Alynda Segarra’s newest album as Hurray for the Riff Raff, final winter’s The Previous Is Nonetheless Alive, is a people odyssey in movement, chronicling practice hopping and bus journeys. Its lyrics name-check nearly each nook of the nation: San Francisco, Minnesota, Florida, the southwest. “I used to be younger after I left dwelling / I by no means stopped operating,” Segarra sings on the title monitor, “Snake Plant (The Previous Is Nonetheless Alive).”
In actual life too, Segarra has been on the transfer: Earlier this 12 months, they left their longtime dwelling base in New Orleans and relocated to Chicago. They’ve switched cities partially to be nearer to collaborators, they clarify, and partially as a result of Chicago seems like a greater private and musical match for the place they’re headed in the intervening time. “I simply actually need to create a nest right here,” they are saying.
Segarra started their travels within the mid-aughts, leaving their dwelling within the Bronx at age 17 to hop trains like their hero Woody Guthrie. The Previous Is Nonetheless Alive, they are saying, is a “scrapbook” or “reminiscence field” of that historical past: “Hiding from the cops / In Ogallala, Nebraska” (“Ogallala”); carrying a “bathing go well with on a two-day drive” (“Snake Plant”); a pal with a “dildo waving on her automotive antenna” (“Hawkmoon”). Recording for the album started in Durham, North Carolina, a month after the loss of life of Segarra’s father.
“I’ve at all times had this actually arduous relationship to reminiscence, as a result of I really feel like my reminiscence is, in some methods, actually spotty, after which in different methods it feels overwhelming and intense,” Segarra says. “It feels actually emotional. The stuff that I do bear in mind—I couldn’t inform you the identify of the city, however I might inform you how I felt.” Placing all these recollections in an album, they are saying, “felt very therapeutic.”
Alynda Segarra recorded The Previous Is Nonetheless Alive in North Carolina, however the touring band supporting it got here principally from Chicago.
Segarra’s band has modified from document to document; the identify “Hurray for the Riff Raff” refers to whoever they’re working with now, to not a gentle group. For The Previous Is Nonetheless Alive, they enlisted producer Brad Prepare dinner, who’d additionally labored with Segarra on the 2022 album Life on Earth. The musicians, Segarra says, have been “his buddies . . . a complete North Carolina crew,” together with Brad’s brother Phil, Conor Oberst of Shiny Eyes, Matt Douglas of the Mountain Goats, S.G. Goodman, and Meg Duffy. Most of these folks weren’t accessible to tour with Hurray for the Riff Raff, although, so after the document got here out in February, Segarra wanted to place collectively a band so as to get out and assist it. That band ended up consisting principally of Chicagoans.
That is partly as a result of Segarra’s someday guitarist, Johnny Wilson, is from Chicago. He’s additionally their longtime tour supervisor and sound engineer, and he’s labored with many artists right here, together with multi-instrumentalist and singer-songwriter Nnamdï Ogbonnaya, one of many founders of Sooper Information. Within the 2010s, Wilson and Ogbonnaya performed collectively within the punk band Nervous Passenger, and Wilson is now a part of Ogbonnaya’s touring group. So when Segarra wanted a bassist for a present in Tulsa, Oklahoma, reaching out to Ogbonnaya was a pure transfer.
“I’d by no means truly listened to a full [Hurray for the Riff Raff] document,” Ogbonnaya admits. “My introduction to the band got here after I was requested to play with them. However they simply wanted me to fill in for one present. And I used to be like, yeah, I’ll do this.”
One gig became one other after which into a daily position. (“They’re not sick of me but, so I’ll stick round so long as they need me round!” Ogbonnaya says.) Due to Wilson and Ogbonnaya’s connections, Segarra’s band quickly crammed up with different Chicago musicians, particularly from the orbit of Sooper Information. On Hurray for the Riff Raff’s latest tour to Mexico, the lineup included Marcus Drake on drums, Sen Morimoto on keyboards, Kaina on background vocals, and Parker Grogan (now in Sacramento, however previously a Chicagoan) on guitar.
As a result of Segarra was touring with Chicagoans, all through 2024 the band used Chicago as a spot to relaxation and get well between tour stops. Segarra lastly moved right here completely in September.
Segarra had been dwelling in New Orleans for round 15 years. “I actually wanted a change,” they are saying. In New Orleans, they clarify, most musicians don’t tour. “You keep on the town and also you play your gig day-after-day,” they are saying. “I used to be feeling like me and New Orleans have been rising aside, as a result of I used to be gone on a regular basis. I used to be dropping contact with the best way that that metropolis operates musically.”
Segarra additionally thought-about the advantages of dwelling in a blue state. They got here out as nonbinary earlier than the discharge of Life on Earth, and The Previous Is Nonetheless Alive is in some ways a tribute to queer group and queer mates. “After I was developing studying people music and being a practice rider, the entire those who I used to be mates with who have been fascinated with previous fiddle tunes or studying banjo or any of those conventional songs have been queer folks,” they are saying. The music “Hawkmoon” memorializes their pal Miss Jonathan, the primary trans girl they’d met. “She opened up my eyes / Within the holes of her fishnet tights,” Segarra sings. Additionally they bear in mind seeing Miss Jonathan being crushed on the street.
“There’s such a powerful queer resistance and historical past within the south that will get neglected,” Segarra says. “There’s going to be folks all around the nation who’re very scared and really involved with what’s occurring and with the place our nation is being led. And we’re going to play in Florida, as a result of there’s folks in Florida who actually need to go have a present the place they really feel a little bit of calm, or a spot the place they will go and really feel a bit of bit healed on this actually chaotic time.”
As a lot as southern resistance and southern group encourage Segarra, although, the present political local weather has made even a blue metropolis like New Orleans really feel precarious. “Louisiana obtained fortunate throughout COVID, as a result of we had a Democratic governor,” they are saying. “He was conservative, however he believed in science. However there’s a brand new governor there now. . . . ”
Segarra admits to feeling dangerous about leaping ship to return north. “However I don’t know if guilt actually does something for you or anyone,” they are saying. “What introduced me [to Chicago] was understanding that I might have a powerful creative group that I might survive these occasions with. In order that’s actually what I thought of in my transfer.”
That group is already coming collectively. Along with touring with Chicagoans, Segarra has been working with Chicago unbiased video producer and director Jeff Perlman. Perlman is shut mates with Wilson; they used to play within the band Rat Hammer collectively, and within the mid-2010s they ran a Humboldt Park DIY venue referred to as the Flowershop. Wilson even officiated at Perlman’s marriage ceremony.
Wilson related Perlman and Segarra, and the 2 have since collaborated on a few movies for The Previous Is Nonetheless Alive. They made the primary, for “Hawkmoon,” in late 2023, a number of months earlier than the album got here out. They shot it in Tucumcari, New Mexico. Perlman says they have been impressed by indie westerns and heist movies such Wild at Coronary heart, Badlands, and Paris, Texas. Segarra, carrying a cowboy hat, joins mononymous actor-musician Denny to smash automotive home windows with a golf membership and dance on a motel mattress coated with cash. Perlman and his pal and codirector, Sean Kelly, drove out in a van and “two-man-banded that entire video, which was a heavy elevate however tremendous enjoyable.”
Perlman and Segarra made the second video, for “Buffalo,” in August and September of this 12 months, and it’s a extra direct welcome to Chicago. The music is a strummed elegy for misplaced creatures: “Will we go just like the woolly mammoth / Or the pricey dodo / Gone just like the Bachman’s warbler / Disappeared just like the melting snow.” Segarra’s phrasing emphasizes the ends of traces and the pauses for breath, giving the music a way of claustrophobia and of life baffled, trapped, and craving.
“The lyric content material simply instantly conjured a museum,” Perlman says. He reached out to a contact on the Area Museum, who arrange a shoot inside. For a lot of the video, Segarra shares the display with taxidermied animals, enjoying their guitar and soulfully serenading glass-eyed deer, birds, zebra, tigers, and warthogs.
In different footage, Segarra stands exterior a pen containing stay bison. These scenes too have been shot in Chicagoland. “I used to be like, it’d be cool if we might get stay buffalo,” Perlman says. “So I simply googled bison farms and located a ranch referred to as Broken Wagon in northwest Indiana. And so they have been tremendous gracious.”
Perlman liked the expertise of working with Segarra, with or with out bison. “They’re the proper mixture of anyone who is aware of what they need and has imaginative and prescient but additionally respects different folks’s visions and creativity,” he says. “So it was a very easy dialogue to get on the identical web page. They create a lot to the desk, however on the identical time they’ve a lot belief for folks to do what they do. That’s a uncommon and fairly superior factor.”
Segarra continues to be touring, however they are saying they’re wanting ahead to immersing themselves in Chicago. They’re planning to discover our jazz scene. “I used to be dwelling in one other jazz metropolis, however the jazz right here may be very completely different,” they mentioned. “New Orleans may be very centered on trad jazz, and that’s the music that I realized enjoying on the road. I’m actually excited to go to some Chicago jazz golf equipment and have a psychedelic expertise.”
Segarra can be serious about working with their touring band on some recordings. “I haven’t written something but, however I actually need to use the winter to be impressed,” they are saying. “I’ve some concepts, however yeah, I positively need to create with these guys.”
Segarra says they’re planning to chop a single or B-side with Ogbonnaya shortly. They particularly reward the folk-tinged Kara Jackson album Why Does the Earth Give Us Individuals to Love?, which Ogbonnaya produced. “That document is the best-sounding document I’ve heard in so lengthy,” they are saying.
“I like these guys,” Segarra provides. “It’s arduous to make new mates in your 30s, you understand?”
Ogbonnaya can be enthusiastic in regards to the collaboration. “I simply love Alynda’s lyrics a lot,” he says. “All the things of their songs is so visceral, and each time I hear a lyric I can image a picture. I’m a really visible individual, visible learner—have been since endlessly. And I believe each line of theirs, I can image the place they’re at that second or what they’re serious about. I believe that’s lovely. I don’t assume lots of people can do it the best way that they will, so it simply feels very particular to me. And actually sincere.”
Ogbonnaya, who grew up right here, says he thinks Segarra is an effective match for Chicago. “It goes again to simply speaking about honesty,” he says. “You get a type of midwest honesty right here; folks aren’t going to let shit slide, like they do perhaps on the coasts. Sure, I’m a hater! I really feel like it is a completely different sort of sincere vitality right here, the place it simply feels actual. It feels, like, attainable right here. Individuals go to LA for this huge dream, however shit simply feels actual right here and extra, like, working-class—folks simply doing it, making it occur.”
Segarra is planning to tour with Shiny Eyes in February and March, this time within the south and southwest. (“I did that with the final document, and I’m excited to do it once more,” they are saying.) They don’t have agency plans for Chicago performances but. They’re hoping to get booked for the second annual Evanston Folk Festival in September 2025. They’ve someway by no means performed on the Outdated City Faculty of Folks Music, which looks like it could be a pure match.
“It’s type of enjoyable if you enter into the opposite cycle, the subsequent cycle of an album marketing campaign,” they are saying, “as a result of you may simply be extra artistic and there’s a bit of bit extra freedom in what you are able to do. I’d like to play a solo set or a extra acoustic set, or one thing like that.”
Within the meantime, Segarra is having fun with their new dwelling. “Assembly folks right here,” they are saying, “feels extra like the place I’m at in my life. Everyone is writing music, they usually’re all, like, mixing genres. I really feel very fortunate.”
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