A song is a recipe. It’s not a fixed thing to be reproduced like a grainy copy of a copy of an old document. It should live and adjust with whoever is cooking the meal, a new dish every time. 

When I wrote the songs for my second album, Braided Together, I was dealing with endless hypotheticals and “what if’s.” I knew I wanted to make my pure Americana statement, but how did I want to approach that as a contemporary classical music soprano and songwriter? How would I stay true to all the pieces of myself while creating something more recognizable from a genre perspective? 

The way it played out was funny and surprising to me. Songs that I deemed too simple or obvious have been fan favorites. My big, serious, emotional showstoppers have been called overly complex by some and beloved by others. In the end, we can’t predict what listeners will connect with. I love the unpredictability and I want that variety in my music. Mostly, I want to serve something delicious to the folks who are taking the time to listen.

More surprising than the album reception was learning the performability of each song during my album tour. Most of these tunes went from sheet music to studio without seeing a stage, which meant I had never felt the live audience reaction, and WHEW! That’s a different experience than the studio! Watching your audience be visibly excited or noticeably distracted during a performance is something I’m totally used to after multiple decades in the biz, but when it’s your own songs about your own life, it hits differently. 

One song in particular, Please People, had the biggest 180 for me. This was one of those “simple,” toss off songs that I wrote in an hour, editing a bit later, and was certain listeners would find trite and corny. I like the studio version, but this song needs a stage. I fully felt this difference at Reverb Lounge in Omaha, NE. Maybe it was playing banjo, which isn’t on the recording, maybe it was that I went full blast with my vocals for the live rendition, maybe it was Evelyn Thom’s raging fiddle solo. Whatever it was, I was blown away by the energy from the audience performing this song. It brought the house down and made me realize that when we write a song, it’s like making a recipe for the first time. Hesitant and careful, unsure what it will really taste like. But a creative cook knows, after you’ve spent a few years making something, you start put your own spin on it. You learn where you can push the limit and take a risk, and you know which recipes will be crowd pleasers for the holiday potluck. 

I’m deep into the creation of my next album, and as much as I love all of these new songs, I feel like I already have ideas about which ones will bring the house down and which ones are better suited for the chill, coffeehouse vibe. But who knows? I’ve certainly been wrong before. 

REVERB LOUNGE SET LIST

June 19, 2025
Omaha, Nebraska

With Fiddle in the Middle: Jesse Langen, Steve Morrow, Evelyn Thom
Double Bill with Ben Eisenberger

Storm
I dunno Jack
Quick Trips

Irish set from Fiddle in the Middle

Please People 
Mama Rolls On
Sweet Annie
Papio 

The post The Set List: Cooking on the Road appeared first on Karjaka Magazine.

For some artists, genre is a box to be respected. For others, it’s a sandbox to play in. For me, it’s always been the latter. I thrive on variety and transformation. Whether it’s slipping into a folk aesthetic, leaning into experimental textures, or drawing from my classical training, I’m most alive when I’m moving fluidly between worlds. Genre, to me, isn’t a destination, it’s a set of tools, moods, and histories I can call on to tell a story.

My classical training gave me a deep well of skills, musicianship, vocal technique, emotional nuance, but the rigid hierarchy of “high art” never quite fit. I felt split: grateful for the craft, but uncomfortable with the culture. From the moment I arrived at DePaul, I began pushing against that grain, immersing myself in experimental music and finding community outside the mainstream. Over time, I stopped seeing classical music as a rulebook and started seeing it as a toolkit, one that I draw on constantly, even as I write and sing music that sounds more like Woody Guthrie than Wolfgang Amadeus.

That blending of styles and identities is at the heart of Braided Together, my upcoming album. It’s a slow-built collection of songs, rooted in decades of songwriting, improvisation, collaboration, and a desire to tell the stories I carry. My collaborators come from all over the musical map: from Irish traditional musicians to experimental composers, from soul and country artists to classical singers. The result is music that feels familiar and strange all at once, folk songs dressed in new harmonic clothes, country melodies sung with classical technique, experimental textures woven through storytelling.

I grew up in Omaha, Nebraska, on a steady diet of radio pop country, Reba McEntire, and Garth Brooks, alongside classical piano lessons and a deep yearning to play fiddle tunes and Scott Joplin rags. College opened doors to Joni Mitchell, Kurt Weill, and the idea that songwriting could be both personal and political. Moving to Chicago brought me closer to the new music world and expanded my teaching and performing opportunities, but it was stepping back from festival organizing to focus on motherhood and my own music that sparked this new phase in my artistry.

This album isn’t just a sonic blend, it’s also a reflection on community, identity, and history. As someone descended from homesteaders, I think a lot about legacy: the resilience and violence that coexist in our family stories. There’s power in reclaiming folk music not as nostalgic entertainment, but as a vessel for truth-telling and connection. I see that same power in teaching community choirs, in hearing people harmonize for the first time, in making music that brings strangers together in a room.

We often talk about breaking down genre barriers, but we also need to think about audience, about building bridges between listeners as much as styles. That’s where the real work is. Whether in a bar or a concert hall, I want my music to spark recognition and curiosity. I want it to invite people in.

Braided Together comes out this June. It’s for anyone who’s ever felt like they belonged in more than one place at once.

The post I Hear Dead People: How Motherhood, Travel, and Genre-Blending shaped a Sophomore Alt-Folk Album. appeared first on Karjaka Magazine.

Karl in the Coffee Shop

Somewhere along the way I find
contentment beside the
couple at the café, happily dazed in marital
stupor, contemplating their thousandth crossword,
the epic 9-letter author,
minimalist piano composition…

Counting down minutes and refills behind the painted window, |
6-letter word for gong,
blond moment when I realize
that a repeat sign is the only appropriate formal tendency among friends,

And while you process the completion of another row,
repeating the tenth chord of Wed
until 42 across doesn’t align with Uruguay,
I begin to understand that electing my barista and listening to 70s folk pop

Could be the most logical solution to date. – ADB

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silence.

i answer your
tight-lipped disapproval with

eternal

silence

as you parallel yourselves in slow-moving
rows these few minutes feel

eternal

and silence

composes my complacency.
your thick-skinned composure

eternally

silent

while the assessment
continues to

eternity

silently

rests in the seconds between
sound when we validate silence and

return to eternity.

– Amanda Deboer Bartlett

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Spring nights, too, I wandered uptown
unsheltered 
devouring
free-floating particles of other people’s conversations
guzzling the scent of milky trees
frothing
showering
promises at my feet

I wondered what we would be saying

Drunk on street lamps, I took to the alleys
gayly
winding
the long way back.

But those were old times.
Back when there was time,
time to have and to hold before the
frozen
always
of these sheltered places. 

Now I don’t wonder.
I know.

 and in my knowing I am still…

 …and still

 the spring thrusts frothy blooms at my feet.
Another promise.

Amanda Deboer Bartlett

The post Spring Nights, too appeared first on Karjaka Magazine.

I’m sweating, and not necessarily because this venue doesn’t have air conditioning, although that’s certainly not helping. It’s 10:15pm on July 7, 2017, and Omaha Under the Radar’s headlining show, a new staging of Sir Peter Maxwell Davies’ Eight Songs for a Mad King is slated to start at 11:00pm. The event is being held at an abandoned car wash near downtown Omaha, and we’ve spent the past two weeks working with the venue managers trying to make the space as comfortable as possible, but there are limits to what we can do with our budget, which is effectively zero dollars. 

 I’m sweating because our event starts in 45 minutes and the venue, which is probably not up to fire code, is already overflowing with people. Sweaty, cranky people who are sitting on precarious folding chairs, on the concrete floor, on the ledge of a partial cinder block wall.

The musicians aren’t thrilled either. There’s no dressing room, their instruments are soaking up the late-night prairie humidity like sponges, and they’re wearing full-blown costumes…in an abandoned car wash. 

Did I mention that New Music USA, one of the big contemporary music granting organizations, decided to send a cohort of staff and donors to this year’s events? They are in the “front row” in some of the precarious folding chairs. 

 It was our fourth annual festival, we were finally starting to feel established, and we wanted to do something big. I had always wanted to present Eight Songs… and I finally had the players in town to make it happen. JJ Pearse, based in Kansas City, was our King George III, and everyone else was here in Omaha, making rehearsals and staging a possibility. Scott Shinbara, who was a percussion professor at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, was performing and providing gear. We hired a local staging director and costume designer. Stacey Barelos, OUTR co-organizer, was playing piano and helping run the rehearsals. JJ came up from Kansas City a couple times to work out the production. Things were going smoothly during the development, everyone sounded incredible and the design team was miraculous.

But then the whole air conditioning thing…

And it didn’t help that the air conditioning in the previous event that night, held at Project Project, lost their air conditioning, too. Well, “lost” is the wrong word. An artist turned it off without telling us because it was too noisy for their extremely quiet music, and we couldn’t get it back on after they performed. Project Project boasts particle board walls and flooring and was also, in no definition of the term, up to fire code. 

What in Berio’s name was I thinking?!

Well, I was trying to run a contemporary classical and experimental music festival in Omaha, Nebraska. I was trying to prove that this music belongs everywhere and to everyone. I had no money, and I was trying to create organic, community oriented experiences in communities and in places where they don’t normally happen. 

And everyone was mad at me. 

But we were going to make this work! Back at the car wash, we found some extra rugs and people started sitting among the musicians, wherever they could fit. My friend Ben went to Wal-Mart and bought us some fans. The venue managers brough out big jugs of ice water and opened the garage doors on either end of the space (the one benefit of being in a car wash…). And, I had to remind myself that too many people was a good problem to have. I have certainly performed my fair share of shows for a crowd of 2 people in an otherwise empty space. 

I started Omaha Under the Radar with a local actor/playwright in 2013, but before the first festival launched, he ghosted. I was scrambling. Thankfully, a friend of mine connected me with pianist and composer Stacey Barelos, who had recently returned to Omaha, and at our first coffee meeting, I flat out asked her if she wanted to step in and help me launch the festival. She said yes without hesitating. I looped in my grad school friend Aubrey Byerly, who helped us manage finances, and we were off. 

We launched the first festival in July of 2014 with over 40 acts at venues throughout Omaha. Highlights from that first year included a sold out performance of Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians, an interactive theremin exhibit, and an explosive closing performance by Ken Vandermark and Tim Daisy. It felt like we’d invented a new universe by bringing all these people and places together, uniting them in the spirit of iconoclastic creativity in our hometown. 

Places like Omaha rely on grassroots organizations like OUTR to nurture the community and buoy local artists. The bigger arts organizations often ignore the locals altogether, and without the infrastructure and substance of large events, it’s tough to build momentum in smaller markets. In the 9 years that I directed the festival, we presented over 500 individual artists; helped launch new collaborations, ensembles, venues, and nonprofits; introduced contemporary and experimental performance practice to hundreds of attendees who have limited access to those genres in Nebraska; survived the COVID-19 shutdowns and found digital outlets to keep presenting artists; made lifelong relationships with artists and organizers built on mutual respect and reciprocity. All of it by the skin of our teeth. There was never a dime or a minute to spare. It was our passion project, our sweat and blood. It nourished my soul, of course, but it also racked up debt on my personal credit card…especially in those first few years!

Now, almost ten years after I started planning the first festival, my life looks completely different. I have two young children and two cats, my performance career has grown steadily, and we recently moved to Chicago. After having children, it became so difficult to travel for gigs, that I was running myself ragged trying to be three places at once all the time. Omaha doesn’t have enough of a gig scene for me to make a living as a performer locally, and traveling all the time is a nightmare with young kids. I wanted to live somewhere that could provide performing opportunities that I didn’t have to set up for myself, top to bottom, from scratch, over and over again for the rest of my life. So, here we are in Chicago, planting new seeds. I’m bursting with creative energy, and grateful to bring all of the knowledge and wisdom from my time with OUTR to a new city. 

There has been some continuity with this move, thankfully. My ensembles, Quince, Ensemble Dal Niente, and Hasco Duo are continuing on their course with new projects and collaborations. I recently released my first album of original music, and I organized a release show in Chicago with some dear friends from Omaha. I’ve been diving into new collaborations and deepening relationships with folks that had previously been casual acquaintances. It feels like a triumphant moment of building bridges and capitalizing on years of hard work. 

Almost six years after our production of Eight Songs for a Mad King, people still bring it up to me, unprompted. They remember the sweaty venue that felt like a cave, the anticipation and nervousness of not knowing what was about to happen, the feeling of being part of something special, and the experience of being completely immersed in a brilliant and overwhelmingly powerful performance. The alchemy of the evening was perfect. I’m so proud that we created something singular, something impossible to reproduce without all the unique circumstances in place. It was the epitome of grassroots. Did it give me grey hair and possibly take years off of my life? Absolutely. Would I go back and change it? Absolutely not. 

Well, maybe the air conditioning thing…

After the event, we found a couple of 2-week old kittens by a dumpster behind the car wash and decided to bring them home. We named the black one King George III. – ADB

The post Of The Earth appeared first on Karjaka Magazine.

panning rush

a man made of leather
looks back
wonders
then wanders

I swallow a
burning pomegranate
common rocks
sloshing in the silt of my weedy water

please come back

sift away my murk and
unearth my gold

in spring

Amanda Deboer Bartlett

The post Poetry: panning rush appeared first on Karjaka Magazine.

Because someday it will be illegal or poisonous or both

Because your hair doesn’t matter, and neither does your shirt

Because you want to make out with the sky

Because if someone really loves you, they’ll love you sopping wet

Because it traveled all the way to heaven, and still chose earth

• Amanda Deboer Bartlett

The post Poetry: Reasons to stand in the rain appeared first on Karjaka Magazine.

so i turn up at Lindsey’s after she’s already carried the tree home and
there it was in the corner, the branches still
stiff upward from being twined and
roped round so long.

the lights were strung on green wire, half of the bulbs burned out or
blinking as they wrapped back and
forth toward thewire star.

she opened a bag of ornaments: red, blue, silver; their paint chipped
from being crammed and rubbed up
against for eleven months.

we hooked and hung them in the spaces and
there it was, stiff in the corner
with half its lights burned out and us

staring into the tree looking to fill the places we missed.
we hooked the dead tree and it laughed back by
dropping dry needles on the silk skirt we dressed him in.

on the train home, a man with half his teeth out got into a conversation with the
girls across the aisle. the blonde’s earrings whipped her
in the cheek as she turned to

her friend. “he’s so mean!” she noted, then
whipped back to him, “why
are you so mean?” with an offended smile on her face.

he let out a dry holler of a laugh that rattled and dropped to the floor like a dead man’s last wish.
a cigarette dangled from the hole where his bottom
front teeth used to live and

there he was next to an empty chair talking
at two empty girls. “what the hell would I do with a cell phone? who
the fuck am I gonna call? My momma’s dead! My dad’s dead! my grandparent’s

are dead! what am I gonna do with a cell phone? if I found one I’d give it away!”
as he walked out, the door got stuck
open and there we all were, filling spaces

on the train somewhere between Bryn Mawr and
Sheridan, experiencing a short delay and
waiting for signals up ahead…

the blonde dropped some dry comments while the
operator fussed with the door trying to close the space and
move ahead to underground tunnels
on a fixed track to nowhere.

Amanda Deboer Bartlett

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