The Milk Carton Kids revived 'excitement' for their folk stylings comes to The Ryman

Excelling at the art of making uncompromising folk music put Americana-beloved veteran duo The Milk Carton Kids in an unimaginably compromised position. The tandem of Kenneth Pattengale and Joey Ryan were peerless at their craft but found themselves bereft of inspiration.

Thus, the story of "I Only See The Moon" -- their 2024 Grammy-nominated Best Folk Album -- is one of "gaining a renewed appreciation and gratitude for creating a global community of off-the-beaten-path freaks and weirdos who love folk music," Ryan told The Tennessean before embarking on a 2024 tour in support of the album.

For the first time, The Milk Carton Kids' tour arrives at Nashville's Ryman Auditorium on Feb. 1, 2024, with Ryan and Pattengale as a headlining act.

"The Ryman's environment and vibe impeccably create the perfect confluence of everything that defines The Milk Carton Kids as an act," says the player of, among many instruments, a 1951 Gibson J-45 acoustic guitar.

Rediscovering creative passions

The Los Angeles natives' decade together saw space and time granted by the COVID-19 pandemic place the tandem back together again in North Hollywood with their homes and studio within a half-hour of each other.

Elongated solitude for the duo meant not recording their latest album with a dozen-plus players as they did for their 2018 album "All the Things That I Did and All the Things That I Didn't Do."

That release saw session players with drums, pianos and strings infiltrate their recording space.

The result?

The release is melodically emboldened, but as Pitchfork noted, the album's 10-minute-long "elegiac progressive rock" lead single, "One More for the Road," leaves a duo best regarded for stringently-arranged and impressively coldly downtempo ballads as, yes, more inventive, but also sounding creatively threadbare for the rest of the release.

In previous interviews, Pattengale has noted feeling that COVID's enforced break from a stream of album cycles and touring gigs with acts like Mumford and Sons "[shook] off some kind of collective writer's block and renewed [he and Ryan's] collaborative purpose in what we were trying to say, or where we were trying to land artistically."

Rekindling excitement

"Sharp" lyrics on songs "that spark excitement when heard live when [Pettengale and Ryan are playing as] a duo" evolve The Milk Carton Kids past "making boring and pretty songs that just sound nice," Ryan says.

Of note, the heartbroken "Star Shine," plaintively mellow "Running on Sweet Smile" and fanciful yet lyrically thoughtful "North Country Ride" are album standouts.

"Let's take the north country ride where it stays light so far into the night / We'll keep the moon in our eyes; We'll keep our eyes on the prize / Breathe the ions until everything feels alright," states the song.

Delivered in a style akin to Simon and Garfunkel-meets-David Rawlings, it's a winner.

Playing folk music in Los Angeles -- a place whose Laurel Canyon neighborhood blends elevated spaces and often idyllic weather with being surrounded by generations of peerless, guitar-wielding talent -- can stymie creativity emerging past what can become meeting, but not exceeding a style that could eventually feel milquetoast and tired.

Faced with this notion, Ryan describes an "intentional, magic and raw" process of discovering songs guided by urgent truths that caused three-quarters of the first batch of songs that The Milk Carton Kids recorded for the album that became "I Only See The Moon" not to make the final cut.

Recording the album track "All The Time In The World To Kill" shows the performers singing in unison as vocalists for the first time. The change was initially "trippy and disorienting" but reflected a progression in their experimentations in maximalism that didn't require a dozen musicians surrounding them.

Also, the track removes elongated instrumental solos from the mix. Instead, intricately layered choral-style vocal arrangements backed by ambient distortion and reverb are present.

"Two guitars, two voices and folk music"

2024 finds The Milk Carton Kids' collaborative spirit revived and unchanged from how it was birthed over a decade ago, arriving via "exciting music -- or at least we believe it to be."

"I mean, it's also important to remember that it's hard to achieve something exciting when there are two guitars, two voices and folk music," jokes Ryan.

"We've grown from forcing promoters to place folding chairs on the floors of 150-person capacity bars and tiny rock clubs that were sticky and soaked with beer to playing in the Mother Church of country music. Still, though, it's better to do better with less than do more with more. We have done that before and now it's time to do it again."

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: The Ryman Nashville: The Milk Carton Kids talks folk stylings