Notes From Country, Cajun and Bluegrass’ Far Western Bureau With Caleb Klauder and Reeb Willms
Simplicity, danceability and "rogue-ness" are at the heart of the duo's music
These are anxious times. You may already know, but the US House of Representatives passed the $9.4 billion rescissions package which would gut PBS, NPR, USAID and other organizations recently, sending it on to the US Senate. You may also know that Southern Songs and Stories is possible because I work at a public radio station, WNCW. This defunding should prove catastrophic for all of the agencies mentioned, especially USAID, which is already shuttered. While public media does bring in the majority of its funding from private donations and business underwriting, the sudden claw back of this funding would be nothing short of seismic. For a public radio station like WNCW, the loss of money would be significant, and the loss of programming from NPR would be as well, however the kicker in this scenario would be the then nearly insurmountable problem of how to license the music it plays. The music rights agreements that public radio stations have now are made possible — and affordable — by the existing framework, but without this, those would have to be renegotiated entirely. It could be incredibly burdensome, or impossible for many public stations to pay what might be well into five or six figures yearly for the rights to play music in this scenario. As things stand, should the Senate pass the rescissions package as is, and it become law, public media outlets could be left out in the cold, or worse, begin going dark beginning January 1, 2026.
This has weighed on my mind in recent days, as you can imagine. Thoughts of possibly not being here in a matter of months have played on repeat. In the overall scheme of things, I realize that this dilemma is only a small part of our overall, national crisis. There are larger fish to fry, so to speak, for everyone concerned about what is happening.
But in the midst of this tumult, all the rest of life keeps happening, and thankfully, much of it is really good. The good parts include this podcast, and I am grateful to bring you a new episode here today. Caleb Klauder and Reeb Willms are our guests, and below you will find the script and transcript to their episode, also which you can hear on podcast platforms everywhere.
Thank you for spending time here! There is much more awaiting you at the podcast website as well, including articles, photos and videos that are not included in these newsletters. Onwards to the transcript for our latest, enjoy!
[“Gold In Your Pocket” by Caleb Klauder and Reeb Willms, performed live at Albino Skunk Music Festival 05-10-25, continuing as bed]
In the roots music world, we talk about place all the time. Unlike pop music or any music that is geared towards a national or international audience, roots music sounds like it still has the dust of its hometown caked on its boots -- it sings about and sounds like the hills and hollers, bayous and plains, front porches and muddy rivers where it was born. It is easy to think of roots music as staying rooted in these places: bluegrass from Appalachia, blues from the Delta, western swing from Texas, and so on.
But the thing about those dusty boots is that they do not always stay at home. They ramble, too, sometimes very far. And so, we get an incredible variety of roots music going wherever people roam, whether they are displaced, like the Acadians when the British kicked them out of Nova Scotia and sent them to Louisiana, or whether they were following opportunity, like so many Southerners after the Civil War, or whether they spread their influence far from home by touring and recording records, like scores of Hawaiian slack-key guitarists, beginning in the late 19th century.
In the 19th and 20th century, workers migrated to the Pacific Northwest for jobs in the timber industry, for example, and a lot of them took their instruments, which included fiddles and banjos, and their songs, which were the same roots music styles that we so strongly associate with places like Appalachia or the deep South. Over time, the music took on different accents and storylines of the region, remaining easily recognizable as country or bluegrass, for example, but with its own, subtly distinct flavor.
Caleb Klauder and Reeb Willms make their home in the San Juan Islands, in Washington State, and their style of country music is on display now, with their live performance of “Gold In Your Pocket”, the title track to their 2024 album, taken here from their set at the Albino Skunk Music Festival in May 2025. With its uplifting lyrics, bright melody and swinging rhythm, this tune, like many others by Caleb and Reeb, reflects a big part of their musical mission, which is spreading joy and fostering community wherever they go. And oh, the places they go! To Louisiana, to celebrate the music of Cajun and country legend Jimmy C Newman; to The Last Frontier state for the Alaska Folk Festival; and to Vermont, where Caleb connected with Noam Pikelny, which led to becoming a guest member of bluegrass supergroup Mighty Poplar, to name a few.
I spoke with Caleb Klauder and Reeb Willms on a picture perfect spring afternoon in Greer, SC, in between their two sets at Skunk Fest, where we touched on all of those travels, both physical and musical; their own region’s musical “rogue-ness”; the raw simplicity and danceability of their take on country music; and the importance of slowing down and being present. That and more awaits you, including more music on this episode. I am your host Joe Kendrick, welcoming you to Southern Songs and Stories with Caleb Klauder and Reeb Willms.
[SSaS theme song with VO by Joe K]
00:06:44 Joe Kendrick
Thinking about place and its bearing on music, You know it has such an impact on especially roots music. I think it's very much a, you know place is at the heart of so much of this music and you're here at Ground Zero for a lot of music that originated from you know, within the earshot of where we're sitting right now. I have, watching music -- a lot of country music and, and, and this, you know, has taken off and gone worldwide, of course. So it's interesting to think about, like, how the music that you're playing is, you know, it could be just like you could just be right at home having come from Brevard, you know, but you’re from Washington state. So I like to think about how some people might miss the fact that you know, this, this music is universal. It may have started here, but it doesn't necessarily only live here.
00:07:44 Reeb Willms
Yeah, we love that. We talk about that a lot because you know the fiddle is the small instrument and all the people that went out West when they migrated there, they were miners or loggers or.
00:07:57 Caleb Klauder
Jobs were there.
00:07:58 Reeb Willms
Jobs were out West and people brought their fiddles and their banjos. And all that music went with them and continued on out there.
My great uncles and great grandfather had banjos and fiddles and mandolins that they played on the ranch where they were farmers and ranchers. And I grew up hearing music that my dad played, my uncles played.
00:08:24 Caleb Klauder
Yeah, I mean, some of the really early music from this region actually went out that way early on, earlier than we kind of think it did. And, you know, Hank Williams, Willie Nelson, those guys were out in the West Coast, plant or living and working out there. And some of that, I know that some, some really. You know, important mountain music like the Roan Mountain Hilltoppers, part of that family moved to Washington because of logging and they spent time there, really close to where I'm from, just on the mainland, in Darrington. It’s an amazing bluegrass festival. But it feels like you're in West Virginia or North Carolina. So that stuff's been going there for a long time now.
I feel like this question has come up quite a bit about place and like I'd say, the last two or three interviews we've had, which is really neat, that it's come up so much. But I think that for us now You know the West Coast has kind of been a melting pot Like the United States as a melting pot, but we really are out there a lot of different people have come into the West Coast over the years. And I feel like, also. We feel excluded or we feel removed in a sense, those Rocky Mountains are important. They're big and there is an element of like we're not. We're not like, I think we're seeing, but there's an element where you kind of feel like you're not seen sometimes because you're from the northwest. And I think that only gives us a little bit of like, rogueness.
And I feel like there is also a separation. I mean the Internet has changed everything, but there's a little bit of ‘We just do it like this’. You know, we're just kind of, it's like a little tiny twist on something you can't quite put your finger on, but we don't really follow that rule and I think that's that is our place. We have a little bit of rogueness to it.
00:10:03 Joe Kendrick
Awesome. Yeah, yeah. You pointed out something that I was talking around, which is that the place having place be at the heart of so much of this music, kind of like points people towards the region where it originated and you being on the other side of the country can have to go against the grain a little bit or actually you know you have to say, yeah, we're here too, right. You have to, you have to say like this is not just yours over there. We're here too. But the whole nature of it is that you know it's -- you're singing about places you're you're, you know, you've got an aesthetic that is totally, you know, very much here. But of course it works where you are.
00:10:54 Caleb Klauder
Yeah, and it might just be a tiny bit unique. I remember one time a while ago. I won't say the name, someone referenced our country band playing and they're like, yeah, you don't have enough. You don't have enough Texas two step in your music and I just kind of looked at him and I was like, we're not, I mean, we're playing music that's probably from Texas or is relative to Texas, but we're not from Texas. We don't need to do that just because you think we should because we're playing something that's, I mean, just let us play how we're playing. I kind of right away. I was just like kind of got my hair bristled up a little bit like we don't do it just because we have to do something Texas. So that's exactly an example of like well. We don't necessarily just do that. We might, but we don't have to.
[“You Gotta Roll the Dice To Win” by Caleb Klauder and Reeb Willms, performed live at Albino Skunk Music Festival 05-10-25, excerpt]
It may not be a Texas two step, but it sure got the crowd in South Carolina dancing at the Albino Skunk Music Festival in May 2025. That was a bit of a new song by Caleb Klauder and Reeb Willms, “You Gotta Roll the Dice To Win”. Country is at the heart of their music, but as you will hear later in our conversation, they play other styles, like bluegrass and Cajun music. That is coming up after we get to the heart of what the duo considers country music. Here’s Reeb Willms, followed by Caleb Klauder.
00:11:43 Reeb Willms
I think we really think about our music as dance music at the core. We want it to have that kind of energy, even if we're singing a ballad, we still want it to have some kind of energy and groove. But we definitely think of ourselves as a dance band.
00:12:00 Caleb Klauder
I think we keep the music simple as well, so it's not getting into the jazzy elements and we try to keep things kind of raw. I think that helps us feel like it's country. I think that simplicity is what might be one of the storytelling, yeah.
00:12:14 Reeb Willms
Storytelling and songs about your feelings.
00:12:20 Caleb Klauder
But we're I think we're pushing those, you know, hopefully adding to the canon of what it is to be country, you know, like there's so much country music where it's like sad and lonesome and, you know, sing me, we have this song called “sing me a sad song to make me happy”. It's like a common theme in country music. But also you can sing these positive, uplifting, happy songs and they can be country. Because it's dancing music and it's like common themes in people's lives.
[“Sing Me A Sad Song To Make Me Happy” by Caleb Klauder and Reeb Willms, performed live at Albino Skunk Music Festival 05-10-25, excerpt]
[jump to]
00:22:15 Joe Kendrick
Thinking about another one of your records, which is, uh, not the usual, perhaps: Farewell Alligator Man working with Joel Savoy. And I love the tie into Louisiana because you know, that's its own You know, like we could just talk for a day about it and not even, you know, really get into it because it's so rich. Tell us about that record. And that's sort of what that music, that style of music does for you.
00:22:41 Reeb Willms
Yeah, that's awesome. There's. I feel like there's so much connection and mingling through the decades with Cajun music and country music and They're really connected in a lot of ways. The communities are connected and the music's connected and You know, I guess.
00:22:59 Caleb Klauder
The dancing.
00:23:00 Reeb Willms
Dancing elements.
00:23:00 Caleb Klauder
Inspiration and all that, yeah.
00:23:02 Reeb Willms
Yeah. We've been inspired by a lot of Cajun music through the years, and we've been country musicians that came out of Cajun territory, and we started listening to the music of Jimmy C Newman years ago and just really fell in love with his simple kind of straight ahead songwriting, beautiful melodies. And we started to learn and sing some of his songs and our buddy Joel Savoy. Around that time he was getting into Jimmy C also and Kelly Jones, our friend, they were singing some of his songs and we were too. And we connected over it and we just thought, oh, we should make, we should make an album sometime and tribute album to his music and it took a few years before it actually happened, but.
00:23:45 Caleb Klauder
Yeah.
00:23:49 Reeb Willms
And then we also, Joel, put on a show down in Louisiana. And he invited Jimmy C Newman to come play on the show, and he called us to see if we could come and we thought It was pretty short notice, but we thought we gotta go. We gotta go meet Jimmy C if we can, you know.
00:24:07 Caleb Klauder
He was getting old at that point. Joel pretty much retired to help pull him out of retirement to come play on these shows.
00:24:14 Reeb Willms
So we there was a house band and we all took kind of took turns playing during the show, singing different songs and It was just beautiful to meet him. He was such a star. He wore his rhinestone coated Nudie suits and he just really was such a charismatic performer. So great singer.
00:24:34 Caleb Klauder
A little bit of a bittersweet back story too, where Jimmy C was on the Grand Ole Opry. He was very famous in that sense. And he was on it forever. But prior to that, when he was starting out in Louisiana, he was writing these really simple country songs in English, like Hank Williams or like early George Jones and toured around the Louisiana Hayride with George Jones.
He wrote songs with George And he got himself all the way to the Opry. It was just great. And then someone told him, like, hey You're kind of done like those. So those old songs are like old. We're we're the opera is moving on and like, thanks. But see you and he sort of was like hey saved his job by saying, hey, can I stay on the Opry, I'll be the Cajun guy? I'll be Jimmy C Newman, Jimmy Cajun Newman, and he switched from like this old school country vibe that was old, quote UN quote to cajun guy. He was the only one, so. He kept his job, but he started playing more Cajun music and singing in French and he was told that these old songs were kind of like, done. So when we met him here we are in love with his old, old kind of obscure stuff. And we're singing these songs and he's just blowing his mind like here's these young people from the West Coast singing his songs, like what? And you know, and we You know, we sang him warm and we got this cool nod like he was really overjoyed and even he even told us the story about how they sort of shot him down and these songs were no good anymore and we were like, these are the most beautiful songs I've ever heard. And he told me stories about some of the ones he had written and he'd even forgotten singing them. He just kind of blocked them out. So it was really neat to see him light up when we sang ‘em and see us supporting those.
And then he passed. And then we decided to make this tribute because we were all so hammered with his material and his son, Gary Newman, actually came and played bass on the album. And brought in a bunch of his old fancy sequin suits, and brought some really beautiful big pictures of him at the Opry just for inspiration while we were recording. And, you know, we brought essentially, our country band came in and Joel playing fiddle and Kelly Jones and we just all brought our love for Jimmy C and just poured it into that record and that's farewell alligator man, because he had a, a song called “Alligator Man”, so.
00:26:55 Joe Kendrick
That is so wonderful. Pretty, pretty special.
00:26:57 Reeb Willms
Yeah, we had a great time making that album.
[“Alligator Man“ by Joel Savoy, Kelli Jones, Reeb Willms and Caleb Klauder, from Farewell Alligator Man, excerpt]
[jump to]
00:16:09 Joe Kendrick
I loved your record from last year, Gold In Your Pocket. It made my top 10. I was just, really fell in love with that record. And I know you've been playing some new music today. I heard one song. Was it “Key To Life”? Tell us about that song.
00:16:26 Caleb Klauder
Well, as I said, we have a songwriting group that we've been pulled into by some friends in the West Coast that we meet mostly virtually just to get together once a week and we meet in person every now and then when we can host. But somebody said one night, one of the meetings we were having just kind of in common conversation was like if we could just slow down and like, take a break and kind of like focus and like that's like the key, you know. And I was like that. That's the key to life right there.
At least for me, like I'm so busy rushing around trying to pick up everything and catch this and do that, sometimes I'm not slow enough just to be present and be at peace in that slowness. I'm a kind of busy body person, so that song was me kind of talking to myself. Hey, slow down and just don't let life. Life is cruel to those who squander. It'll, what's the word? But it's just basically, like, squander. Like, it's easy to, like, have too many ideas going on and you can't do any of them. And so you're kind of like squandering away your time. You're not focusing and you're not being still and just kind of putting your energy into this one thing and being productive.
It's a little bit of a self conversation about that. Yeah, finding the little simple joys in life and just enjoying them and.
00:17:52 Reeb Willms
Being present,
Caleb Klauder
Being present.
00:17:55 Joe Kendrick
It sounds like you practiced what you preach there.
00:17:59 Caleb Klauder
I'm working on it, yeah.
[“Key To Life” by Caleb Klauder and Reeb Willms, performed live at Albino Skunk Music Festival 05-10-25, excerpt]
00:18:31 Caleb Klauder
You think so? Well, you know, we just got back from a really amazing festival in Alaska called the Alaska Folk Festival. And there's a community up there that's really powerful and it draws people in from far away. And we spent about four days there and I think we both left as high as a kite just on the musical camaraderie and the musical like celebration and the dancing and the singing.
And like the community just pulls together around everybody who's playing there, you can feel it. And as a performer you get, like, full on love and as a participant watching your friends, you get to just dump it all into them and everybody just swirls into, like, a flame. It's amazing, you know, it's. You leave there and, numerous friends, we talked about it together after the fact, like weeks later like. Are you still flying? Yeah, I'm still flying. So that's where we get really. That's where the box is. Like a plus. You know, that kind of thing. So trying to take that and spread that around more, you know that little bit that we know can exist in other places. Let's take that everywhere. Let's take that to more people. Let's try and share that. I've been singing a couple of songs like, you know this one I wrote called “surrounded by love”. It's just an acapella thing that is talking about that. Or the other one I wrote is kind of also acapella “the church with no walls”, which is like this is a church with no walls. This festival is outside. Anybody can come here. We're celebrating. We're having church. We're all singing and playing and we're all convening and and like hugging and and supporting each other. Those things are referencing all of that stuff.
00:20:10 Joe Kendrick
Isn't all music spiritual on one level or another?
00:20:14 Caleb Klauder
Tell me about it. Absolutely.
[“Church With No Walls” by Caleb Klauder and Reeb Willms, performed live at Albino Skunk Music Festival 05-10-25, excerpt]
[jump to]
00:27:53 Joe Kendrick
Well, thinking of other collaborative ventures, anything that you have on your radar, you want to do like you would like to work with somebody, but also I want to touch on your stint in Mighty Poplar. Let's talk about the other associations that you either have done, like Mighty Poplar or want to do in the future.
00:28:13 Caleb Klauder
Yeah. So, That Mighty Poplar thing came up. We were playing at the Green Mountain Festival in Vermont, so the great festival is -- Noam Pickelny is there often he lives nearby there and good friends, and so his mighty pop well, watchtower plays there quite a bit. And the promoter is a big fan of Reeb and myself and some stuff I had done a long, long time ago. She wanted me to sing some of these old songs of mine that I don't really perform anymore. Long story behind that. But she's been asking me to perform these songs. They don't feel like they quite fit into the band we have now, has sort of moved on.
So she's been asking and asking. I finally obliged, and I needed to kind of pull a band together that I thought could do it. So I asked Noam Pikelny. Reeb and I, the little tour with the duo opened up for Mighty Poplar, and in that tour I just chatting with Noam like, What are you thinking about when you're playing those banjo licks backstage, he's warming up and he's like, oh, just tell he licks like Telecaster and I'm like you played Tele?, you know.
And so we start chatting about this. I'd love to play in your country band sometime. That got me spinning my wheels and so I brought Noam into play on this obscure old stuff of mine. Christian Sedelmeyer played fiddle. Andrew Marlin played mandolin. Playing these songs of mine and we pulled this set together for a Green Mountain and then. You know Andrew Marlin and Emily were having a baby, and these Mighty Poplar gigs are coming up and. We're all buddies and he just leans over one day, he goes, you come sit in and fill in for two gigs with us. My first thought was “no way”. I don't want to play all that crazy music like that's way above my head, you know? And I just realized I I took a walk away from that and I said, what am I thinking?
It took me about two hours to come around and say yeah, heck yeah, I'll play with you. And it was fabulous. They like, let me sing a bunch of my songs, which was really inspiring and uplifting to bring my stuff into their fold. And then we've been collaborating with Noam a little bit. We were up in New England in March. He came and played with us. That's the story behind that right, playing with Mighty Poplar. Just those two shows were really impressive and amazing for me.
Coming up on the horizon, I have some stuff I want to do. We've been writing new songs. We have new songs coming up. We're not even quite sure how to produce those yet. That's still developing. I've got some mandolin tunes. I've written a handful of them. I want to make an album, probably an instrumental album of my own original mandolin tunes, so just kind of like brainstorming who to pull in for that. There's so many amazing players. How do you pick? You know, it's just like finding the right people that you just totally just drop into the connection with just right. So I don't know how to do that yet. I'm just. I'm waiting for that magic moment to happen. You just got to know when it happens. And the, gosh, I don't know. The horizon sometimes seems blurry. To be honest! You don't really know.
00:31:14 Reeb Willms
A lot of times we're so busy it's hard to look up actually, but.
00:31:19 Caleb Klauder
Yeah, but we have new songs written, and they'll be recorded very soon. I think we're maybe waiting for a few more to arise so we can make a new album, we might just do singles too.
You know, people have been doing quite a bit of that, like just recording one or two.
00:31:34 Joe Kendrick
I learned the industry term for releasing singles: the waterfall.
00:31:41 Reeb Willms
I’ve heard of that. Yeah.
00:31:44 Caleb Klauder
Maybe we should do the Waterfall. Maybe we should. All right. Well, here's to a waterfall. I love a big swan dive off a waterfall.
[“He’s Gone” by Caleb Klauder and Reeb Willms, performed live at Albino Skunk Music Festival 05-10-25, continuing as bed]
Ending this episode with the song that leads off Caleb Klauder and Reeb Willms’ album Gold In Your Pocket, which also began the first of their two sets at the Albino Skunk Music Festival on May 10, 2025. Their first set was just Caleb and Reeb, while their second set featured their full band, with Shad Cobb on fiddle, Mike Bub on bass, and Rusty Blake on guitar and pedal steel.
Did you know that there are over 150 episodes of Southern Songs and Stories available anytime for free anywhere you find podcasts? It’s true! Also they have a home on my website southernsongsandstories.com, where there are many more articles and photos to go along with those episodes.
You can follow us on social media: at southstories on Instagram, at Southern Songs and Stories on Facebook, and you can view these episodes and a lot more on my YouTube channel, at the handle JoeKendrickNC. Like to read? We’re now on Substack, where you can read the scripts of these podcasts, and get updates on what we are doing and planning in our quest to explore and celebrate the unfolding history and culture of music rooted in the American South, and going beyond to the styles and artists that it inspired and informed.
This series is a part of the lineup of both public radio WNCW and Osiris Media, with all of the Osiris shows available at osirispod.com. You can also hear new episodes on Bluegrass Planet Radio at bluegrassplanetradio.com. Thanks to Jaclyn Anthony for producing the radio adaptations of this series on public radio WNCW, where we worked with Joshua Meng who wrote and performed our theme songs, and now, Elena Dickson, who lends her production skills, and soon, her voice to our episodes this summer. I am your host and producer Joe Kendrick, and this is Southern Songs and Stories: the music of the South and the artists who make it.