MPR’s Chris Roberts talks with Neal Hagberg and Leandra Peak, of the folk duo Neal & Leandra. The two share their thoughts about album “Stranger to My Kin,” which takes a strikingly darker lyrical turn from duo’s previous sound.

Segment includes music clips.

Transcript:

(00:00:00) Fans have come to expect the optimism and hopefulness that have characterized Neal Hagberg and LeAndre Peaks songs may be in for a mild shock when they listen to stranger to Mike in here the hope if there is any is hard one.

(00:00:16) Sometimes I feel like I've been crushed it. growing fan on my bones bones and short of breath afraid that there will be nothing left under the way of Allah.

(00:00:39) We've well, I don't know we've gone through a lot of soul-searching in the last couple of years and I think this album reflects a lot of that wouldn't you say we've hit middle

(00:00:49) age? I think that Sid rowse wait a minute looming or something like that. I'm

(00:00:53) 39, you're 37. We can't hit middle age till we're 40, but

(00:00:57) it I think we just two more years of plugging away and music we've been doing this about almost 15 years 10 years full time and I think the last couple years of touring and stuff like that just started to kind of Grind us down a little bit. Well, yeah, it was it

(00:01:12) was funny because we've gotten a lot of the things that we have wanted in the music business and there are a lot of things that we haven't gotten that we wanted and you come to a realization that there is no

(00:01:26) enough. In the backyard of the Kentucky side mama and me my our minds our and their princess. It's the one and only they're saying oh Lord, I will. And a time we've kind of lost that naive young thing, but we've lost our aunjanue status. We think finally and and we're kind of glad I mean in the last few CDs, we've always made CDs that we really liked we thought they were very reflective of what we've been doing. But this record reflects the last couple years and we knew when we did it we thought wow, you know, I wondered what people are going to think because it's a little darker and I Cry Wake up with Jay darker indeed with songs that

(00:02:41) layout tragedies or touch on Bittersweet

(00:02:44) world-weary

(00:02:45) themes. You wouldn't expect from a pair who met at a performance of Godspell at Gustavus. Adolphus College, but Neil Hagberg says don't assume the songs are drawn from their personal lives. Our audience has come to That everything's autobiographical. And so when you hear a song like less of you, it's a that's a that was actually not written from my own experiences written. I was in the middle of reading Jane Smiley is a thousand acres which is just a wrenching beautiful book, but I was in the middle of the abusive situation with her father and I put the book down Midway through and I wrote the song

(00:03:34) Do it til there's nothing left to me. But why?

(00:03:57) And take me down to the water. It's a song that a lot of people have picked up on its become their favorite song on the recording which surprises me, but it because it's a Twist where a woman has a baby out of wedlock and accidentally kills it, you know, and it and it was the father was the preacher. I mean it was it's a it's a it's a sort of a sort of tail but it is a you know, if people who are thinking that all of this is autobiographical are going My God LeAndre when you were 15, you shook your baby to death and

(00:04:31) actually asked me that people have said we didn't know you had a baby and I don't even know how to respond because then I'm always feeling like, you know, they just didn't get it at all. You know, I'm not singing that right if they're not getting the story but I think it is there has been a shift from more autobiographical songs to more stories, you know, so it's a from someone else's Viewpoint and I think that's a healthy stretch for us. Teen my baby daddy. Shook her huh one night when she cry. China have been me. her preacher day She caused. Breathe, everything is different take me down.

(00:05:59) We came out of one concert last spring and turn to each other and both were thinking the same thing. We did we looked at each other and said we're not kneel and Leandria anymore in the way that in the way that a lot of people want Neil and LeAndre to be if we could still be naive if we could still be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and wow. Everything's Possible that would be wonderful but to be forced to feel like you have to be that way when you've already seen things that you know are not possible. Well, then you got to move to a new place and you just hope you just hope that your audience moves with you one clue on whether the audience will embrace the new darker Neil and LeAndre will be turnout at the Duo's Monday night performance at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis. Their new album is called stranger to me. Ken I'm right House Records, this is Chris Roberts, Minnesota Public

(00:06:59) Radio 3 tires and my black suit shaving kit and shiny shoes dust

(00:07:07) it off an old suitcase tucked in my Bible and a bottle of

(00:07:11) booze 50 bucks in my pocket. Try to get me a cheap room for three days and it's over. It's just something then I've got to do I'm ready for members just gonna be a big meeting their whole I could happen. There's just something in the sweet Magnolias.

(00:07:50) development and reform the developing

(00:07:51) trend ten hours on a Greyhound old ladies and still are hopeless men riding shotgun. I just look out my window and stare bigger way in my sack Bunch. My wife packed it before work. She thinks I'm crazy. She's afraid that I'll get her but I'm ready for it. It's just something sweet.