Featured Photo Credit: Calli Westra
Since their formation in 2012, Indie American Folk Band, Mipso has uncovered beauty in pain.
Their latest single, “Carolina Rolling By,” carries on that tradition with uninhibited storytelling. Through harmonies and vibrant lyricism, the quartet tells the tale of a down-and-out pill-popping truck driver trying to get back on his feet. This fictional story was almost Joseph Terrell’s (guitar/vocals) following a boating accident and his introduction to painkillers during recovery. “I couldn’t walk for 12 days, but I had my grandma’s guitar and some hydrocodone and worked on this song, I think because I fully understood for the first time how anyone could get addicted to those,” Terrell shared of how he found beauty in his own pain.
The timeless tune can be heard on their upcoming sixth studio album, Book of Fools dropping August 25. The album is available to pre-order on vinyl here.
The band will also bring North Carolina to the rest of North America on their tour, kicking off on August 17 in Portsmouth, NH. Tickets are on sale now via mipsomusic.com/tour.
Before you roll down the windows and drive, check out our chat with Joseph Terrell (guitar/vocals) about his personal connection to the single, the album, and more.
What inspired your new single “Carolina Rolling By”?
I think rural North Carolina is the most beautiful landscape in the world. I grew up here so I can’t help it. The Piedmont’s rolling hills just grab me by the heart. And as much as I hate cars and our dependence on them, the feeling of controlling a machine like it’s an extension of your body is such an intense pleasure. I can move my ankle and make a two ton pod go 80 miles an hour, it’s such a miraculous thrill to our paleolithic brains. Driving these rolling hills with the windows down is like medicine. I’ve written a lot of songs in the car just repeating lines to myself, humming along to nothing.
A couple of years ago, I fell out of a canoe onto a big root in a creek and they rushed me to the ER. At first they thought it was a spinal injury but it turned out to be a deep muscle tear in my back. I couldn’t walk for two weeks, but I had a guitar and some hydrocodone and a seat by the window. I was feeling pretty great in my window seat but I was also viscerally aware of how anyone could get addicted to those things.”Carolina Rolling By” is about a truck driver who gets addicted to pills after an accident, and he’s trying to get his shit together and knows he’s struggling but still feels beautiful moments like the sunrise after an all-night haul when he sees the sun first peek between the branches on a Carolina road. I think I write songs that feel hopeful because I need the reminder these days that we can still be hopeful.
Much of your music finds beauty in the pain. What is your process of translating those difficult stories into Mipso’s signature sound?
These days anything beautiful exists alongside a backdrop of real tragedy because we’re murdering the planet so that a handful of rich people can buy their second yachts. That fact is always there. I don’t think pain and beauty are opposite things that we combine, like we’re throwing ingredients into a cake mix. They’re always together, always a part of the same feeling. A good song is just being honest about that.
This single is the first taste of your upcoming sixth studio album. How does this track tie into the story of the project?
We’ve tended to think of albums as falling into one of two categories: pushing ourselves into a new sound or honing into our comfort zone. On this album, we realized we don’t have to make that choice. We’re good enough to do both at the same time. I think “Carolina Rolling By” hits a sweet spot.
Do you have any favorite memories from the making of the album?
We had such a California time recording the album. We stayed in the basement of a friend’s beautiful house. Every night we sat in a hot tub next to a palm tree, and every night a little possum climbed up into the lemon bush next to the hot tub and watched us soak.
Joseph, you noted that this album “feels more relaxed, more confident, more us.” What was the process like to get there?
The process was making five other albums first. We’re each better at our instruments now and better at writing songs because we’ve been doing it for a decade. We’re also specifically better at understanding how to make music with these four people. A band has to be a bobsled team, all leaning in the same way together at the same time.
If you could set fans up in the perfect environment to listen to the single, what do you imagine it looking like?
In the car on a country road in the summer with the windows down.
What can fans look forward to next?
I’m really excited for the tour. For the first time, we’ve taken some deliberate months off the road, and I feel like I’ve had space to be a human being with a home and to remember why I like to play music in public. For a few years, the only way we knew how to pay rent was to get back in the van and play more shows, and we were always exhausted, and the tours started to run together. I hate to blame it all on economics, but it’s a shitty era to be making a living making music. But this time, we managed to take a step back, and we’re re-energized, and we’re redesigning the stage setup and the sound. It’s going to be the best tour we’ve ever done, and the best part is we’ll be rested enough to fully have fun with it.
You’re kicking off a North American tour on August 17 in Portsmouth, NH? What can fans expect from one of your live shows?
These songs groove so hard, if I can say so. Our drummer Sean is the greatest. We will be loud for some of these. We will also bring the whole show down to a single microphone for a couple of songs and sing some harmonies together. If people leave the show tired from dancing and say, “wait, what genre is that? what kind of band is Mipso?” we will have succeeded.
What song(s) on the EP are you most excited to play live?
“Starry Eyes”/ “Book of Fools.” No one has heard that one yet. It starts intimate and reserved, and then on the chorus, I get to switch over to a different amp totally fuzzed out and play Lib’s vocal melody on guitar in unison. Very fun.
What is one quote that you have heard or that you go by that you want to ECHO out to the world?
I just read How To Blow Up A Pipeline. Andreas Malm says, “Property will cost us the earth.”