Lonnie Holley

American artist Lonnie Holley, long celebrated in creative circles for sculptures assembled from found objects along with paintings and installations, reached fresh listeners after he began issuing and staging his music in the 2010s. His freely unfolding pieces, wholly improvised and resistant to any single genre, weave stream-of-consciousness words through a richly textured, time-weathered vocal delivery. No song is ever repeated in performance; he prepares only a list of thematic titles, yet each rendition diverges completely in its unfolding details. The first album to document his work in a studio, 2012’s Just Before Music, followed years of private home recordings that had remained unknown outside his immediate circle. Once the record appeared, he commenced road work alongside figures such as Bill Callahan, Deerhunter, and Animal Collective while also completing further collaborative studio projects, among them the politically charged MITH in 2018 and 2021’s Broken Mirror: A Selfie Reflection, recorded with Matthew E. White. Guests including Michael Stipe and Sharon Van Etten appeared on his 2023 album Oh Me Oh My.

Born in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1950 as the seventh of twenty-seven children, Holley endured a childhood marked by upheaval and remarkable episodes. He recounts being exchanged for a bottle of whiskey at age four and has held an array of unconventional jobs since turning five, among them grave digging, waste collection, and short-order cooking at Disney World. Art-making began at twenty-nine with sandstone carvings that gradually incorporated discarded materials into expansive sculptures. His initial gallery showing took place at the Birmingham Museum of Art in 1981, after which pieces soon appeared in New York and Atlanta institutions. By the close of the next decade his work had traveled to venues worldwide, and President Bill Clinton extended an invitation to the White House. The first large-scale retrospective, titled Do We Think Too Much? I Don’t Think We Can Ever Stop, opened with a year-long 2003 residency at the Birmingham Museum of Art that produced numerous sculptures; the period was captured both in the film The Sandman’s Garden and in an accompanying art book.

Although Holley had been capturing music at home since the 1980s, none of those tapes were ever meant for outside ears. Matt Arnett, whose father had collected Holley’s visual art, arranged the first professional sessions in 2006. A 2010 home performance drew the attention of Dust-to-Digital founder Lance Ledbetter, whose label had previously specialized in reissues of rare folk and blues material from 78 RPM discs. Holley became the imprint’s first living signing, and Just Before Music appeared in 2012. Subsequent touring included a live session at Jersey City’s WFMU that furnished bonus tracks for the album’s eventual vinyl edition. The follow-up, Keeping a Record of It, arrived in 2013 and featured guest contributions from Deerhunter’s Bradford Cox and Black Lips’ Cole Alexander. Before year’s end he had crisscrossed the United States with Deerhunter and Bill Callahan while also completing a first European tour.

In the years that followed he maintained an active schedule of performances and recordings with collaborators such as Daniel Lanois, Jenny Hval, and Julia Holter. Several interludes on the 2014 Arthur Russell tribute Master Mix: Red Hot + Arthur Russell came from Holley, and major museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art continued to present his visual work. Bon Iver incorporated a sample of his music on 2016’s 22, A Million, and the two shared a stage later that year. Jagjaguwar issued the third album, MITH, in 2018; its advance single “I Woke Up in a Fucked-Up America” was accompanied by a notable video, and the record itself included appearances by Laraaji and the late Richard Swift. National Freedom, documenting a 2014 session with Swift, surfaced as an EP in 2020. Spacebomb Records released the funk-oriented Broken Mirror: A Selfie Reflection, again made with Matthew E. White, in 2021. Subsequent work with producer Jacknife Lee yielded the 2023 album Oh Me Oh My, which carried contributions from Michael Stipe, Moor Mother, Sharon Van Etten, Bon Iver, Jeff Parker, and additional guests.