Roger Harvey and Simon Flory’s Progress, despite its lengthy gestation, arrived right on time.
Fourteen tracks of varying vintage all have a common thread — “maintaining the radical spirit inherent in the tradition of American folk music,” per the press materials. They are brought to life by the pair of musicians, who recorded Progress in Fort Worth live to tape.
Timeless tunes like “I Don’t Want Your Millions, Mister,” “T.B. Blues” and “A Satisfied Mind” evoke the spirit of Woody Guthrie’s unflinching fervor, as Harvey and Flory, along with guests like Abel Casillas, Gary Grammer and Summer Dean, subtly update these classic folk and country songs for the 21st century — Harvey swaps “Rolls Royce” for “Tesla” on “Mister,” for instance. The singing of immigration, homelessness and disease feels simultaneously historical and ripped from last week’s headlines.
The Nashville-based Harvey and the Fort Worth-based Flory first crossed paths in 2018 while touring through Texas. In 2020, just as the global pandemic was shutting everything down, Harvey and Flory, on the cusp of another joint tour, found themselves instead in Flory’s Fort Worth backyard, socially distanced, but creatively connected.
“That’s literally where it started,” Flory said during a recent conversation. “I think it probably speaks best to our personalities where that wasn’t a disappointment [the tour was canceled]. It was — what are we going to do next? When we started in on this [record], it was, to be honest, all just really natural.”
Flory will soon perform a pair of shows in North Texas — Fort Worth’s The Post on March 21, and Dan’s Silverleaf in Denton on March 23 — and will likely showcase at least a couple songs from Progress, which was released digitally last fall and on vinyl in February.
I spoke with Flory about the songs’ timeliness, nurturing the creative partnership with Harvey and the value of hard truths. The following conversation has been lightly edited and condensed.
I really enjoyed Progress, although “enjoy” feels like a conflicted word to use. Especially thinking about the genesis of this coming out of the pandemic — does the record almost feel like a storm-clouds-on-the-horizon kind of thing?
That’s a really interesting way to look at it — maybe it makes us look like some sort of soothsayers or something, like we knew was coming on. I think, because of that, that explains where it’s coming from, and the fact of when we did it.
What is so striking about Progress is it’s talking about issues or however you want to frame it — it never went away, right? Some of these songs are many, many decades old and I think it’s something maybe most people don’t give a lot of thought until it’s thrust into their faces. It’s unfortunate Progress is so timely.
Right? We kept saying that as it was coming out, we hated that this is going to work. … This project has been nothing but conversation after conversation and digging into the deep stuff, the hard stuff, digging into the way we put the record together with so much care. We even had a ranking system for the songs — we got so into the songs. … When we were really digging for these songs, that was all about coming to an agreement.
Progress sort of forces the listener to confront — not that the record is unpleasant or abrasive or difficult — but the subject matter, and the directness of the presentation forces you to sit with it.
It was easy to put our angst and our willfulness into this record, and at the same time, we want to make it pretty and obviously listenable. The whole thing was Roger being ‘Hey, I want to make a record with your band. I want to make a straight-up country record in Texas, in Fort Worth.’ That was his stipulation. … Coming from two different worlds, we got to share in our processes. I’ve learned an intense amount about how to do music in general from Roger.
What are you hoping people take away from the project?
These songs aren’t for me. They aren’t for Roger. They’re for everybody. I think that’s how they were written. That’s how they were meant to be listened to and enjoyed. … This is America. These are folk songs. This is the whole idea of the entire thing. With some people who’ve heard these songs before, I hope they can get into it … but I really hope it gives them a moment of pause. … I hope it gets a conversation going somewhere, whether it’s about the songs, the content or even just the musical style.
Simon Flory at The Post, Fort Worth. 8 p.m. March 21. Tickets are $12.
Simon Flory at Dan’s Silverleaf, Denton. 3 p.m. March 23. Tickets are $10-$50.
Preston Jones is a North Texas freelance writer and regular contributor to KXT. Email him at preston@kxt.org or find him on Bluesky (@prestonjones.bsky.social).Our work is made possible by our generous, music-loving members. If you like how we lift up local music, consider becoming a KXT sustaining member right here.
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