This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Luis Hernandez: Allysen, welcome to The Public’s Radio.
Allysen Callery: Thanks for having me.
Hernandez: You know, I’ve read a lot of your bio and been listening to your music, but when you run into folks, how do you describe your art? How do you describe your music?
Callery: Well, the moniker I got from my first label was Ghost Folk. And it kind of is a combination of, hauntingness. The music is haunting, but it’s also the ghosts of the past. I was influenced a lot by my parents, British Isles folk revival records of the late 70s. I mean late 60s, early 70s, like Steel Eyespan, and of course, Fairport Convention. And I, I really resonated a lot with Incredible String Band. And so I’m drawing upon those ghosts, and also I just happen to be a little spooky.
Hernandez: You’re self taught. What does that mean? Like at some point, at what point did you start playing an instrument or singing?
Callery: So we always had instruments in the house. My father played beautiful classical guitar. I played violin as a child. I really wanted to play cello, but my parents said it was too expensive. And my dad passed away really young and I got his guitar and I’d always sang, I sang in church, I sang at school in chorus and stuff. so I wanted an instrument that I could hold and play and sing to, so it meant a lot to me to carry on my father’s legacy.
Hernandez: When did you decide, though, like, this could be a career?
Callery: Is it a career, though? Okay. I work a part time job that, you know, five hours a day, usually. And I’ve been there 20 years, so I can be a musician and make very non commercial music. I play a lot of local, by local I mean like an hour, hour and a half away, places and you play for three hours and you make your $200 plus tips. And then I have my job because I have a mortgage and I have a family and, and, you know. I gotta pitch in.
Hernandez: Your latest album is called Witch’s Hand. It’s a collaboration with a doom metal band from Germany called Mother Bear. Explain that one.
Callery: All right, so Mother Bear from Germany are these adorable 20 something year old boys that are friends with my label friends, who are like my age, but they love my music. And we were outside a club after I’d played, and they’re like, Hey, you want to collaborate? And you hear this a lot as an artist, but three months later, they’re like, Hey, do you have your songs? And I went into my music room and in a half an hour I wrote “Witch’s Hand”, my portion of it.
[MUSIC: Death Skull by Allysen Callery featuring Mother Bear]
Hernandez: You really didn’t get started until much later, right? You had a family. You decided to go that route, then go and do your music. But why that decision, and how did that play out through your life?
Callery: For me, it was really important to have a family I didn’t have one growing up. I really wanted to have that baby and I got my baby girl that I dreamed of. And while I was home with her, I started writing poetry. And those poems became songs later on, and then as she grew up and was more autonomous, I started going out like little bit by little bit, going to open mics, and then, I got the guts to write to a record label. Actually, it was a record label out of Germany that was originally from Brighton, England, called Woodland Recordings, and to my surprise and delight, he wrote back and said, send me some demos.
Hernandez: And now your daughter’s a musician?
Callery: And now my daughter, Ava, is a musician, and she’s in a band called Bouquet, and they do dream pop. It’s absolutely gorgeous.
Hernandez: Did you want her, did you push her into music, or that was her choice?
Callery: I got her a guitar after I saw her as a little kid, like, playing around with my guitar. That tiny guitar never got touched. But we were driving somewhere, and she’s like, Mom, I think I want to get a guitar and I went [reeeek] with the car and I turned around and we went to a place literally called Liquors and Guitars that has a big sign, but it was nearby. I got her a little acoustic, but like three months later, she’d already borrowed somebody’s electric guitar. So she’s the electric Callery.
Hernandez: You’re on the board of the Rhode Island Folk Festival, which is celebrating its 10th year this August. Previously known as the Providence Folk Festival. Can you give us a little early preview of what people are going to see in this year’s festival?
Callery: Boy, well, very big news. We got Tom Rush on the main stage. Everybody’s extremely excited about that. For my stage, I have some of my favorite people. Hungrytown, they travel all over the world. They’re huge in England. It’s a husband and wife team. Driftwood Soldier, they’re fantastic. There’s a few, you know, more local people that are doing it, but we’ve got several stages. We’ve got a main stage, like the big clamshell stage, and that has the bigger bands, like more people in the bands. My stage is called Songbird Stage, which is named after my record, The Songbird Sings. It was very nice of them.
Hernandez: Between, I mean, the traveling, the shows, your work and your family, you know, I’m wondering like when you fit in creating new music, creating new pieces, and are you working on anything?
Callery: Yeah. I mean, it comes all the time and, you know, it’s a fallacy that you have to like go up into your garret to be able to create. I’ve written songs in the car driving home. I’ll just dictate it into my phone. And then I’ll, you know, tweak it, and then I’ll set it to music. And this miraculous invention, the smartphone, I have GarageBand right on my phone. And I’ve recorded so much here, like right on a phone. I even have a record called Lost Children that are all demos that I’ve recorded on my phone. And it’s on my Bandcamp.
Hernandez: What are you going to play for us today?
Callery: This song is called “Dark-winged Sparrow.”
[MUSIC: Dark Winged Sparrow]
[MUSIC: I’m Not Scared of the Dark]