Fern Maddie — 13 December 2023 on Rocket Shop Radio Hour

Monochrome photo by Ross Mickel

Fern Maddie joined guest hosts Abbey BK and Keagan Lafferty on ‘Rocket Shop,’ Big Heavy World’s weekly local Vermont music radio hour on 105.9 FM The Radiator. Catch up with them at instagram.com/fernmaddie

Text by Keagan Lafferty

Fern Maddie rolls up her sleeves to show me her tattoos, revealing an intricate design of human bones intertwined with various plants. She just finished a performance on Rocket Shop, and as someone who believes that tattoos are the best way to know someone, I can’t help but ask to see hers. This one, on the opposite side of her forearm, shows a crossover of nature and humanity, resembling an earthy aesthetic that is reflected in Maddie’s music and persona. Her face is framed by shoulder length brown hair and wispy bangs. She’s wearing a coffee-brown cable-knit sweater with overalls, and I can’t help but picture her on a green hill in remote Ireland, a gray sky overhead, and wild sheep and horses in the distance.

An image like this one, in fact, serves as her primary influence when it comes to songwriting. Maddie’s style embodies traditional ballads with roots in the United Kingdom and old time Appalachian folk. She’s inspired by the folk revival of the early 50s and 60s, including artists in England and Ireland like Shirley Collins and Dave Van Ronk. However, she is re-inventing the genre on her own terms with hauntingly beautiful vocals and original ideas that are unlike anything the industry has seen before. 

Maddie plays a mix of original songs and traditional ballads which are impressively re-interpreted; “I'm gay, and I want to write songs that are about queer experiences and project those experiences back in time because we don't have a lot of songs that are explicitly about gay people in the past, but we know they existed,” explained Maddie, “So that's one of the ways that I try to massage songs into into new shapes without changing the bedrock of the song.” Maddie also uses production strategies to re-invent old songs, adding electronic beats or experimental elements that create a different and more modern sound. 

“I was raised in a very creative family,” said Maddie. Her dad was a composer, songwriter, and pianist, and her parents wrote musicals together which Maddie performed as a child. While she began singing and playing piano and guitar at a young age, it wasn’t until her teenage years that Maddie discovered traditional music. “[I] tried to learn Irish fiddle, which was very challenging,” said Maddie. “I love Irish folk music, [but] I’m not a fiddler.”

Therefore, banjo was Maddie’s next venture. She took on a clawhammer style of playing; where one strikes the strings with their nails and uses the thumb to create a rhythmic bouncing motion. Maddie is thoughtful and acknowledges that this style, along with the banjo itself, derives from traditional African American culture brought to the states by enslaved people. “I do use that style with gratitude and naming where it comes from,” said Maddie.

Maddie plays both guitar and banjo, as well as several other instruments, and closely identifies with multi-instrumentalist techniques in her music. It helps to drive her creativity because she can arrange songs on different instruments to spark new ideas. Maddie also strongly believes in the value of versatility in her music. “Something I really foster as a musician is variety,” said Maddie. “I want my songs to sound different. I want each one to be a new experience.”

Maddie’s songwriting is highly structured with repeated motifs and specific storytelling techniques, reminiscent of traditional ballads. “I see people who write such amazing freeform lyrics over really complex chords, and I'm like, my brain doesn't work that way,” said Maddie. “I need a lot of structure to find the rhythm.” Maddie usually starts with a chord progression or riff, playing it over and over again until she’s in a “trancy space.” Then the lyrics come to her naturally and she edits them. “I'll sit down with the lyrics and finesse them on their own terms, like I'm writing a poem,” said Maddie. And then [I] bring that back to the music and try to make it all work together.” Her lyricism is generally metaphorical, reflecting on internal and personal experiences.

Maddie’s first song on Rocket Shop, “Red Sun,” is an unreleased in-progress demo, beginning with a banjo picking pattern before switching to strumming about half-way through. While the first part is gentle and graceful, the second part is emotional with intense vocals. Her eyes are closed and it sounds as if she is holding back tears, her voice rough and expressing a feeling of pain that the listener feels on a deep and almost incomprehensible level; it is so intense that it’s difficult to understand or desribe the emotions that are invoked within the listener.

“Red Sun” was written the week that Maddie released her most recent album, Ghost Story. “It came out of that feeling I was in of like, ‘this is scary and I'm not sure how it's gonna be received.’” That nervous and excited feeling influenced the meaning of the song, which is centered around the future. “I'm thinking of the future of the world and what that looks like,” said Maddie. “My fear about that, my grief about that, my hopes for that.”

Ghost Story, released in June of 2022, is a guitar led album detailing Maddie’s relationship with the dead; “my own personal dead, historical and cultural dead, those inherited stories, which is what folk music is,” said Maddie. Ghost Story has earned international acclaim; it was listed in NPR’s Best Roots Music of 2022, and was named #2 of The Guardian’s Best Folk Albums of 2022. 

Maddie’s next song, “Catherine Wheel,” uses a soft and rhythmic guitar pattern that utilizes a thumb pick and tapping on the frame to create a form of percussion that compliments the unique chord changes. It has strategic walkdowns, and a beautiful instrumental section before a quiet and elegant vocal outro.

Maddie’s next song, “Two Faced,” uses an open G minor tuning, which she describes as having a “smoky sound” to it. It’s played on guitar and is rhythmically reminiscent of bluegrass, with growing intensity as the song progresses. The vocals on the song are in a lower register, creating a mysterious and enchantingly dark tone. 

“Two Faced'' is in the recording process with Peg Tassey, a local musician and producer, to be released on her next project. The recording has over eight musicians on it, which Maddie describes as both fun and challenging, and certainly different from anything she’s done before. Her first two projects were produced with Colin McCaffrey, a well known producer and musician in Montpelier, and the band consisted of just the two of them playing all the instruments.

“Recording itself is often part of the songwriting process for me,” said Maddie. She explained that seeing the tracks in a visual form introduces new ideas for arrangements, or sometimes lines will be recorded accidentally and are then kept in the song. “When it's on the computer I can edit it and I can see it,” said Maddie. “I sort of have the shape of the song in its digital form.”

Along with recording, Maddie keeps herself busy with various live performances, including a tour across the United Kingdom. “That was a dream come true, because a lot of source material that really inspires me is this English, Irish, Scottish folk ballad tradition,” said Maddie. “My music found an audience there, and I got some good press there, so I was able to go on tour there. That was a really full circle moment for me.”

Maddie’s first release was a banjo-led EP called North Branch River. It details her relationship with the natural world and different landscapes that have inspired her. The title track, “North Branch River,” was the last song that Maddie performed on Rocket Shop. The song sounds exactly like its title; a quick banjo picking pattern that sounds like rapidly flowing water. It has repetitive melodies and lyrics, in contrast to the ever changing landscape that rivers tend to go through. 

Maddie wrote the song while living on a tributary of North Branch River where it goes into the Winooski River in Montpelier. She explained that the song has taken on a new meaning since the catastrophic flooding last summer in the area, since it was this river that flooded the city and surrounding areas, with Montpelier still recovering from the tragic event.

Maddie’s upcoming album has about half played on guitar and half on banjo, and is her most conceptual project. While her previous albums have merely been collections of songs, this one is thematic with a clear thesis. “I’m really trying to be intentional about this,” said Maddie. She explained that in her albums, the songs usually come first and structure comes later, with the addition of new songs when an emotional experience is missing from the project.

The upcoming album will detail Maddie’s internal future and personal feelings that arise from living in an uncontrollable world. Each song is about ways to cope with the future, with the narrator self diluting, ignoring emotions, or experiencing rage, loneliness, or joy. “I've tried to create a different emotional landscape for each song that's creating this picture,” said Maddie.

This emotional landscape that Maddie refers to is intriguing, and I can’t help but wait with eager curiosity. I’m currently planning my own trip to Ireland next year, and I know that this album, along with the rest of Fern Maddie’s discography, will be the soundtrack to my adventure.

Fern Maddie Website: https://fernmaddiemusic.com/home 

Fern Maddie on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fernmaddie/ 

Fern Maddie on Bandcamp: https://fernmaddie.bandcamp.com/ 

Fern Maddie on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/16y7YCDwnRTlRFoktUDDND?si=61wPXGP5RdGhH1pW1q6O9w 

Fern Maddie on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCb61mrxuphsto01HilMFXcw