Episode Eight: Lula Wiles

We talk in this episode with Mali Obomsawin and Eleanor Buckland, who, along with Isa Burke, make up the group Lula Wiles. The three attended fiddle camp as youngsters in Maine, and eventually formed Lula Wiles as classmates at Berklee College of Music. They have recently released their second album (and first on Smithsonian Folkways Recordings), What Will We Do. We discuss their collaborative process as “an exercise in friendship building”, the pros and cons of the academic approach to songwriting, and the making of their fabulous new record.

Lula Wiles came of age in Boston, in the practice rooms of Berklee College of Music and the city’s lively roots scene. In 2016, the band self-released Lula Wiles, a sensitive, twang-tinged collection of originals. Since then, they have toured internationally, winning fans at the Newport Folk Festival and the Philadelphia Folk Festival, and sharing stages with the likes of Aoife O’Donovan, the Wood Brothers, and Tim O’Brien. Now, the release of What Will We Do on Smithsonian Folkways Recordings places the group squarely in line with some of its deepest influences, from the protest anthems of Woody Guthrie to the trailblazing songs of Elizabeth Cotten and Hazel Dickens. (Even the band’s name is a twist on an old Carter Family song.)

In carrying on the folk ritual of innovation, they infuse their songs with distinctly modern sounds: pop hooks, distorted electric guitars, and dissonant multi-layered vocals, all employed in the service of songs that reclaim folk music in their own voice. The band exists in the tense space where tradition and revolution meet, from which their harmonies rise into the air to create new American music.