How Hello Emerson Frontman Sam Bodary’s Family Influences the Band’s New Album
Nearly seven years after a harrowing incident involving his father, the songwriter faces his fears on the indie-folk band’s remarkable new record. Sam Bodary, the frontman of the band Hello Emerson, has written a new album, To Keep Him Here, with his family's influence influencing the band's new album. The album was released in 2017 with the first time the band has released its first album, "How to Cook Everything," exploring themes such as American heartland, and exploring the idea of "legitimate force" locally and abroad. Bodary's songwriting, which includes literary, chamber-folk songs, often reveals deep themes and deep emotions in a three-minute folk-pop song. His new album is set to be released on Anyway Records and K&F Records with an album release date on April 13.
게시됨 : 4주 전 ~에 의해 Joel Oliphint ~에 Entertainment Lifestyle
On Wednesday, July 12, 2017, in the middle of his workday at Battelle, Sam Bodary got the type of phone call no one wants to receive. His mom, Susan Bodary, told him his dad, David Bodary, had been in a serious accident while driving home from Michigan. She wasn’t sure what happened, and she didn’t know if her husband would be OK. She’d call back later. In the stillness of the moment, Sam stared out the window, aware that his family had just begun a new chapter.
After work, Sam, a singer-songwriter and guitarist, tried to continue his evening as planned, heading to a friend’s house to practice for a wedding gig. But as he harmonized lines from Justin Timberlake's cover of “True Colors” from the “Trolls” soundtrack, he knew at any moment his mom might call to tell him he’d never see his dad alive again.
A song from an animated kids’ film isn’t Sam’s usual fare. Since his band Hello Emerson released its first album in 2017, the musician has turned heads with literary, chamber-folk songs that are full of heart, recalling acts like the Mountain Goats and Bright Eyes. Bodary’s masterful songwriting uses small details to reveal big ideas and deep emotions, often in the span of a three-minute folk-pop song.
“It’s like looking through a keyhole, and then you see the whole picture,” says Bela Koe-Krompecher, founder of storied Columbus label Anyway Records, which released Hello Emerson’s brilliant 2020 album, How to Cook Everything. Koe-Krompecher compares Sam to Randy Newman and puts him in the upper echelon of Columbus songwriters like Joe Peppercorn of the Whiles, Zac Little of Saintseneca and Lydia Loveless.
Back when I worked at now-shuttered alternative weekly paper Columbus Alive, we named How to Cook Everything the best local album of 2020, writing, “Sam Bodary has a knack for isolating tiny droplets from life’s gushing firehose, zooming in on them until they clarify and reflect something larger.” On that record, Sam explored what it means to be from the American heartland (“Am I the Midwest?”) and interrogated the idea of “legitimate force” locally and abroad (“Another War”).
On the evening of July 12, Susan’s second call finally arrived. She needed her son to drive up to Michigan first thing in the morning. David might need surgery, and he might not make it.
When Sam arrived, he sat in the corner of the neurosurgical ICU with his guitar, looking at his dad in the hospital bed—eyes closed, ice packs around his head, a spot of blood on the pillow. He wondered if his father would ever wake up. And if he did wake, would he be the dad Sam knew and loved? The warm, chatty guy with big, soft eyes who made dinner for the family? The dad who was always there when Sam got home from school?
Sam noticed the pitch and cadence of the beeps coming from the hospital machinery, and he started to quietly pick out an accompanying melody on his guitar, which he eventually turned into a song, “In the Corner.” He wrote a couple of other songs about the experience, too. And then another, and another. Now, nearly seven years after a tree branch changed the Bodary family forever, Hello Emerson is releasing those songs in the form of a gorgeous, remarkably vulnerable new album, To Keep Him Here, out March 29 on Anyway Records and German label K&F Records, with an album release show at Rumba Cafe on April 13. Anchored by snippets of a 2019 StoryCorps conversation, the band’s third record is part documentary, part meditation on memory, mortality and family. It’s also Hello Emerson’s best album yet.
“Can I play something to keep you here?” Sam sings at the end of “In the Corner,” repeating the line with more and more urgency, louder and louder, until the band pulls back and the question hangs in the air, desperate for an answer.
➽ Samuel Emerson Bodary is a Michigan native, but just barely. In August 1994, 10 days after his birth in Pontiac, the Bodary family moved to the Dayton area, where Susan grew up, so that David could begin a teaching job at Sinclair Community College. From the get-go, Sam had an old soul—quiet, observant, thoughtful, cautious. The Bodary family loves to tell the story of 7-year-old Sam in the backseat of the car, asking his mom, “You have insurance, right?”
“He wasn't one of those wild and crazy boys,” says Annelise McNally, Sam’s older sister.
Young Sam had an eye for detail. He noticed everything, no matter how small. In sixth grade, when asked to write about what makes a house a home for an essay contest, he zeroed in on one thing—juice stains—and won the competition.
As the middle child, Sam aimed to please while his supportive, encouraging parents provided him with a safe, loving home in which to reflect and unpack emotions. That introversion, though, also led to frequent self-imposed isolation and quiet sadness. He could get trapped inside his head as he tried to manage loneliness and persistent depression.
At Kettering Fairmont High School, Sam joined the choir and became a vocal percussionist in the school’s a cappella groups. When his cousin mailed him a USB drive full of indie-folk bands like Bon Iver, the Decemberists, Sharon Van Etten and Andrew Bird, he fell in love with the music and started getting serious about the guitar. “I was annoyed at myself for not contributing something to this thing that I was getting so much out of,” he says.
After graduating from high school in 2013, Sam headed to Nashville to pursue a music-related career at Belmont University, but he quickly realized the school wasn’t a good fit. The next year, he transferred to Ohio State University, where he studied English and became enthralled with David Foster Wallace’s writing on loneliness and depression.
He also began volunteering at the Columbus Metropolitan Library. “When I was doing this heavy, fiction thesis and this after-school programming stuff, I realized, one of these is a lot better for the world,” Sam says, so he continued volunteering at the Linden branch long after his 2016 graduation.
In college, Sam spent a lot of time at Kafe Kerouac, an eclectic hangout and local-band incubator on High Street just north of campus. In 2015, local musician Jack Doran noticed Sam’s talents during Tuesday open-mic nights, and soon the two were playing together in Hello Emerson. Dan Seibert, a classical percussion major, lived near Sam in Baker Hall West and connected with him at a Newport Music Hall concert, eventually taking over drumming duties in Hello Emerson, which allowed Doran to focus solely on piano. Other collaborators would come and go, but Bodary, Doran and Seibert remain Hello Emerson’s core trio.
The Kafe Kerouac scene also introduced Bodary to Lars Hiller, a German who played in a band that shared a bill with Hello Emerson. Hiller and Bodary became fast friends, and after Hello Emerson issued its first proper album, Above the Floorboards, Hiller re-released it in Germany on his own label, K&F Records, and invited the band to play some shows overseas. Hello Emerson has toured Germany three times, with a fourth set of shows coming in May.
Above the Floorboards showcased what anyone who had seen Hello Emerson already knew: Sam had a way with words. But it would take more time before he discovered how to pair his literary lyrics with similarly memorable melodies. That first record arrived in August 2017, about a month after David Bodary got out of his car to investigate a downed tree limb.
➽ David Bodary was heading back home to Ohio from the family’s cottage in Pinckney, Michigan, on July 12, 2017. Susan had left earlier that morning for a work obligation, but David stuck around a little longer, packing his Volkswagen Beetle and then hitting the road around noon. The wind picked up, and it started to rain as he drove south on Baker Road toward I-94. About half a mile from the highway, branches from a huge oak tree blocked the road.
He could have turned around; there are other ways to get to I-94. But finding a different route wouldn’t solve the tree problem for all the other drivers on Baker Road that day. So he pulled over and got out of the car.
And that’s where things get fuzzy. Bystanders told medics and law enforcement that part of a branch snapped, knocking David to the ground. They say he hit his head on the asphalt and lost consciousness for several minutes. When he came to, people asked him where he’d come from and where he was headed. He didn’t know, but he had his car keys in hand and was ready to get back on the road. One bystander, reportedly a nurse, convinced him instead to get in an ambulance, which took him to University of Michigan Hospital in Ann Arbor. His brain began to swell.
Back in Ohio, Susan had barely been home an hour when she noticed an incoming call from David’s phone. She picked up, but instead of her husband’s genial voice, an EMT told her to come to the hospital. She hung up and began talking to herself aloud: “Put your shoes on. Grab the stuff you left by the back door. Put it back in the car. Turn around. Start driving.”
On the drive north, she spoke with a sheriff’s deputy and, eventually, a neurosurgeon, who told her David had a serious head injury. She could hear her husband moaning in the background. Susan knew she had to call her three kids: Annelise, the oldest, and a mother herself; Sam, 2 ½ years younger; and Lily Bodary, a teenager at the time. Of the three, Sam tended to be the calmest, so Susan called him first. “I needed him to shore me up,” she says.
When the accident happened, Sam shared an Old North house on Glenmawr Avenue with Doran, who would stand in his friend’s doorway and talk most nights. He remembers how emotionally overwhelmed Sam seemed the night before he drove to the hospital in Michigan. “You obviously want [your dad] to live, but you're also trying to get yourself ready for death,” Doran says.
At the hospital, David would periodically wake and ask the same question: What happened? Doctors debated whether they needed to operate to relieve pressure in his head. They opted instead to treat the swelling with medication. It worked. After a few days, everyone began to get more hopeful. David could get up to use the bathroom, but he needed help. “His hands on my shoulder felt smaller and more fragile than ever,” Sam says.
David spent nine days in the ICU before recovering in Pinckney, which at first required 24-7 care. He needed daily speech, physical and occupational therapy. His short-term memory took time to return, too. One day, Susan left David listening to a Detroit Tigers game and told him to stay put while she took a shower. Instead, he ventured down the wooden basement stairs (a big no-no) and moved a 50-pound carpet (another big no-no).
“I was as angry as I've ever been. I yelled more than I've ever yelled in my life. I literally closed myself in the room and just sobbed. I didn’t know what to do,” Susan says. “He didn’t understand that if he fell again, that could be it.”
After that, Susan posted a sign near the steps: “No stairs without a wingman.” The sign is still there. These days, she also avoids the Baker Road exit off I-94; driving by the scarred oak tree reminds her too much of the accident.
Over time, David made a nearly full recovery. He permanently lost his sense of smell, and he has less of a filter now in social situations—a trait he has come to value. “Certain filters are unnecessary,” he says.
➽ Sam began to think of the ordeal as a dress rehearsal for the day when he will likely have to say goodbye to his parents. He wrote the song “Tough Luck” about that experience, and he got to play an early version of it for his dad in the summer of 2019, when the two met for a recorded conversation in StoryCorps’ converted Airstream trailer, which was parked in the Short North. But he needed more time and distance from the event to write additional songs.
Sam doesn’t rush anything. He’s intentional about every part of his life, which he organizes using a customized, daily habit tracker (for sleep, running, reading, sitting quietly and writing), along with a “Weeksheet” that includes ranked priorities, meal prep, groceries and other categories.
It’s an impressive organizational feat, especially for someone who doesn’t turn 30 until August. “I demand a lot of structure from my life in order to then deal with uncertainty. If I have those structures in place, it allows me to operate really well in ambiguity,” he says. “I was raised Catholic. I went to church every Sunday. I don't really align with that at all, but I think the practice of spending so much time in church, where the patterns are predictable, leads me to be really intentional with my patterns at home.”
Last year, Sam began sharing parts of his journaling routine on Hello Emerson’s Instagram account, which found its way to the online journaling community. Some of the videos have racked up hundreds of thousands of views, and followers often ask Sam for more details about the Weeksheet and the journal. At press time, the band was approaching 20,000 Instagram followers. (You can download the customizable Weeksheet and habit tracker for free at helloemerson.com/store.)
Every day, Sam handwrites the “thesis statement of my life” in his journal: “I aim to ease loneliness in myself, my community and people I haven't met.” That’s a more accomplishable mission now than it used to be. After college, he worked at Battelle for five years, then taught at the Metro Schools for a year. He decided to switch gears again, pursuing his longtime passion by working at CML’s Linden branch, a job he describes as “a vector through which to ease loneliness for people.” (He recently moved to the Karl Road branch.)
“At the library, I get a green light to be a supportive uncle figure in the neighborhood,” says Sam, who lives in North Linden. “It feels really good to be a known entity and a trusted adult.”
Making records is another vector for fulfilling that mission. How to Cook Everything showed a huge leap in Bodary’s mastery of songcraft. “He approaches it almost like an engineer, but it’s very poetic,” Koe-Krompecher says. A few weeks after Hello Emerson’s album release show in 2020, the world shut down amid COVID protocols. And while that may have ruined any career-related momentum for the band, that’s not why Sam makes music. The art’s reason for existing is inherent in its creation, not its commercial viability or other outcomes, which gives Hello Emerson the freedom to create exactly what the band wants to create.
Initially, “Tough Luck” was slated for that sophomore album, but Sam held it back, thinking maybe it belonged alongside other material exploring the same theme. The pandemic gave him the time and space to work on those songs, which became To Keep Him Here. Much of the album spells out what happened on July 12, 2017, nearly verbatim. Take the first few lines of “Tupperware for Glass,” sung from Susan’s perspective: “I know I never call you on a workday/And I’m gonna call your sisters after this/We’re not quite sure what happened/We’re calling it an accident for now/There isn’t more that we can do/I'll call you back/When I got a bit more news.”
The first time Seibert, the percussionist, heard “Tupperware,” Hello Emerson was playing a show, and the rest of the band left the stage while Sam performed the song solo. The gravity of it hit him right away. “Approaching that as a full band, I knew every note needed to be very intentional, because every word that Sam is saying and every note that he's playing is very intentional,” Seibert says. “I don’t want to be in the way.”
In January 2022, Sam, Seibert, Doran, bassist Ben Ahlteen and recording engineer Tony Rice decamped to Pinckney over a long weekend to record the basic tracks at a former retreat center that Sam’s uncle rehabbed for big family gatherings. Sam was organized and ready, of course. “He had a nicely laid out spreadsheet for us with comments, mixing schedule, tracking schedule. There's a column for each name of each song and revisions,” Rice says. “I use that in my work now with my clients. It's brilliant.”
The songs hit Rice in the heart. “Even after repeated listens, it never really lost the weight,” he says.
Seibert wrote arrangements for the songs, enlisting Knisely, a local chamber quartet of clarinet, violin, piano and vibraphone. Knisely’s beautifully minimalist, experimental sounds became the connective tissue of the album, linking spoken-word sections with more traditional songs. Seibert envisioned the arrangements as a film score or musical theater, where Knisely is the Greek chorus.
“Dan probably doesn't get enough credit,” says Hiller of K&F Records. “He has this massive talent he secretly carries around.”
The band pressed the vinyl version of To Keep Him Here at Musicol in North Linden, leaving no space between the tracks; it’s meant to be played front to back. The packaging is infused with meaning, with vintage photos of David on the cover and insert and family initials etched near the record’s center.
Last year, the Bodary family listened to the whole record together for the first time. Gathered around couches in the rec room at David and Susan’s place in Kettering, tears flowed early and often. Some family members had to walk away briefly. “We hadn't really sat around and talked about what we've been through,” says Sam’s older sister, Annelise. “We probably should have had a family therapist there. It was pretty intense.”
It also brought them closer, as Sam sings on “Tough Luck”: “We’re more like a family than we’ve been in years.”
➽ On the last Friday night in February, Hello Emerson played a sold-out show at Old North venue Rambling House to celebrate the release of “Church,” the second single from To Keep Him Here. Sam comes alive onstage, contorting his face, making direct eye contact with the audience and playing with loud-quiet-loud dynamics. “He must live in those words, because he performs them so naturally,” Rice says. “It’s like he’s talking to you off the cuff.”
Sam’s parents came to the show, and during certain songs, David—dressed in professorial khakis, button-down and sweater vest—stood behind his wife with one hand resting gently on her shoulder as if to steady himself for the emotional weight of the songs. Other times he dropped his hand to grab hers. Certain lines elicited knowing glances, laughter, cheers and applause. David always looks as if he’s smiling, at least a little bit, but on this night he radiated contagious joy mixed with pride as he watched his son do what he was made to do.
It all could have been different, of course. Nothing is guaranteed, including—especially—life itself. Family members responded in different ways. Annelise got a tattoo of a bluebird, which reminds her of her dad. Susan plans to retire this year from a demanding job in education policy. Sam wrote songs. And David, after being spared, couldn’t help but wonder: Why am I still here? What’s my purpose?
For one, he’s pretty sure he was only trying to be helpful on July 12, 2017, and that same impulse remains. “I couldn't see how I could keep living and not keep doing the things that I would do,” he tells Sam in the StoryCorps interview. “And one of those things would be to stop and help people move a limb off the road.”
In fact, after conversations with his wife, David realized he didn’t want to change much at all. He wanted to keep doing the same thing he’d been doing for nearly 30 years: teaching. “I always belonged in the classroom. ... I love helping people become the best versions of themselves,” says David, the chair of Sinclair’s Department of Communication. “It's somewhat reassuring to think that I was in the right place, and I can continue to be in the right place.”
David claims it’s anticlimactic, but it’s a remarkable realization. Imagine enduring a near-death experience and emerging on the other side with a rare chance at a do-over. After taking stock, instead of hatching grand plans to travel the world or making bumper-sticker promises about living life to the fullest, you decide to keep doing the things you were already doing, because you were right where you belonged all along.
When Sam looks at his dad now, he sees the “quiet, humble peace of living a really good life, and doing things that are super meaningful and helpful for the world that don't require a whole bunch of recognition,” he says. “I think I'm seeking what he found. And I think I'm closer to that than I've ever been.”
This story is from the April 2024 issue of Columbus Monthly. It has been updated to include details on the April 13 album release show.
주제: Music