Folk You by Sy Arden

Recorded in Muscle Shoals with Engineer Charles Holloman and Percussionist Justin Holder, “Folk You” is defined by production frugality and fueled by a punk ethos.
Non-commercial in its themes and production, the recording aims to reflect difficult emotions in a familiar, yet fresh way...and I hope the guitar playing helps to accomplish that.
The guitar playing was what helped me group these songs together in the first place (which were written over the years in between other songs with vastly different genre groups).
In the following paragraphs you’ll see me reach for meaning and story, but the truth is I just thought these songs sounded like they went together.
The short recording covers a lot of ground: anxiety, self-determination, unmet collective need, drug use, powerlessness, overwhelm, dissociation, economic hardship, and, finally, an aversion to debate and dogma.

Speaking of dogma, in a strange turn of events a Buddhist monk, Llama Tenzin Choegyal, visited the studio while I was recording. It was on the day I brought out my Dad’s guitar for the first time since he passed- it was sealed up. I had planned to record his song with his guitar and we’d been delayed on my last studio visit.
Llama Tenzin chanted over my Dad’s guitar and tied strings around our wrists to ward off negative energies. It was emotional for me and made the day feel even more ritualistic in its unfolding.
It was uncanny- that something as spiritually symbolic as a blessing from a monk would come in the midst of a recording that focused on expressing emotions not normally “aligned” with higher spirituality.

Deepening the meaning of the blessing from Llama Tenzin was the fact that it was the activity of recording my Dad’s song that created the synchronous encounter. A song that could suggest we might not be “in the mood” for my recording’s sonic expression- as a culture it seems we’re tired and stressed out, without much appetite for certain energies.
My Dad wrote that he’s “not in the mood” for driven points or discussion, that instead he has “it” to do, friends to see, and places to go- that he has “life to love.”

None of this changes my capacity for or belief in the importance of expressing uncomfortable themes- it does however, highlight (for me at least) the predicament we’re in culturally at the moment. Several years after the pandemic, we still loudly feel the need for community, laughter, and love, but our environment is full of unease and aggression, sometimes draining us past the ability to create these things, or at the very least distracting us from them.
At the same time, here in the United States, many of us seem to be neither fighting or fleeing (like much of this recording evokes), but rather frozen. Frozen by what, I’m not sure. Maybe we’re unable to reconcile our external environment with our internal imperative? Maybe we’re busy sitting still for a glimpse of higher consciousness? Who knows.

“Folk You” might not get played in waiting rooms and grocery stores, might not be the soundtrack for fun road trips with friends or assist in spiritual reflection, but perhaps there is still a place for it. Maybe it could serve as a defroster for some of us?

Bless us- something should.

Sy Arden is a songwriter based in Nashville, TN.

Her current project, recorded in Muscle Shoals, is a rambunctious, barebones production displaying distinct and spirited guitar work, sophisticated kitchen-sink percussion and an adventurous, provocative attitude.