My Politic is the Folk/Americana duo Kaston Guffey and Nick Pankey who grew up together in Ozark, MO and started creating music at High School. With the release of their latest album, MISSOURI FOLKLORE: SONGS & STORIES FROM HOME, the duo has taken their talents to a new creative peak. This is music for the mind and the soul. We recently caught up with main songwriter Kaston Guffey and asked him to reflect on the journey that has taken My Politic to their current status of one of the most promising bands on the circuit over recent years.
Congratulations on the release of the new album - MISSOURI FOLKLORE: SONGS & STORIES FROM HOME. It was released in December last year and I wonder about the timing. Was the media response impacted by the clash with the Christmas festivities?
You know, it’s always hard to decide when to release something. This is an album that we had planned to record back in 2020 but things went in a different direction with the pandemic and everything shutting down. We ended up writing, recording and releasing a whole other kind of album (SHORT-SIGHTED PEOPLE IN POWER) and waited on this one. It ended up working out for the best and I think I had written three to four more songs that ended up on “Missouri Folklore,” some of my favourites on the record actually. We recorded it in March and April of ‘22 and felt like we ought to get it out that year, so we picked December. I figured we’d have a couple weeks before outlets turned to holiday fare but given the year, it seems like the cut-off was the week before. Win some, lose some I guess. All that said, the album has been received very warmly and we appreciate everyone that’s been listening and spreading the word. We are as independent as they come and every person listening/talking about it is vital, so eternal thanks to all those that have helped spread the word.
This represents your ninth official release. The new album includes fourteen songs across very expansive fifty-plus minutes. How long was the project in delivery and were the songs written over a lengthy time period?
I’d say maybe nine of the songs on Missouri Folklore were written between 2017-2020 and another four were written between 2020-2021. A couple of the last songs I wrote that ended up on the record made the concept of the whole thing much clearer. Those songs, Cursing At The Night & At The Morning and Vanishing Vapours really gave us the idea to kinda set the whole album in the Ozarks where we grew up and have it be kind of a tapestry of different fictional and non-fictional characters and stories with varying degrees of autobiographical material running throughout.
It’s a reflection of growing up and the ghosts that linger in memories. The songs are both personal and also highlight local characters that impact on a typical rural background. How connected to your upbringing and youthful memories did you feel in the writing for the album?
I’ve always written a lot about where we grew up and how I grew up. I think some of that has to do with the fact that writing has always been part therapy for me. A way to deconstruct lots of different ideas and things that have happened in life so in that sense I don’t think Missouri Folklore is much different... but I do think over the years I’ve gotten a little better at it. I also started writing this album in my late 20’s. I think it’s just a naturally reflective time in a person’s life, trying to figure out how you ended up the way you have. Of course the last seven-plus years in this country have been very eye opening in so many ways. I was certainly grappling with growing up in an area that was/is extremely conservative and evangelical from this new vantage point, post 2016.
Your early releases; A Few Words I Couldn’t Find Yesterday and Not Gone, Just Asleep were released back in 2008/2009. Can you reflect on how your song-writing has changed from these early recordings, and how does the journey look from those early releases to where you are now as a songwriter?
Nicholas and I started recording albums in high school. I think we started on the first one before I was even 16 back in Ozark, MO. The songs aren’t good by any means but we did learn a great deal. A friend of ours, Blake Brandell’s step dad had a basement studio & he taught us so much about recording our own stuff. Jamie Carter is his name. We did three albums of original stuff down there and he taught us not to wait on other people, to just do the work, record the songs and just keep at it. So we did. With song writing, at least for me, it’s been a long process to get halfway decent at it. All those early songs aren’t good but they allowed me to understand my process early. I kinda see all that early stuff as the material you have to get through in order to get to the better quality stuff. I’ve always been really prolific so I think learning how to write, record, release a whole project at that age really helped us get better, on our own time and in our own way.
You followed up the early albums with the ongoing momentum of YOUNGER STILL (2010), AMERICAN WILL (2012), and LOVE AND A MOTOR HOME (2013). That’s five albums over a six-year period. Was it at this point that you decided to move to Nashville?
AMERICAN WILL and LOVE & A MOTOR HOME were the first two albums we made on our own. Nicholas was hitting the buttons/engineering. We moved to Boston in 2010 and immediately started writing & recording in our 400-square foot apartment. We started singing a lot more harmony at this time and started to listen to a lot more songwriters that had become extremely influential to us. Diving deep into John Prine, Towne Van Zandt, folks we’d not been introduced to as much when we were in junior high/high school. These two albums get a little better, song writing-wise but it’s definitely a period I look back on & see that we were still very green. We had no formal training of any kind so just had to learn what we could, when we could. This is also around the time we started booking tours and getting on the road. Then we moved to Nashville at the end of 2013.
ANCHOR, in 2015, seemed to be something of a breakthrough album. Did you see it that way and did it result in increased media attention?
“Anchor” was the first album we recorded in Nashville. We recorded it at our pal Josh Washam’s home studio and we were basically finding little windows of time to record after I wrote songs and over a few months time, we ended up with nine tracks and released it as ANCHOR. That record feels like the first record of pretty decent songs, we even play God Vs. Evolution and Nobody To Blame on the road, still. It definitely felt like a turning point for us both in terms of the quality of the writing and also the harmonies & instrumentation were more fleshed out. It’s hard to say how much attention it got but it certainly felt like the strongest project that we’d put together up till that point.
TWELVE KINDS OF LOST followed in 2017 and I wanted to ask whether you actually felt somewhat “lost” in the Nashville music scene around this time?
It can be a tough city in which to get noticed. I’m sure that was a part of it... we had basically a full band on that album and if memory serves, I remember actively trying to write songs that were a little “bigger” just to make a fuller sounding album. I think for the most part we succeeded. We tracked it all live at The Sound Emporium and that was a really fun experience.
SHORT SIGHTED PEOPLE IN POWER laid your political frustrations on the line in 2021. It was very much a home recording, during Covid, and I wonder whether your criticism of the Republican Party led to some challenging fallout and closed doors in the very much ‘Red’ state of Tennessee?
That album is such an interesting case. We had plans to record what became about 80% of Missouri Folklore in 2020 but of course everything went out the window in March. Nicholas and I were still living together at the Mad Valley (our house south of Nashville) and since we had no idea when we could record or get back on the road, we decided to lay down songs as I wrote them and release a little ep. I was doing nothing but consuming the news and going to marches. We recorded all of it in Nicholas’ bedroom and it really turned out exactly like we wanted. A kind of document that reflected the craziness of that moment. It was only after; when we actually played these songs in front of folks that we’ve had a few tense situations on the road in the south, but nothing too bad. We play a lot of house concerts in rural areas and get folks that disagree with us but it’s been mostly civil so far. We will see if that continues.
The innate conservatism in Tennessee must have been hard to reconcile with your deeply held political and personal views at that time?
We grew up in the Ozarks, a very conservative, extremely evangelical area and Tennessee feels very similar. I’ve never particularly seen eye to eye with this worldview... The thing is, there are a lot of folks in red states like that that aren’t of that political persuasion. We certainly grew up that way so I like going into places like that and singing songs like ours.
Your song-writing craft has been likened to the legendary John Prine. Whereas this is the ultimate compliment, I have to wonder about the weight of expectation that you feel regarding such comments?
Well, I absolutely love John Prine. He’s certainly had an undeniable influence on my writing. While I appreciate that comparison it’s never crossed my mind that it could be true. I just care a great deal about the process and I want to keep grinding at it and getting better at the things about song writing that I think are deeply important. I’m an atheist, science-y kinda person and while that is true, it is also the case that this song writing/creativity thing feels very close to magic. So I’d like to keep getting to the bottom of that. Nicholas and I talk a lot about the deeper philosophical nature of the whole thing and it’s something that keeps us very bound to the work.
Your heart-on-the-sleeve approach to song-writing has gained you many admirers of your craft. Do you separate the personal from the observational in your writing?
So often, I’m not exactly sure what the song or the line means in the early stages of the creative process...the discovery or the untangling, all of that can reveal something deeply personal or observational or maybe a character sketch or some kind of metaphor. So it feels like it’s all tangled up and I’m just trying to reveal whatever it is. So I guess I would say that I don’t separate the personal and the observational at first. After that, ideas start taking shape and then I can usually see a little of my “personal” self in the thing but hopefully it’s turned into something else as well.
Does the growing popularity for your music in Europe excite, or is it a sense of frustration given the constraints that travelling to new audiences brings since Covid?
Gosh, if our music is growing in popularity over there, we wanna come hang out! I hope that can happen sooner than later.
You recently moved to a new life adventure in Pittsburgh. How has that been so far and having spent close on ten years in Nashville, how do you look back on the experiences gained?
Me and my Fiancé Georgia English (fantastic songwriter and music educator) moved to Pittsburgh at the end of October last year and we are absolutely head over heels for it. Nashville has become so expensive and after Covid, we consistently felt less and less like we belonged there. I mean, one could argue that we never really belonged there … My Politic hasn’t been about playing the game or trying to fit whatever new fad is being fed through the machine. It’s also going in the absolute wrong direction politically. It’s illegal for women and people that can get pregnant to seek an abortion. They are passing law after law criminalizing LGBTQIA+ folks. A lot of wealthy far right media types and bad faith messengers are moving there. It’s just getting worse by the day. Pittsburgh on the other hand… I find myself having so many more intellectually stimulating conversations and stumbling into more alternative art spaces. We’ve met so many songwriters and musicians already. The city and our neighbourhood of Millvale are very inspiring in so many ways. I think the future here is very, very bright for us.
Interview by Paul McGee