BF: How did you two meet, and how did you come to work together?

MM: We met years before we were to get to know each other. Darren was playing with his band High and Lonesome in Iowa City and I met him with some friends backstage. I thought he was a jerk! [laughs]. Looking back now, I realize that he’s really just uncomfortable with strangers. It takes him a while.

DM: Yeah, but now you know I’m just a big sweetie.

MM: We didn’t start dating until years after that, and we didn’t start playing music together for seven years more. Darren was the musician, and I never thought about being a performing singer. The truth is that Darren heard me singing through the floor vents. I was doing laundry, he was upstairs listening to music. I was harmonizing. He realized it was me.

DM: I was stunned! I was listening to the Band, ‘The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down’… and there was this extra harmony. It turned out to be Molly.

MM: So that was the beginning. We played together around the house for a year or so, just for fun. Then, one day Darren surprised me by telling me he had booked us a gig opening for [long-time friends and regional act] Brother Trucker. I nearly died.

I was so nervous, and pretty mad at him, actually. I had no intention of really performing in front of anyone else. The show ended up being great, and I was instantly hooked. I don’t think I sang into the microphone very well that night, but the crowd dug it, and we realized we might have something here.

BF: These songs were written over a long course of time, and there were many relationships, tragedies, and triumphs that went into the process. Can you describe what you both went through, and why the album came about when it did?

MM: Yeah, over ten years or so. We both survived the sudden death of someone we loved a lot, and then my father passed away from skin cancer only six months later. That was an incredibly dark time, just in terms of grief and deep, deep sadness. We were both emotionally exhausted. Darren wasn’t playing much music at that time… he never stopped playing the guitar, but he wasn’t feeling inspired. We stuck it out through all of that, and things got better. We raised my son together, which really helped. When you have a child involved, you can’t just let yourselves unravel.

DM: Yeah, that was the worst time in my life, for sure. Molly and I probably grew stronger as people, and as a couple, because of the depth of the situation, and the amount of support we had to give each other. We definitely learned how to trust one another very quickly. We started off as friends, and things grew from there. We really just became one another’s best friend.

MM: I agree with that. It’s intensely personal, but we worked through a lot of this with the songs. We didn’t write any of the songs at that time. We weren’t even musical together, or seeing that kind of future, at that point. The songs started pouring out as we started playing live shows. The first song we wrote together was “He Draws Stars”, and then we worked on the songs separately and together.

DM: The album grew on its own, really. The songs came to us, somehow.

MM: Yeah, that’s true. I had to pull over my car to write down the lyrics to “Fireworks.” I was on my way to the library, during a time when I didn’t have a job. I was going to the library a lot then. The words just came to me as I drove under a beautiful canopy of trees. It all just poured out after that. I wish all songs were that easy to write. I think there is something magical about that. [That] song is our most personal, in a way, and I think it wrote itself because of that.

BF: Let’s talk about the recording process.

MM: The recording process was daunting to me [laughs]. I had never done it before, and I was admittedly very green. The only recording I had done was in [the album’s engineer] Brad Riek’s apartment in Urbandale, Iowa. That is where the demos were recorded, but it wasn’t as intimidating as the studio was.

DM: It was new for me, too, because I’d always just been the electric guitarist. I used to go in, play some licks, and have fun! This time, these were our songs, our arrangements. It was a different deal.

MM: I was so impressed with Darren, however. Weeks before we entered the studio he had written out tons of notes on the arrangements, the instrumentation, all of it. All the preparation paid off. We had applied for a grant maybe a year before, to get the album made, but we didn’t get it. We were sad at the time, but later realized that the year of playing the songs live was integral to the understanding of the material. We really shaped the songs over that time.

DM: We also had just an incredible band on the album. We pulled some of the guys I play with from an Iowa City band Shame Train, and they were fantastic. Adam and Ryan Bernemann are brothers, and they are just a great rhythm section. I think the sibling thing really adds to that, they play off one another just beautifully. Ryan added some harmonies, some accordion-just magic. Ryan’s wife, Laura, came in and added some viola parts that filled out the sound.

MM: The viola was not something we really planned ahead for, but I cannot imagine the album without it now. It needs to be there. Some of the most breathtaking moments on the album, for me, have to do with that viola.

DM: And that was really the core [band]. Aside from that, we had [friends] Jon Eric come in and lay some crazy banjo on “Tell Me”, just what the song called for, and Randall Davis stopped by and threw in some guitar solos. Just a great process overall- we had a blast.

MM: Hearing it all come together in the studio was just incredible. There is a point on the album in which I hear bagpipes, toward the end of “Mortgage Day”, but it seems to be a combination of the accordion and the viola. That was really mind-blowing for me, because my grandfather was a bagpipe player. It somehow made me feel like my dad was there.

Gillian Welch & David Rawling’s “My First Lover,” as well as Dylan’s “Simple Twist of Fate” show up in your live setlists. As songwriters yourselves, why pick those songs, and why cover those artists?

MM: For me, it’s simple. I have to have an emotional response to the material. I have to feel a song, as if I had written it myself. If I don’t feel the song, it won’t come off as true, and I won’t enjoy singing it. We also try to choose covers carefully. We don’t want to do the same cover that has been done before. We also try to cover singer-songwriters who aren’t well-known as a way of spreading their songs around.

DM: As far as the musical aspect, it has to be compelling enough for me to play it as it is, or to change it into something that resonates within me.

BF: More so than ever before, there is a plethora of free distribution channels to get your work into the hands of fans. What is the next step, as independent artists, in advancing Thankful Dirt to the masses?

MM: We hope to leave Iowa for the summer! We are trying to get things in place, so that we can do this. We are also considering adding our songs to some of the online radio stations. I think this is a great way to get heard all around the world.

DM: I hate to say it, but I’m not good at this stuff. Molly’s the one who really has put the time and effort into all the social media. For me, Facebook is just a way to share a really cool Skip James video or something. Molly has really done all of the website stuff, and she is the one who goes out and talks to the fans at shows. She is just more comfortable with that.

As for advancing Thankful Dirt to the masses, we’re just going to keep at it. No matter what. We’re just going to keep writing and playing. People do spread the word themselves, too. We have had total strangers order the CD from different parts of the country. Some of them heard of it from a friend, sometimes they will have found us online. Pretty cool how that works. Definitely a different climate than when I started out in music. It used to be about posters and newspapers. Now it’s really internet driven.

MM Yeah, and Darren is a bit of a Luddite. He only started using the computer a couple of years ago!

BF: Do you see yourselves being able to tour successfully in 2011?

MM: Definitely, that is our plan for the summer. Success will be booking enough shows to keep us in gas and food! Hopefully, some money to bring home for the mortgage, as well. Getting our songs out there is really the goal, and touching folks who wouldn’t hear of us otherwise. Des Moines, and Iowa, have been great to us, really kept us fed and feeling loved the past couple years, but we need to branch out.

DM: Success to me is just to keep on the road, get the songs heard. When folks come up after a show and want to buy a CD, that’s success. Not the ten dollars we get for the CD, although that sure helps, but the idea that the person is going to take our songs home with them and hopefully listen to them again and again.

BF: Building from there, what do you think is missing from our current musical climate, in terms of great artists, known or not, getting the recognition they deserve?

MM: I think this issue has been around for a long time, as long as there were record labels, I’m guessing. Music is seen more as a product these days, and less as an art form, at least by the labels and licensing folks. When BMI chooses Taylor Swift as ‘Songwriter of the Year’, you just have to grin and bear it.

I don’t think looking outside of ourselves for recognition is a bad thing, but it shouldn’t be something by which we measure our work. I think musicians supporting and promoting one another, is key, especially on a local level. Having other musicians appreciate our work is very flattering. As for deserving recognition, I don’t know. It seems like we’re doing it for other reasons anyway.

DM: Yeah, I agree with Molly. If you play music for recognition, you’re playing for the wrong reason. That being said, a little recognition is really nice. It helps you keep going, makes you feel like what you’re doing is important. Not being recognized is okay, too. You gotta stay in that place where you’re doing it for you, and you’re doing it for the songs.

BF: Looking forward, the debut has a lot of legs left, but are you allowing yourself to look forward to your next project? Do you have material left from these sessions, and/or have you written any new material?

DM: Oh, definitely looking forward. We have at least ten songs in the hopper.

MM: Five of them we’re really happy with right now. We don’t have anything from the previous recording, but we’re working steadily on the next album. Finances are always a hindrance. Recording, hiring musicians, etc, is not inexpensive! We’d love to fund the next album on sales from the first, but we’ll see.

DM: We are hoping to get into the studio this spring to at least lay down a couple of tracks. Might have to piece this one together a little more.

MM: And we’ve got a growing collection of live tracks. We’ve thought of maybe putting together a live album or something, if folks seem interested enough.

DM: You know, I’m always writing music. I play guitar for at least eight hours a day. I probably have twenty songs ready for words, it’s just a matter of getting them together.

MM: The words are really important to me. I don’t like just making up some words that rhyme. If I’m not going to feel attached to the song, it’s not going to be as good.

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