Silas House and Matraca Berg • Songwriter Session, 2019
Songwriter Sessions • 42m
Author Silas House reads excerpts from his novel “Southernmost” alongside songwriter Matraca Berg, who performs five original compositions, during a Songwriter Session at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. Together, they look at the portrayal of home through a Southern lens.
Berg opens the program, filmed June 15, 2019, with a performance of “Oh Cumberland,” alluding to the river that runs through her ancestral home in Kentucky and Nashville, where she grew up. Striving to choose songs that complement the imagery in House’s novel, she also sings “You Already Know” (written with Little Feather’s Liz Sharpe and Aaron Spraggs), “Arguing With Ghosts” (written with Gretchen Peters and Ben Glover), “Back When We Were Beautiful,” and “The Dreaming Fields.” In addition, Berg and House express admiration for Southern writer Lee Smith.
A Kentucky native, House explains that he relied on a playlist of songs, including some of Berg’s, to help him stay focused during the writing of “Southernmost.” After noting that it took him eight years to write that novel, he compliments Berg by saying, “I think you capture, to me, so much of the experience of being Appalachian and being Southern, in that you can never get rid of home. Even if you leave home physically, you never leave it spiritually. It’s always there with you. It’s in you and you carry it everywhere you go. You just do that so beautifully.”
FOR MORE
Explore the Museum’s public programming: https://countrymusichalloffame.org/plan-your-visit/exhibits-activities/public-programs/
FOLLOW THE MUSEUM
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/OfficialCMHOF/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/countrymusichof/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/countrymusichof
Up Next in Songwriter Sessions
-
Luke Dick • Songwriter Session, 2021
Luke Dick performs and tells stories about three of the hits he’s co-written: Dierks Bentley’s “Burning Man,” Eric Church’s “Kill a Word,” and Miranda Lambert’s “Bluebird.” He also shares two songs from a documentary he produced about his mother.
In a virtual interview with the Museum’s Michael ...
-
Teddy Robb and J.T. Harding • Songwri...
Recording artist Teddy Robb and hit songwriter J.T. Harding swap songs and answer audience questions during this Songwriter Session, held on June 8, 2019, at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, during the year’s CMA Music Festival. Along with Robb’s originals, Harding offers songs cut by K...
-
Songs of Brad Paisley • Ashley Gorley...
Three of Brad Paisley’s frequent songwriting collaborators—Ashley Gorley, Kelley Lovelace, and Lee Thomas Miller—talk about their friendship with the country artist and tell stories behind their songs he’s recorded.
Part of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum’s Songwriter Sessions series, ...
