't use proper nouns." 12:53 But I think that if we really dedicate ourself to the craft and we do it for long enough and we do it with the right amount of bravery and the best intentions behind it, we can transcend that. 13:04 And what I mostly hear from people is how much it does resonate with them because it is so specific that it gives them a story to jump into. 13:13 Yeah, and I, and at the same time I was asking that question, I was also thinking this isn't a question that we pose to memoirists- Mm... if their story is not relevant to other people's lives. 13:24 It wasn't so much that, but we don't see it so much in music, where artists take, if not a risk, but that level of vulnerability that you put into your music by being so specific. 13:36 Where is your contemporary relevance to music that I'm sure you're still performing when you perform some of your older music? 13:43 Do you have to find a new foothold for the relevance for you today to music you wrote 10, 12 years ago and longer? Oh, interesting. Some of it, yes. 13:54 I think if you're putting music out there, which even though I had a few years where I wasn't, my first solo record I put out in 2013, and since then I feel like I've lived many lifetimes. 14:06 And in 2013, I was single and much younger and had a lot less responsibilities. And so sure, I was singing about different stuff. 14:15 And when I do revisit some of those songs, I remember to give myself a little bit of credit and say, "No, you were still tapped into elements of life that were very true for you," and those can be universal also. 14:27 And there are some songs that I still love and some that I just won't play. [laughs] Yeah, sure. Yeah. [laughs] Let- let's go back in your career a little bit. 14:33 You got known, at least locally, first through the Barrelhouse Mamas, right? 14:37 Talk about that group and how that imprinted on you where you wanted to go with your music, both what you were able to do within the group and what you weren't able to do within the group. Yeah. 14:49 So that group formed with two friends, and then we added a third member later on at Warren Wilson College. Did all of you go to Warren Wilson? We did, yes, and that's where we met. 15:00 And so it was Molly Reed, Eleanor Underhill, myself, and then later on we added Anna Bauman-Smith into the group. And so- Were you kind of the supergroup of Warren Wilson College? [laughs] Yes. I guess you could say. 15:13 [laughs] In the year 2000, we were hot stuff. And I think I started doing solo acoustic stuff at the campus cafe and all that, and there was, like, a women in music feature showcase or something. I knew Eleanor well. 15:27 I didn't know Molly. And we decided to team up and collaborate and do a few things together. And for us, our common ground was Appalachian music and, like, the O Brother, Where Art Thou? 15:38 soundtrack was out newly then, sometime between 2000 and 2001, something like that. And so we got together in a stairwell to rehearse. I think it was, like, Angel Band or something, an old traditional. 15:50 And it was just one of those moments, and I still feel it in my body, where it was like we heard our harmonies and our voices together and thought, "Oh my God, this is special," in the stairwell of a dorm. 16:00 I think we all felt it. And so yeah, in as much as you can when you're 20, 21, 22, we tried to keep it going, and there'd be some lulls. 16:09 But we got a little bit of momentum, I don't know, around 2004, '5, '6, something like that. And yeah, we did it for a handful of years, and we put out one album. 16:20 And it was my first taste of, like, touring and just this wonderful musical sisterhood. 16:25 And certainly there are dynamics within any group that are tough, and so I had some where I struggled feeling like I felt insecure bringing as many of my songs to the group. 16:34 Yeah, is that what led to the parting of the ways in a way? 'Cause I know that was kinda painful for you, wasn't it, that experience? Yeah. Yeah. 16:41 You know, honestly, the parting of the ways I think was just a sort of very sad, catastrophic bunch of different circumstantial influences that happen when you're in your 20s and you don't know how to deal with it. 16:54 At the time, I was married to another songwriter. I had a college love that I was with for 11 years, Pierce Edens. He's- Yeah, he developed a name of, for himself too. Yes. Yeah. 17:03 Yes, he's a wonderful songwriter, and we're still good friends. So yeah, we got married young and had a wonderful, special relationship, but I was trying to be married. I had a full-time job. 17:13 Working in social work, right? Working in social work, yes, in Asheville. And the other girls were a little bit younger than I was, not just a few years, but, you know, were at different places in their lives. 17:22 So I was struggling to be gone on the road quite as much as maybe it would've taken to get to that next level, and I think maybe there was some undercurrents of that. 17:31 And then there was just some normal growing pain stuff. But long story short, it came as a big surprise to me. I was out of the band and sort of the last to know. [laughs] That's terrible. I mean- It sucked... 17:40 that sounds heartbroke. So how did you begin reclaiming yourself as an artist? You said y- you already were doing your own music and- Mm... stepping out there a little bit, right? 17:50 I would say I had done it before the group, and then the group very much became my identity and my sort of safe place. 17:56 And there were maybe some, even though it was wonderful, the harmonies were wonderful, it was a death of sorts. You know, it was my business relationship. It was my artistic relationship. They were dear friends. 18:07 We slept in hotel beds together all over the country. So it felt like a deep betrayal, and I don't mean to besmirch anyone's name. 18:14 I think I have done all my work of forgiving, and I know that I'm sure they had some reasons. 18:19 It also happened at the same time as my divorce from Pierce, which was very painful, and I lost my social work job at the same time, and a very dear friend who was like a brother to me, who shows up in Valley of the Bones songs, committed suicide, and this is all the year I turned 30. 18:34 Oh my gosh. So- [laughs] Wow. And is that when you decided to move to Portland? Yes. I had to- You said you, you're getting help... hell of a dodge Right. So you- Yeah... 18:41 move to Portland, and you began writing songs, and you didn't stay in Portland very long, right? I was there for four years. Four years? Yeah. So did you find that, okay, this can be my musical and spiritual home? 18:55 'Cause you've told me, at least when we talked way back in 2018, that you felt called back to Asheville. Mm-hmm. What were you missing in Portland that you reclaimed- Mm... in coming back to Asheville? Yeah. 19:08 I think Asheville just unquestionably is my, it's my dirt. It's my place of inspiration. It's my spiritual home. I never didn't feel that way. I just felt like I didn't know how to stay here and heal. 19:21 'Cause look, you had all these reminders all around you of people who'd, who've moved past you or left you. Yeah. Right? Yeah. And don't you feel in moments like that, you feel pushed- Yeah... out of a community? 19:30 Totally. Not that it was your choice, but it was choosing for you, telling you a message. And correct me if I'm wrong here, but you were getting the message, "I don't belong here anymore." [laughs] Yes, absolutely. 19:41 I was getting the message that I sucked from the universe, and thank goodness I was able to transmute that message. But to answer your last question, for a while, Matt, I didn't wanna write songs. It was too painful. 19:52 I didn't wanna hear my own voice alone. I didn't think that I had the chops or the talent to do a solo career. I just didn't want anything to do with it. Yeah. So how do you leapfrog over that- Mm... 20:06 or tunnel under that? Because I would think you're creating a narrative for yourself that, "I don't have it what it takes." Mm. "I don't belong here." I could see where you felt repelled by that creative side. Mm. 20:18 How did you winnow or chisel your way through that- Mm-hmm... to where you found a home in writing again? Yeah. 20:26 I think much like the long stretch of life and pause between the last album and this album, even though I was very much still writing and playing, the songs, at the end of the day, they're still there. 20:37 I'm still hearing them. And even when I'm literally swearing off writing and feeling really rejected and bad for myself, I am writing a song about it in the back of my head. It's like something I just can't not do. 20:49 And so, yeah, I think with the move across the country, the move to Portland, a little bit of geographical distance and new experiences, I still heard the songs. I still felt the songs. 21:00 I had some songs that I had written and not done anything with, and I realized I very much needed to process some more through songs. 21:08 I don't remember if it was one conscious choice or a bunch of them, but I just remember coming back to myself and the guitar and feeling, like you said, at home in the songs again, and realizing that 21:20 regardless of what remained of a career or what career I could build, I just needed to make the songs and share them. Yeah. 21:27 Other than the chronology of life, which you effectively document in your songs, how would you trace the evolution of your songwriting? Hmm. That's a great question. 21:41 I would say, if possible, I've become more brave. [laughs] I would say I've become more brave. 21:50 I would say there was a time where I thought that my youth and some of my follies and the hard circumstances that I had lived through were what made my songs interesting or worth listening to, and that almost made me feel like I had to have kind of a persona, that I, like, wore these boots and was drunk, and, like, poor Jane. 22:11 I don't know. I don't know if anybody else felt that way, but I did for a little while. And now I'm 46, and I'm a mom, and my life is relative. 22:18 I pack lunches, and I play the shows that matter to me, but I'm not out living this exquisite life on the road, and I still believe that my lived experience is worth listening to. Yeah. 22:29 In fact, you even have a song titled 46. Yeah. About being [laughs] 46 years old. Yeah. Tell me about what songs are you gonna perform for us today? Yeah. So I think the first one I'll play for you is called Ballast, 22:43 and it's one of the earlier songs that came about in my writing process for this album. I wrote it when my mom was in the final months of her life, and I didn't exactly know that was the case. 22:54 My mom undulated with her health. Thank goodness she had some periods of good health after her cancer diagnosis and then some rough ones, and so this ended up being her last hospital stay. 23:03 I didn't really know it at the time. And I was obviously just steeped in anticipatory grief and thinking about my mom. My mom was an activist and just such a force of compassion in the world. 23:17 Her thing was animal rights and environmental rights but really compassion for all. And so just thinking about what a beautiful mark she made in my life and in so many lives and just thinking, "Gosh, now I'm a mom. 23:30 Like, gosh, that's a lot of responsibility." 23:32 [singing] When the four winds blow me home, hope I leave more than my bones, and something blooms at this Carolina red 24:03 clay. Where the jewel weed by the riverbank and the sycamore sway. I need no chapel or no hymn, just a bonfire and my friends. 24:22 Laughing and toasting to how hard I tried. With their hearts full of peace and their cups full of rye. 24:36 Send me up to the night like the sparks from that fire 24:50 All the fear that I'd never be enough. Let me ask instead as the valley draws near, was I worth my weight in love? 25:09 Was I worth my weight in love? 25:18 [singing] I went the highway and the sea with a song and on my knees. 25:39 Took the stars in my collar when no beauty was mine. Filled my cup up with wanting and wasted the wine. 25:54 I held a battle, held a stone, held a daughter of my own. Climbed the stairs to the temple in her Pacific Ocean eyes. 26:09 Laid down my wild sorrow to do right by her smile. Made a home on this earth out of mountains and miles. And all the hurting 26:27 that I did down here, all the fear that I'd never be enough. 26:36 Let me ask instead as the valley draws near, was I worth my weight in love? 26:49 Let me ask instead as the valley draws near, was I worth my weight in love? 27:02 [singing] How do you think your mom, in an active way that you've been conscious about, influenced the way you mother? 27:21 Wow. I talk about it a little bit in this other song I think I'll play called Moon and Mother, which is the title track of this album. 27:29 My mother came to motherhood with such a joy, like there was nothing else she would rather be doing, even really in the tough moments. 27:36 I mean, she was very much human, but she just delighted in my sister and me, and was so creative in terms of how she approached us and how she spent her time with us. 27:47 And so for me, so much of my journey of healing in my grief around losing her is just realizing that, yes, she's not here physically, but she literally made me spiritually, physically, everything else. 27:59 And so my capacity to mother in a way that's as beautiful as hers was is inside me. 28:07 [singing] I don't wanna talk about 28:19 this tideless ocean of my cosmic aloneness, since the one who loves me most is gone. 28:31 I only wanna mention that the butterfly bush is blooming. My little girl is barefoot in the garden, and she's singing your song. 28:46 I see the moon, the moon sees me. The moon sees the somebody I'd like to see. 29:01 God made the moon, but my mama made me. So if I'm made of moon and mother, I must be tough enough for loving, 29:18 even though I know loving means my loves will leave. I don't wanna think about stepping back into your empty house. 29:36 Packing up all your colored glass, how the floorboards sang goodbye. I only wanna focus on you coming back here as a song. 29:52 Teaching my daughter to find you where the branches brush the sky. I see the moon, the moon sees me. 30:05 The moon sees the somebody I'd like to see. God made the moon, but my mama made me. 30:20 So if I'm made of moon and mother, I must be tough enough for loving, even though I know loving means my loves will leave. 30:38 Ooh. Ooh. 30:59 Tornado, flower, heavy fruit. Thundercloud and poplar shoot. Monarchs and the milkweed, and a child's feet down the hall. 31:15 I wear the name of Mama now, and although it weighs a thousand pounds, I think she scattered her seeds here 'cause she knew I could grow them all. 31:32 I see the moon. The moon sees me. The moon sees the sun, but he had like to see. 31:47 God made the moon, but my mama made me. So if I'm made of moon and mother, I must be tough enough for living. 32:05 I must be. I must be. Anything we haven't talked about with this record or where you're going forward that you think is important for people to know? 32:21 One other thing I wanted to add was it was a vulnerable decision to want to make a record, 'cause I was like, "Who even cares? 32:27 You're gonna spend this money," and maybe part of it was my mom from the other side nudging me along, saying, "No, it matters. It matters to put these songs out there." 32:35 Your podcast is so beautifully devoted to art, and I think what I want to stress is, like, make the thing. Just make it. Just put it out there. Um- There's so much to that. Jason has done that with Ash Vegas. Yeah. 32:49 The Hot... She just make it, and that's what I'm doing with this. Yes. I did with my previous podcast. Yes. And I r- I can relate to that feeling, and in a way, that's really empowering, isn't it? 32:58 Where you just say- Yes... you're not gonna let anybody else determine whether you make the music. Yes. Now, whether it, it gets traction or whatever, that, you can't control those kinds of things. Right. 33:08 There's only so much you can control. Exactly, but at the end of the day, on a given Tuesday, when I'm packing my daughter's lunch, I feel like I have done what I'm here to do by making these songs and archiving them. 33:22 And then the other thing I just wanted to add was once I made that decision, it was so beautiful how it fell into alignment, you know? 33:28 I thought, "Okay, I'm gonna call my absolute favorite musicians," the Free Planet Radio guys. Yeah, River and, and- Yep, River Gurganious. Chris. Chris Rosser- Yeah... 33:36 Jake Wolf, and Matt Smith from the Honeycutters, who I've played with for many years, Franklin Keel, who's in the symphony. Did you also record this at Echo Mountain? 33:46 We did, and Echo Mountain, at the time, was going to be closing, which was tragic. So we recorded it in September of last year, when Echo Mountain was set to close in October. 33:56 Oh, so you were getting in under the wire- Yes... at least you thought. Yeah. Which kind of imbued the whole thing with a very bittersweet feeling, and thank goodness Echo Mountain is very much open now. Yeah. 34:06 And we're all so happy about that. Well, thank goodness you made this record. Thank you. So thank you, Jane. Thank you. For that, and thank you for being part of See Hear, for being on this podcast. I'm delighted. 34:14 Yeah, great. Thank you for having me, Matt. [upbeat music] If you haven't already, please subscribe for free to our newsletter so you can see and hear what's happening in Western North Carolina's arts and culture. 34:25 Just go to seehearwnc.com. I'm Matt Peiken, and I'll see you here at See Hear. The blackberries smell like burning sugar in the sun
