The Brown Mountain Lightning Bugs

Folk(ish) fuel for your psychedelic soul.

Kendra and Zack Harding form The Brown Mountain Lightning Bugs, a folk(ish)/Americana group hailing from Winston-Salem, NC. The band made its debut in 2015, shortly after the two tied the knot in an old chapel in the heart of the Piedmont.

Zackalasia - This Is Not An Album

From Zack:

When I first started playing music, my two biggest influences were Primus and Tool. Over the years, I shifted into a more Americana/acoustic direction. Most the albums I've played on have been in this second category. For "This is Not an Album," I'm digging back into the Primus and Tool influences. There's a whole lot of the former and fair chunk of the latter if you're into that vibe.

Zackalasia - This Is Not An Album (Spotify)

Zackalasia - This Is Not An Album (Bandcamp)

Rain and Change

I started chronicling the surreal transition from being on the road to being in lockdown indefinitely a while back. I wasn’t sure if I would ever post it. I mostly did it for myself, and there’s more to it that I may post later, but today felt like the time to put this part out into the world.

A cloudy Mojave Desert around 6am

A cloudy Mojave Desert around 6am

 It seemed like the spitting rain had followed us from the edge of the Mojave, all the way back to the Ozarks, and with the clouds came a growing sense of unrest. I don’t remember exactly when I started singing the chorus of “My Shot” from Hamilton every time I washed my hands, but by the time we got to Arkansas I wasn’t the only one spending extra time at the sink in the public restroom.

Public restrooms. That’s basically all I’d used for the last two weeks. As I sat at the small, round table in the café window and watched the ice-cold drizzle soak into the sidewalk, I casually wondered if I’d come into contact with the virus. Women a few tables over chattered about toilet paper and hand sanitizer, DIY recipes to make disinfectant if they ran out of Lysol. I scrolled through Instagram on my phone and saw the first post about someone cancelling an event. I showed Zack, and I wondered if and when it would happen to us. When would this dream life we’d been living be paused – or worse, ended?

It wasn’t long before I got my answer. A text lit up my phone as I typed up a booking inquiry on my laptop. A talent buyer in Virginia asked to cancel a weekend stint she and I had spent months planning. I tried to look on the bright side, telling Zack that at least we didn’t have to hire my sister to watch our dogs for another weekend. She’d spent the last two weeks with them while we were on tour, and I was pretty sure she’d gotten her fill.

We weren’t set to play until 7, so we sat and worked and read, and watched as the virus’ ever-present partner began to do its work. Fear moves quickly, altering our behavior with minimal effort, and sometimes altering history with the same efficiency. When I ordered my sandwich at the counter, the barista hadn’t been wearing gloves. By the time we started setting up our equipment, all employees were wearing gloves, and a new plan for sanitizing surfaces had been set in place.

“Once an hour, every hour,” I heard the barista chipperly tell a customer. He was smiling, but I wondered if he was feeling as nervous as the toilet-paper hoarders a few tables over.

We played our gig, and people listened. People drank. People ate, people laughed, people talked, shook hands, hugged, danced. Families ate ice cream together while we played CCR. A mom and daughter shared a cocktail in celebration of something, anything, and sang along to “Jolene.” These used to be common sights for me on gig days. I had no idea I was about to lose them.

We left the café and made our way back east. A 15-hour, all-night drive awaited us, so I shotgunned the coffee the barista made for me (a large triple-shot latte) and wound down the spaghetti-noodle streets of Eureka Springs.

The rain pittered on.

Song-by-Song: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

From Kendra:

Zack wrote this one long before I ever came onto the scene, but he pulled it out of the Rolodex last year to see if it might work in our live show. He invited me to tweak the melody and lyrics, and after playing it live, rewriting it, playing it live some more, and doing some last minute studio rewrites we arrived at the “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” we have today.

Ryan came in and added his harmony to the banjo riff that we hear under the refrain, along with some acoustic guitar and glockenspiel played by Wayne, elements that I think make the piece into the airy musical wonderland that it is. When we were listening back after tracking it and it hit the outro with Wayne’s acoustic lead riff I knew it would be the track to wrap up the album. Something about this song just exudes both finality and possibility and I can’t think of a better way to end our debut album.

From Zack:

Most of the songs I write are written under the concept of having a lot of parts and layers built on top of them. Isolated, the banjo riff in this song would be boring and repetitive, but with the parts that every else adds, it sounds great. I’m particularly fond of the harmonies Ryan wrote for the refrain lick. He’s got a knack for harmony that I lack, and I’m always impressed with it. Trevor actually apologized to me for his solo at the end, but I think it’s fantastic!

I also write songs sometimes that I have absolutely no business singing. This is one of those. When I sing “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” it’s a disaster, but Kendra altered it just enough and sang it beautifully.

This is the oldest song on the album by at least a couple of years, but like Kendra said above, we knew it would be the perfect ending track.

Song-by-Song: I Am the Waves

From Kendra:

This song was written in response to a song that was written in response to a song by Les Claypool (more on that below). Zack was in the Philippines visiting family at the time, and I missed him quite a bit. His birthday was going to be happening while he was gone, so I decided to write a song and video it for him as a present. He loved it and proposed not long after getting back from his trip, so it must have been a good song!

I started with a spare, a capella opening and then let the song grow more and more chaotic in tempo throughout (like a stormy sea). This makes the song fun to play live, but we had a heck of a time recording it. Getting the timing right between tracks was super challenging, but listening back to it, it’s clear that all the hard work and brainstorming paid off!

From Zack:

Primus has a song called “Tragedy’s A Comin’” on their 2011 album Green Naugahyde. The song is about seeing tragedy on the horizon, but being completely unable to do anything about it. With my own health problems and my family’s illness over the years, I could relate to that feeling. It’s a terrifying, helpless feeling to know that some terrible thing is bearing down on you in the near future and there’s no way to get around it. I wrote a song called “Seawall” that followed a similar perspective with the added notion that I would succumb to the tragedy if I had to face it alone. Finally, Kendra wrote “I am the Waves” in response to “Seawall,” letting me know that I wouldn’t have to face tragedy alone ever again, because she would be there with me.

This is a haunting tune, and the recording captures both the harrowing nature of looming tragedy as well as the loving embrace of standing together in the face of such a challenge. I think this is my favorite banjo part on the album.

“Seawall” almost made the cut for this album, but not quiet. I hope to release it in some form in the future, because we have a really nice recording of it.

Song-by-Song: You're the One for Me

From Kendra:

This was another one that was mostly done when we started recording the album. Zack, Wayne, and Trevor had begun the process previously for another project and we decided to pull it into what we were doing.

It has such a big, open sound that captures the essence of what the song is about: how love is one big adventure. Getting to write some harmonies to add into this was a ton of fun, and has continued to be a fun thing to do during our live shows. I couldn’t be happier with how this one turned out.

From Zack:

I wrote this one on the campus of UNCSA in Winston Salem. Kendra and I had just gotten engaged, and I was waiting for her to get out of class. I got the mandolin out of my car, sat a folding chair on the grass and wrote. People walked by and gave me a lot of funny looks, but I got a fantastic song out of it.

I had went dirt biking in the Pisgah National Forest the weekend before, and that inspired some of the lyrics. I literally scared a black bear out of my way, and accidentally ran over a MONSTER of a rattle snake on that trip. I once crossed a flooding river on the way to Big Bradly Falls in Saluda North Carolina. I dirt biked through the jungles of Cambodia, climbed up to the peaks of the Appalachia, and have seen 10,000+ sunsets in my lifetime. None of these were as powerful as the love I felt for Kendra.

I was deeply in love when I wrote this tune, and it shows. Still am, too.

Song-by-Song: Ember

From Kendra:

This is another one of those obscure literary reference songs of mine. Zack wrote the main guitar lick, and invited me to come up with some lyrics. I had been reading the second book in Jeanne DuPrau’s Books of Ember series, had just wrapped up playing Supergiant Games’ Bastion, and had wanted to write something based on C.S. Lewis’ The Magician’s Nephew. So I decided to write lyrics that referenced all three, and thus “Ember” was born.

I think this was the first song Zack and I cowrote that lent itself really nicely to being a jam song, and I think we captured that really nicely in the recording. This one is always gets me pumped up during a gig and I think it does the same thing as we approach the end of the album.

From Zack:

Musically, this song is heavily inspired by Neil Young’s jam songs like “Down By the River” and “Cowgirl in the Sand.” The progression is dead simple, giving plenty of room for the lead guitar to do it’s thing. Ember really cooks when there’s two lead guitar players weaving around each other through the song. Kendra’s vocal is fantastic on this one, and I think Wayne’s production hit exactly what we were looking for: it’s straight to the point, rocking, and punchy.

The last third of my solo sounds like a thunderstorm to me.

Song-by-Song: Rambling Roads

From Kendra:

This one is a staple in our live show, and always gets a good response. I love the pairing of the bouncy, upbeat, down-home feel of the main banjo riff with the carefree attitude of the lyrics. And our little stacked harmony always makes me smile. This feel-good song makes me appreciate the beauty of simplicity, both in music and in life. I think that the vibe of this song was what Thoreau was going for in writing Walden. Except maybe less pretentious.

From Zack:

This song is one of the first songs I wrote when I started a solo project called “Skeeter Hawk.” I made a bedroom recording of it that was pretty good, but this kicks the pants off of it. I’ve played this tune with every group I’ve played with since it was written, including the one-off show with the band “Molehill Mountain.” It’s always a solid, reliable part of our set, and the vocal harmonies are fun. We’ve played the song in one of two ways, either really fast and bluegrass-ish in style or more funky and slow like it is on this recording. You never know which version you’ll get when we play it live, which is part of the fun!

Song-by-Song: Joni Girl

From Kendra:

This song. This song is probably the best thing I’ve ever been a part of. Not because I got to play melodica on it, but because I got to play a love song for a dog. This one speaks for itself (featuring some special BGVs from the Joni in question). I have nothing else to say, but here’s a picture of the muse herself.

d jone.jpg

From Zack:

I always introduce this as "the best love song I've ever written, and it's written for a dog!" Our black lab Joni holds a special place in my heart, as she has bonded with me closer than any other dog I've ever had, and I've had dogs my entire life. She loves to hike, and whenever you mention the word, she'll start yipping and jumping in excitement. I knew that'd be the perfect intro and outro to this song.

The main riff and melody is about as dogish as they come, and quite the earworm as well. People seem to like this song a lot, and it's always a fun part of our set. Plus, I get to see Kendra play melodica!