Down to the title, Georgia Dish Boys’ Good Country Livin is an exercise in folksy positivity. On its new album, the prolific Athens roots-rock band casts aside the torn ’n’ tattered Crazy Horse rippage of last year’s Nine Song Movie in favor of an unabashed exuberance that seems at odds with these aching times. Yet the album also feels like a balm, a reminder that uplifting music can be as powerful as that which challenges and provokes.
Above all, Good Country Livin is a fine summertime listen, a perfect soundtrack for half-drunk late-evening hangs. Explains frontman and principal songwriter Seth Martin, “There’s not one minor chord on the whole album.”
Martin dished—pun entirely intended—on three things that inspired his group’s new LP.
The Porch
Good Country Livin was recorded live on the front porch of Martin’s childhood home in Elbert County and engineered by band member Tyler Key.
“I knew early on this would be a home recording, and that it would be done live and outside,” says Martin. “We didn’t know exactly how or where on the property we’d record, until we got down there. The porch had all this old wood for siding, and [it] pushed out into the yard really nicely.”
The rustic setting bleeds into the album’s pared-down sound. “[T]here’s a song that has a lyric about a wind chime in it,” Martin says, referring to the record’s rollicking fourth track, “Ain’t Losing Time.” “During the intro of that song, [vocalist] Olivia [Anderson] reached over and rang a wind chime that was on the porch. You can hear it on the recording.”
The recording process was as convivial as the end result suggests. Key “was the only one wearing headphones while we played,” Martin says. “Olivia and I faced each other to sing the harmonies live, and we turned the amps towards the woods. We kept all first takes, except on two songs… After the recording, we cooked sweet potatoes and collard greens and drank peach moonshine while picking on joke songs by the fire.”
Singing All the Time
Georgia Dish Boys’ music acknowledges certain bedrock influences—Neil Young, Lynyrd Skynyrd and Townes Van Zandt among them—but it draws from a deeper well, with rock, country and psych flavors commingling cheerily on playful tracks like “Kiss You on the Jeans.”
“I could try to name off all the albums that fed into making this album, but the word limit on this article isn’t big enough,” says Martin, who says music informs his being on an elemental level. “I listen to music as much as I possibly can. I can’t be in my car without singing at the top of my lungs to something.”
Pressed to name a specific inspiration, Martin reaches for one of contemporary folk music’s all-time greats.
“John Prine has always been huge for me, and I was listening to him almost exclusively when I wrote the first few songs for the album almost two Christmases ago,” says Martin. “I made a little CD for my family that had a few [songs] on it that I knew were pulling at the thread that became this album.”
Gettin’ Some Love
During the process of constructing Good Country Livin, Martin met Anderson, and the two became an item, both musically and romantically.
“Meeting, becoming friends and falling in love with Olivia has been an indescribable influence on the songwriting,” Martin says. “We wrote several of the songs together, and she wrote the lyrics to the title track.”
That sprawling, slow-roasted title track centers on scenes of familial strife but is given a homespun Dish Boys twist.
“She was back home in Lookout Mountain and returning home from a distillery with half of her family… The other half were in the kitchen trying to separate a couple of fighting dogs, and someone got bit,” says Martin. “She texted me and said, ‘Half of us are drunk, and the rest of us are in pain.’ I replied, ‘That’s good country livin.’
“About five minutes later, she sent me 10 verses of lyrics with that line as a chorus,” Martin recalls. “We edited it down, I put the chords on it almost immediately, and it’s never changed.”
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