Birdcloud: Birds Of A Feather

Country music is in a strange state these days. While there’s always been a rift between the kind of commercial music that gets played on country radio and all the rest, in recent years that rift has become something of a gulf, one not unlike the divide seen in today’s political climate.

In some ways, though, that gulf has been a fruitful one. It’s sparked a number of important conversations — whether female artists should be treated as nothing more than garnish, for example — and has inadvertently led to a renaissance of left-leaning country and roots music.

It also gave us Birdcloud. The Nashville-based duo of Makenzie Green and Jasmin Kaset make the rare kind of music that marries sensibilities from the most extreme points on either end of the country spectrum. With songs like “Saving Myself For Jesus” and “I Like Black Guys,” they offer up social commentary through humor and exaggerated twang, achieving maximum impact by refusing to hold back. They write what they know, and often what they know is what makes them laugh.

Meeting over lunch at Nashville restaurant Butcher & Bee, Makenzie Green and Jasmin Kaset are just as in sync as they are onstage, their natural chemistry giving way to plenty of laughs and little conversational riffs that could double as stand-up bits. That doesn’t mean they don’t get serious, though, or that they don’t take their music seriously.

“It’s a unique perspective to be a woman in the South who thinks politically different than people you were raised around, or to be sexually assertive in a political climate where men think they have free tickets to be assholes,” Kaset says. “It can be a confusing time to write and make music. But I think it’s a really important time to be doing it as well, and to be doing it mindfully. I think it’s really fucking powerful and important that we do it.”

Having performed together as Birdcloud for the past five years (the pair met at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro), both Green and Kaset have seen a lot together, from naive show-goers walking out mid-song to hardcore fans who show up to gigs with handmade signs. They’ve also experienced their fair share of harassment from fans, a phenomenon they’ve noticed has gotten worse since Donald Trump took office earlier this year.

“Sometimes on the road, just the physical act of touring feels different,” Kaset says of touring in recent months. “People do think they have a free pass to do whatever the fuck they want; men think they do. I think that happens to a lot of female artists.”

Sonically, Birdcloud eschews the slick production of pop country in favor of sweaty cowpunk twang, influenced by the story songs of country greats like Roger Miller and Tom T. Hall and the DIY ethos of bands like Minor Threat in equal measure. Their live shows, which often find the pair performing in diapers, feel more like punk shows than anything you’d expect to find on Music Row.

“We were born and raised in Nashville — nobody’s born and raised in Nashville — and we listened to a lot of pop country stuff growing up,” Green says. “I grew up listening to a lot of punk rock and watching skateboard videos and shit. When we write a song, we’ll be like, ‘This kind of sounds like a Metallica song.’ But it doesn’t sound like Metallica. It’s just because we can barely play our instruments.”

In a couple of days after this interview, the pair will head out on their first European tour. While they’ve built a cult following touring the States relentlessly (typically playing at least 150 dates a year), neither has much of an idea of what to expect from fans across the pond. They have managed to stir up a little controversy in advance of the tour, though, with a 2016 album cover that shows the pair mooning the camera, pissing off a Swedish priest who accused the two of “advertising [their] sexuality.”

“An old man from the church being afraid of a sexually assertive woman is not anything new,” Kaset deadpans.

“We heard that there might be some Catholic protestors outside the show,” Green adds. “I’d love to take pictures of that.”

They’re excited to hit the road, though, and to take what started as a joke between friends across Europe. They also hope the tour will offer up a little levity in the midst of some truly “fucked up” times.

“I have no idea what that tour’s going to be like,” Kaset says. “We’ve been touring stateside for five years now and have played a lot of the same markets. Over there, especially now that Obama isn’t our president, it’s going to be a really interesting time to be doing what we do abroad. Also, as a band that has a sense of humor and that can laugh at itself … I think it’s a great time to be able to laugh at yourself.”

Green agrees. “If you’re not laughing, you’re crying.”

This article appears in the November/December 2017 print edition, on newsstands November 14.