Joy Oladokun was driven to pick up the guitar when she was 10 years old after seeing a video of Tracy Chapman performing “Fast Car” solo at Wembley Stadium in 1988.
“It’s nice here,” Joy Oladokun says through the phone. “The mountains are beautiful.” The 31-year-old Nashville-based guitarist and singer-songwriter is taking a moment to breathe and clear her head in Asheville, North Carolina, while on tour with her friend Noah Kahan. Touring is fun, especially with pals, but it’s also tiring and stressful. Oladokun is doing her best to stay balanced since the release of her fourth LP, the lush, hopeful Proof of Life. The record indulges the best bits of pop, R&B, indie rock, and folk, all sewn together with Oladokun’s defiant optimism and vulnerable, late-night-diary-entry songwriting.
Proof of Life, too, is a balancing act, swaying expertly between subdued acoustic ballads, plush, swooning electronics, and heady electric guitar churns. It’s clear about the state of the world: “Newspaper says the world’s on fire / People yelling and the water’s rising,” Oladokun sings in cool harmony over calming acoustics on track two, “Changes,” before submitting at the chorus’ end, “I’m trying to keep up with the changes.” But opener “Keeping The Light On” is a breezy, textured mission statement to always make one’s way back out of the darkness. The third track, “Taking Things For Granted,” is a humming, light-footed indie-rock jam that recounts Oladokun’s lonely 8th birthday, when no one from school came to her party. It’s a real-life, heartbreaking memory, relayed over a beachy-road-trip arrangement. These are the huge, existential places Oladokun takes us with her voice and her guitar just in that trio of opening songs.
“This record is as autobiographical as anything I’ve ever made,” says Oladokun. “It’s actually me this time, it’s not a bunch of songs about ideas. Are people gonna like me?”
Joy Oladokun - "We’re All Gonna Die"
Oladokun admits it’s frightening to be this vulnerable, especially when, at this stage in her career, she has voices around her telling her how she ought to create her art. But the specificity is paying off. On tour, people are expressing how meaningfully her songs capture and validate even their own experiences. “That’s the ultimate goal for me,” Oladokun says.
Oladokun’s artistic path has taken her across North America, on stages with John Mayer and My Morning Jacket, but the road can be traced back to one turning point when she was growing up in Casa Grande, Arizona. She was only allowed to watch TV on weekends, when her father would go to Blockbuster to rent a video. When Oladokun was 10, he screened a DVD of Nelson Mandela’s 70th birthday celebration at Wembley Stadium, and at a point during the festivities, Tracy Chapman walked onstage and performed “Fast Car,” with just her and her guitar in front of tens of thousands of people.
“It’s actually me this time, it’s not a bunch of songs about ideas. Are people gonna like me?”
To this day, the performance is arresting and gut-turning in the best ways, crackling with tension and desperation. It was the first time Oladokun remembers seeing a Black queer woman on television, and not only that, but Chapman was alone, vulnerable, and changing entire worlds with her song. “I had a feeling that I belonged / I had a feeling I could be someone,” Chapman belts in the chorus. For many listeners, it was simply a great pop song. For Oladokun, it was liberating.
That clip was “the gateway drug” for Oladokun, who begged her parents for a guitar that Christmas. They bought her an acoustic, and she went from a socially anxious kid who didn’t show interest in much to a committed guitar student. In small-town Arizona, guitar was one of the few things that lit Oladokun’s candle. “They couldn’t get me to do my homework to save their lives,” she says. “But I would sit in my room and play guitar for four or five hours every night.”
Joy Oladokun's Gear
For her new record, Joy Oladokun took a more autobiographical approach to lyricism, crafting songs that share different intimate, personal portraits of her life.
Photo by Lauren Schorr
Effects
- Jam Pedals Wahcko
- Mesa/Boogie Grid Slammer
- JAM Pedals RetroVibe
- Chase Bliss Audio Automatone CXM 1978
- Gamechanger Audio Third Man Records Plasma Coil
Strings
- D'Addario NYXL (.009–.046)
First up, she learned the riff to Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song,” and stretched her fingers so she could play power chords more clearly. Her parents’ great music tastes nudged her toward Nigerian guitarists like King Sunny Adé, whose music imparted deep appreciations for rhythm and syncopation alongside technical skill. Simon and Garfunkel, Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, Nina Simone, and even Genesis were played around the house, but perhaps the most significant influence came from the church, and the gospel music Oladokun heard and sang there.
“I grew up listening to a lot of music that was purpose-driven,” she says. “Everything that I listened to and my parents listened to, they were talking about the world and revolutions and stuff.”
“They couldn’t get me to do my homework to save their lives. But I would sit in my room and play guitar for four or five hours every night.”
Oladokun self-released her first EP in 2015, followed the next year by a full-length. Her 2020 followup, in defense of my own happiness (the beginnings), yielded syncs on This Is Us, Grey’s Anatomy, and The L Word: Generation Q, all of which laid the groundwork for her to sign with Amigo Records and Verve Forecast Records for her 2021 breakout in defense of my own happiness. The record, which featured a co-write and appearance by pop country titan Maren Morris, expressed itself in broad, universal terms, dissecting anti-Black violence, religion, and being queer in America. She’s said that she wrote the album’s closer, “jordan,” the day she decided to come out herself. In December 2022, she performed the song on the lawn of the White House as part of a celebration of the signing of the Respect for Marriage Act, which requires that all states recognize same-sex marriages.
Before the performance, she had a moment where she booted everyone from her dressing room, and just looked at herself in the mirror—a practice her therapist encouraged. “When I was a young Black queer kid in Arizona, I don’t know that I could’ve imagined a world where I would be invited to perform on the White House lawn to celebrate same-sex marriage. It was really emotional and powerful. I tried to embrace as much of the significance of the day as I could because I also know that things like that are a lifeline for queer people around the world.”
Joy Oladokun’s music weaves between alt-folk, indie-rock, and pop, and on her fourth full-length, she invited friends like Chris Stapleton and Manchester Orchestra’s Andy Hull to fill out the sound.
Oladokun came up with the title for Proof of Life one day when she was sitting in her studio, looking at all the instruments and knickknacks lining the room. “I started morbidly thinking about what would happen to them after I die,” she chuckles lightly.
“For me, ‘proof of life’ was like a way of saying, ‘What is singular about my existence right now, and what connects me to the rest of this planet?’” Oladokun continues. The songs on Proof of Life became vehicles to explore those threads, “and doing it in a way that 100 years from now, if someone found my album, they would have a pretty good understanding of who I was, what I had been through, and what I believed about life.”
Oladokun says she conceptualized the bulk of the record’s 13 songs in her attic studio at home, then enlisted Mike Elizondo and Ian Fitchuk to produce some of them. But Oladokun produced a good chunk herself, renting Electric Lady Studios and inviting her friends to contribute. Across the record, guest spots from Chris Stapleton, Manchester Orchestra’s Andy Hull, and Mt. Joy add extra color and dimensions. Oladokun says it was an exercise in learning to contribute and how musicians can lift one another up.
“When I was a young Black queer kid in Arizona, I don’t know that I could’ve imagined a world where I would be invited to perform on the White House lawn to celebrate same-sex marriage.”
Right through to its close, Proof of Life ripples with big-picture tension and energy, but they’re perhaps the most pronounced and direct on “We’re All Gonna Die,” which opens with howling violins before switching gears to a macabre, anthemic indie pop rock banger. “We’re over our heads so I’ll say it out loud / We’re all gonna die trying to figure it out,” Oladokun calls on the chorus. Her pal Kahan takes the mic on the second verse: “I’m pissin’ in the dark and hopin’ I hit the bowl / I’m afraid of what I can’t control,” he groans.
Making the record and performing the tracks live has pulled Oladokun into a more open dynamic conversation with her guitars. Sure, she can do the tender, Chapman-style singer-songwriter routine as well as any of them. But on tour recently, she and her band have been ripping “Smells Like Teen Spirit” right after the heavy racial reckoning of “I See America.” By the time the solo in “Teen Spirit” comes, it feels like an explosion of emotion. “It’s like this expression of all the sadness and frustration that those songs represent to me,” says Oladokun. “I’m gonna get on the acoustic guitar and give you a clean version of ‘Keeping The Light On,’ but I’m also gonna take the solos at the end of ‘We’re All Gonna Die.’ To me, [performing both styles] gets the message across in a different way than if I delegated [those parts] to someone else.”
On Proof of Life, Oladokun isn’t a pessimist, but she is a realist. The record tells us that we can and must find joy and peace and community, but the trouble is that we have to do so knowing that not a single one of us is here forever. It’s hard work to keep your footing knowing that everything changes, and everything goes away. But if you can find something to help steady yourself, hold onto it. “One thing that I feel really proud of that hasn’t changed,” says Oladokun, “is that I love playing guitar more than any single thing in the entire world.”YouTube It
Joy Oladokun and her band groove through a perfectly restrained, airtight rendition of “Somebody Like Me” on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.
Onstage, Tommy Emmanuel executes a move that is not from the playbook of his hero, Chet Atkins.
“My biggest decision every day on tour is, ‘What do I want to start with? How do I want to come out of the gate?’” Emmanuel explains to me over a video call. “A good opener has to have everything. It has to be full of surprise, it has to have lots of good ideas, lots of light and shade, and then, hit it again,” he says, illustrating each phrase with his hands and ending with a punch.“You lift off straightaway with the first song, you get airborne, you start reaching, and then it’s time to level out and take people on a journey.”
In May 2023, Emmanuel played two shows at the Sydney Opera House, the best performances from which have been combined on his new release, Live at the Sydney Opera House. The venue’s Concert Hall, which has a capacity of 2,679, is a familiar room for Emmanuel, but I think at this point in his career he wouldn’t bring a setlist if he was playing Wembley Stadium. On the recording, Emmanuel’s mind-blowingly dexterous chops, distinctive attack and flair, and knack for culturally resonant compositions are on full display. His opening song for the shows? An original, “Countrywide,” with a segue into Chet Atkins’ “El Vaquero.”
“When I was going to high school in the ’60s, I heard ‘El Vaquero’ on Chet Atkins’ record, [1964’s My Favorite Guitars],” Emmanuel shares. “And when I wrote ‘Countrywide’ in around ’76 or ’77, I suddenly realized, ‘Ah! It’s a bit like “El Vaquero!”’ So I then worked out ‘El Vaquero’ as a solo piece, because it wasn’t recorded like that [by Atkins originally].
“The co-writer of ‘El Vaquero’ is Wayne Moss, who’s a famous Nashville session guy who played ‘da da da’ [sings the guitar riff from Roy Orbison’s ‘Pretty Woman’]. And he played on a lot of Chet’s records as a rhythm guy. So once when I played ‘El Vaquero’ live, Wayne Moss came up to me and said, ‘You know, you did my part and Chet’s at the same time. That’s not fair!’” Emmanuel says, laughing.
Atkins is the reason Emmanuel got into performing. His mother had been teaching him rhythm guitar for a couple years when he heard Atkins on the radio and, at 6, was able to immediately mimic his fingerpicking technique. His father recognized Emmanuel’s prodigious talent and got him on the road that year, which kicked off his professional career. He says, “By the time I was 6, I was already sleep-deprived, working too hard, and being forced to be educated. Because all I was interested in was playing music.”
Emmanuel talks about Atkins as if the way he viewed him as a boy hasn’t changed. The title Atkins bestowed upon him, C.G.P. (Certified Guitar Player), appears on Emmanuel’s album covers, in his record label (C.G.P. Sounds), and is inlaid at the 12th fret on his Maton Custom Shop TE Personal signature acoustic. (Atkins named only five guitarists C.G.P.s. The others are John Knowles, Steve Wariner, Jerry Reed, and Atkins himself.) For Emmanuel, even today most roads lead to Atkins.
When I ask Emmanuel about his approach to arranging for solo acoustic guitar, he says, “It was really hit home for me by my hero, Chet Atkins, when I read an interview with him a long time ago and he said, ‘Make your arrangement interesting.’ And I thought, ‘Wow!’ Because I was so keen to be true to the composer and play the song as everyone knows it. But then again, I’m recreating it like everyone else has, and I might as well get in line with the rest of them and jump off the cliff into nowhere. So it struck me: ‘How can I make my arrangements interesting?’ Well, make them full of surprises.”
When Emmanuel was invited to contribute to 2015’s Burt Bacharach: This Guitar’s in Love with You, featuring acoustic-guitar tributes to Bacharach’s classic compositions by various artists, Emmanuel expresses that nobody wanted to take “(They Long to Be) Close to You,” due to its “syrupy” nature. But for Emmanuel, this presented an entertaining challenge.
He explains, “I thought, ‘Okay, how can I reboot “Close to You?’ So even the most jaded listener will say, ‘Holy fuck—I didn’t expect that! Wow, I really like that; that is a good melody!’ So I found a good key to play the song in, which allowed me to get some open notes that sustain while I move the chords. Then what I did is, in every phrase, I made the chord unresolve, then resolve.
Tommy Emmanuel's Gear
“I’m writing music for the film that’s in my head,” Emmanuel says. “So, I don’t think, ‘I’m just the guitar,’ ever.”
Photo by Simone Cecchetti
Guitars
- Three Maton Custom Shop TE Personals, each with an AP5 PRO pickup system
Amps
- Udo Roesner Da Capo 75
Effects
- AER Pocket Tools preamp
Strings & Picks
- Martin TE Signature Phosphor Bronze (.012–.054)
- Martin SP strings
- Ernie Ball Paradigm strings
- D’Andrea Pro Plec 1.5 mm
- Dunlop medium thumbpicks
“And then to really put the nail in the coffin, at the end, ‘Close to you’ [sings melody]. I finished on a major 9 chord which had that note in it, but it wasn’t the key the song was in, which is a typical Stevie Wonder trick. All the tricks I know, the wonderful ideas that I’ve stolen, are from Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Lionel Richie, James Taylor, Carole King, Neil Diamond. All of the people who wrote really incredibly great pop songs and R&B music—I stole every idea I could, and I tried to make my little two-and-a -half minutes as interesting and entertaining as possible. Because entertainment equals: Surprise me.”
I share with Emmanuel that the performances on Live at the Sydney Opera House, which include his popular “Beatles Medley,” reminded me of another possible arrangement trick. In Harpo Marx’s autobiography, Harpo Speaks, I preface, Marx writes of a lesson he learned as a performer—to “answer the audience’s questions.” (Emmanuel says he’s a big fan of the book and read it in the early ’70s.) That happened for me while listening to the medley, when, after sampling melodies from “She’s a Woman” and “Please Please Me,” Emmanuel suddenly lands on “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.”
I say, “I’m waiting for something that hits more recognizably to me, and when ‘While My Guitar’ comes in, that’s like answering my question.”
“It’s also Paul and John, Paul and John, George,” Emmanuel replies. “You think, ‘That’s great, that’s great pop music,’ then, ‘Wow! Look at the depth of this.’”
Often Emmanuel’s flights on his acoustic guitar are seemingly superhuman—as well as supremely entertaining.
Photo by Ekaterina Gorbacheva
A trick I like to employ as a writer, I say to Emmanuel, is that when I’m describing something, I’ll provide the reader with just enough context so that they can complete the thought on their own.
“You can do that musically as well,” says Emmanuel. He explains how, in his arrangement of “What a Wonderful World,” he’ll play only the vocal melody. “When people are asking me at a workshop, ‘How come you don’t put chords behind that part?’ I say, ‘I’m drawing the melody and you’re putting in all the background in your head. I don’t need to tell you what the chords are. You already know what the chords are.’”
“Wayne Moss came up to me and said, ‘You know, you did my part and Chet’s at the same time. That’s not fair!’”
Another track featured on Live at the Sydney Opera House is a cover of Paul Simon’s “American Tune” (which Emmanuel then jumps into an adaptation of the Australian bush ballad, “Waltzing Matilda”). It’s been a while since I really spent time with There GoesRhymin’ Simon (on which “American Tune” was first released), and yet it sounded so familiar to me. A little digging revealed that its melody is based on the 17th-century Christian hymn, “O Sacred Head, Now Wounded,” which was arranged and repurposed by Bach in a few of the composer’s works. The cross-chronological and genre-lackadaisical intersections that come up in popular music sometimes is fascinating.
“I think the principle right there,” Emmanuel muses, “is people like Bach and Beethoven and Mozart found the right language to touch the heart of a human being through their ears and through their senses ... that really did something to them deep in their soul. They found a way with the right chords and the right notes, somehow. It could be as primitive as that.
Tommy Emmanuel has been on the road as a performing guitarist for 64 years. Eat your heart out, Bob Dylan.
Photo by Jan Anderson
“It’s like when you’re a young composer and someone tells you, ‘Have a listen to Elton John’s “Candle in the Wind,”’ he continues. “‘Listen to how those notes work with those chords.’ And every time you hear it, you go, ‘Why does it touch me like that? Why do I feel this way when I hear those chords—those notes against those chords?’ I say, it’s just human nature. Then you wanna go, ‘How can I do that!’” he concludes with a grin.
“You draw from such a variety of genres in your arrangements,” I posit. “Do you try to lean into the side of converting those songs to solo acoustic guitar, or the side of bridging the genre’s culture to that of your audience?”
“I stole every idea I could, and I tried to make my little two-and-a-half minutes as interesting and entertaining as possible. Because entertainment equals: Surprise me.”
“If I was a method actor,” Emmanuel explains, “what I’m doing is—I’m writing music for the film that’s in my head. So, I don’t think, ‘I’m just the guitar,’ ever. I always think it has to have that kind of orchestral, not grandeur, but … palette to it. Because of the influence of Stevie Wonder, Billy Joel, and Elton John, especially—the piano guys—I try to use piano ideas, like putting the third in the low bass a lot, because guitar players don’t necessarily do that. And I try to always do something that makes what I do different.
“I want to be different and recognizable,” he continues. “I remember when people talked about how some players—you just hear one note and you go, ‘Oh, that’s Chet Atkins.’ And it hit me like a train, the reason why a guy like Hank Marvin, the lead guitar player from the Shadows.... I can tell you: He had a tone that I hear in other players now. Everyone copied him—they just don’t know it—including Mark Knopfler, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, all those people. I got him up to play with me a few times when he moved to Australia, and even playing acoustic, he still had that sound. I don’t know how he did it, but it was him. He invented himself.”
YouTube It
Emmanuel performs his arrangement of “What a Wonderful World,” illustrating how omitting a harmonic backdrop can have a more powerful effect, especially when playing such a well-known melody.
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