INTERVIEW: Minnesota's Pine & Fire Come Home With Radical Folk Music
Pine & Fire belong on bigger stages. The duo, comprised of Jobi Adams and Brandi Foster, plays exquisite folk music with a radical bent. Their music is mellow and is fit for a campfire, but the lyrics light a bonfire in your soul. The pair would be perfectly at home in a lineup with Adeem the Artist, Jessye deSilva or Austin Lucas (or hey — why not all three?) In our interview, Jobi talks how the pair returned to country music after being alienated by its politics — and how the pair while away the hours on their long lonely drives.
(PS — I found Pine & Fire on Bluesky! Follow my Y’allternative feed to find fellow queer country artists and fans!)
Who are some of your musical influences?
Oh gosh, we have so many, but the first that come to mind are Pete Seeger and Hedy West. Clearly we’re suckers for some good banjo playing. Pete was so wholesome while also being so political and critical. He seemed like a radically gentle man. And Hedy West is just great too. I think she’s such an underrated folksinger. We always “joke” about how we wonder if Hedy West was secretly a lesbian or if she was just really cool. Like have you heard her song “Bush Whacker?”
As far as contemporary influences go though, The Avett Brothers, specifically their early work, have been big for both of us. We were both introduced to them in our early teens and they were some of the first music that we connected with each other over. Jason Dea West is another contemporary influence. He’s one of my favorite songwriters. And his skill, his sound, his energy when he performs…he’s just one of the best doing it right now. If I can be half the performer he is then I’ll know we’re putting on a good show.
Do you have any go-to albums to listen to in the van?
Emotionalism by the Avett Brothers. It’s so good all the way through and it’s a great vocal warm up as we drive to shows. Hank Williams Sr’s Greatest Hits is another go-to. It’s just classic and goes great with the varying landscapes we drive through. It makes me feel like I’m in an indie road trip movie. Honorable mentions; People Who Can Eat People by AJJ. It’s such a short but high energy album we really just yell the whole thing. Willi Carlisle gets a lot of spin time as well. Peculiar Missouri is incredible. Everything before that is incredible. Willi is a legend.
How do you kill the long hours in the van?
I’d say the majority of our time is spent listening to music, and we’re definitely the sing loud in the car type of people. We also play the Alphabet Game to kill time. You gotta find a word (outside of the car) that starts with each letter of the alphabet, starting with A, and then the first person to get through Z wins…we’ve got all sorts of rules in our version though. It gets pretty competitive. We’ll also unintentionally end up down these little rabbit holes that help us burn through some hours. Like recently, while driving to Minnesota from Wyoming, we spent a good two plus hours discussing and researching the origin and history of sport hunting. It was really fascinating actually. We learn a lot of random shit on those long drives.
How have you healed or grown your relationship to country music/Americana?
We had pretty parallel experiences with our relationships to country/americana music. We both consumed and played a lot of it in our early lives. I’ve been writing folk tunes since I was a literal kid and Brandi grew up singing Hank Sr. songs with her grandpa. It’s always been a big part of us. But we both definitely went through a time where we distanced ourselves from it…probably starting in our late teens. Brandi used to listen to a lot of radio country specifically and when she was coming to terms with her transness she realized that there was a lot of hate for someone like her in that world so she pulled away from it. I guess I distanced myself from country music because it just didn’t reflect who I was then. In my late teens I got involved in anti-racist and anti-police organizing work and at that point, I was a young brown queer who had only recently fled my small town. I still carried so much anger then. I just felt like the world of country music didn’t have space for me. So for a few years I sort of strayed from it and I had quit songwriting. We largely listened to folk punk and rap back then. There was also a brief window of time in there where we thought we were gonna start a punk band, but that never came to fruition because we were both homeless.
I think ultimately it was just us finding a more accepting scene within the country/americana/folk world that brought us back to it. I remember stumbling upon [low-fi Americana performances YouTube channel] GemsOnVHS probably six or seven years ago and being like “whoa people still care about this kind of music?”. And from there we just kind of dove in and discovered that there’s a whole world of independent, radical, and honest country/Americana music out there. That’s what got me back into songwriting. It sort of felt like…coming home. Reconnecting with roots music has helped both of us reconnect with our own roots. And I know for me personally it’s played a big role in healing my relationship to my hometown and being a rural queer. I don’t know if I ever feel as seen, like as my whole self, as I do when I’m playing folk music.
What would you like to say to people who are currently questioning their identities?
Give yourself permission to just explore and try things out…nothing has to be permanent. Try out a new name, try on some pronouns, if it isn’t right for you try something else. Your identity can change and grow as you do and that doesn’t make who you are, who you’ve been, or who you’ll be any less valid. Everyone deserves the space to find themselves. And if the risk or fear of losing people in your life is a deterrent, I promise that your own joy is worth it.
